Chapter 46 Chapter 46

Chapter 46 Chapter 46
By Wednesday, wanting answers had started to feel almost as dangerous as not having them.
Not because anything was wrong.
That was the frustrating part.
Nothing was wrong.
Jaxon still texted me before school. Lucy still treated me like a beloved consultant with unclear legal standing. My mother had started saying things like, “If you’re going to the Reeds’ house, take the good container back with you,” which felt alarmingly domestic and slightly terrifying.
Everything was good.
And somehow that made the uncertainty louder.
Because when things are bad, your job is simple. Survive them.
When things are good, you have to decide what you’re brave enough to hope for.
I was standing outside the library after last bell waiting for Naomi when my phone buzzed.
Jaxon:
field’s empty. come here?
I stared at the text for a second.
Then:
Me:
that sounds suspiciously like a trap.
Jaxon:
probably. still coming?
I smiled before I could stop myself.
Me:
yes.
The football field after school looked strange without noise.
No band. No shouting. No crowd packed into the stands. Just late afternoon light across the turf, the bleachers silver and empty, the goalposts too still.
Jaxon was sitting halfway up the home stands in his practice clothes, forearms resting on his knees. He looked up when I climbed the steps, and the expression that hit his face when he saw me made my chest warm in that now-familiar, still-dangerous way.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
I sat beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched.
For a minute, we just looked out over the field.
It should have felt awkward.
It didn’t.
That was the problem too—how easy silence had become with him. How much room there was now for things that mattered.
“You’re thinking loud again,” he said.
I leaned back against the bench. “That phrase remains fake.”
He smiled a little. “Still true.”
I looked over at him. “So are you going to tell me why I’ve been summoned to the dead field?”
He glanced down at his hands, then back out toward the fifty-yard line. “Coach asked if I wanted to bring someone to senior family night next week.”
I blinked. “Family night?”
“Yeah. Before the game. Parents walk the field, photos, embarrassing speeches, all that.”
For a second, I forgot how to respond.
Not because I didn’t understand the event.
Because I understood it too well.
Parents walk the field.
Family night.
Photos.
Public.
The whole school.
And suddenly I was very aware of the empty bleachers around us, because full ones were all I could picture.
Jaxon must have felt the exact second I went quiet.
“You don’t have to,” he said immediately.
I looked at him. “You asked me here to invite me and then immediately told me I don’t have to.”
He lifted one shoulder. “I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds like you know I’m spiralling.”
“That too.”
I looked back out at the field.
The turf glowed green in the slanting light. Somewhere across campus, a door slammed. A bird landed on the railing two rows down and then lifted off again.
Family night.
I had spent so long being the person nobody publicly claimed that the idea of being asked to stand in a ritual built around belonging felt almost absurd.
And yet.
The fact that he wanted me there moved through me in a way I couldn’t dismiss.
“What would that mean?” I asked quietly.
Jaxon went still beside me.
Then he said, just as quietly, “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I swallowed. “Would I be there because Lucy likes me? Because your dad does? Because I’m your girlfriend? Because all of those are different levels of terrifying.”
That last part pulled a faint, helpless laugh out of him, but his expression stayed serious.
“All of those,” he said. “But mostly the third one.”
Heat rose into my face even as my nerves stayed sharp.
I tucked one leg under me on the bench. “You really don’t know how to do low stakes, do you?”
His mouth tilted. “Not with you.”
That should not have comforted me as much as it did.
I looked at him for a long second. “Are there mothers with clipboards involved?”
He laughed. “Probably.”
“That’s evil.”
“It’s football. Evil is implied.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then his hand found mine between us on the bench. Not grabbing. Just warm fingers threading through mine, asking and answering at once.
“I want you there,” he said softly. “But I don’t want you there because you feel like you have to prove something.”
I looked down at our hands.
The old instinct was still there, the one that wanted to turn every invitation into a test. A measurement. A risk assessment.
Would I look right there? Would people stare? Would they decide I was too much, too visible, too unlikely to stand in a place meant for the chosen?
But Jaxon wasn’t asking me to perform belonging.
He was offering it.
That difference still had the power to wreck me.
I let out a breath and looked up. “If I say yes, and someone makes one weird comment about me being on a football field, I reserve the right to become a problem.”
His grin flashed quick and bright. “That sounds hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “You are absurd.”
“Still yes?”
I studied him—his face, the careful hope in it, the fact that he looked more nervous about my comfort than his own request.
Then I said, “Yes.”
The relief in his expression was small but unmistakable.
“Okay,” he said softly.
“Okay,” I echoed.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then he lifted our joined hands and pressed his mouth lightly to my knuckles.
The tenderness of it hit me low and aching.
“That’s unfair,” I muttered.
“Probably.”
“You keep doing that.”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
We sat there a while longer after that, talking about stupid things to make the moment survivable. Lucy had apparently informed Mr. Reed that senior family night was “the prelude to emotional devastation.” Naomi had texted me four times during this conversation, each message more dramatic than the last. Coach had once cried at a commercial featuring a truck and a golden retriever, according to locker-room legend.
By the time the sun dipped lower and the field turned gold at the edges, I felt calmer.
Not because the future had shrunk.
Because I had said yes to something else that scared me, and it hadn’t broken me in the saying.
When we finally stood to leave, Jaxon paused halfway down the bleachers and looked back at the field.
“What?” I asked.
He slipped his hand into mine again. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“Definitely.” He looked at me, eyes warm and serious all at once. “That I’m really glad you keep choosing the scary stuff with me.”
The simple honesty of that settled through me.
I smiled a little. “I’m not doing it because I’m brave.”
“Then why?”
I squeezed his hand once. “Because you’re worth being brave for.”
He stopped walking.
I immediately regretted saying it.
Not because it wasn’t true.
Because it was.
And truth with him still felt like handing over the softest part of myself and trusting he wouldn’t bruise it just by holding it.
But Jaxon only looked at me like I’d stunned him and steadied him in the same breath.
Then he bent and kissed me there on the bleachers, with the field empty below us and the whole quiet school around us holding its breath.
And when he pulled back, smiling in that way that still made him look slightly undone, I realized maybe that was what we were learning now.
Not how to stop being scared.
How to keep choosing each other through it anyway.