Chapter 52 Chapter 52

Chapter 52 Chapter 52
The week before the orientation and recruitment weekend felt like standing on a train platform while two different departures were announced at once.
Everything became lists.
My mother made lists about what I needed for the fellowship trip. Naomi made lists about what I needed emotionally, which were less useful and included things like self-respect, snacks, and refuse ugly lanyards. Jaxon made no list that I saw, but he had started checking his phone more, answering texts from Coach, and going quiet in that way he did when he was thinking too hard.
I noticed because of course I did.
That was love too, apparently. Not just warmth. Attention.
By Thursday afternoon, my room looked like paperwork and laundry had lost a war. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor trying to decide if two sweaters counted as overpacking when my phone buzzed.
Jaxon:
come outside?
I smiled before I could stop myself.
That still happened. Even with all the future stuff crowding us. Even with nerves and distance and forms.
I slipped on shoes and went out to the porch.
He was leaning against his truck under the streetlight, hoodie on, hands in his pockets. The second he saw me, his whole face softened.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
I came down the steps and stopped in front of him. “You know texting like a Victorian suitor is still weird, right?”
His mouth tilted. “And yet effective.”
“That remains unproven.”
He looked at me for one second too long. “Liar.”
The air was cool, the kind that smelled like damp grass and the first warning of deeper autumn. Somewhere down the street, a television drifted faintly through an open window.
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then I asked, “Are you okay?”
His brows lifted slightly. “That’s my line.”
“Not tonight.”
He leaned back against the truck a little harder. “Coach called.”
Something in my chest tightened. “And?”
“He wants me to stay overnight at Halston after the recruitment dinner. Meet players, do the morning training stuff, sit in on meetings.”
I nodded slowly. “That sounds… important.”
“It is.”
He said it without excitement.
That made me look at him more carefully.
“You don’t sound happy.”
“I am happy.” He exhaled. “I just also hate the timing.”
That hit me harder than if he’d said he was nervous about the visit itself.
“Because of my trip?”
His gaze met mine. “Because we’ll both be gone at the same time and I already know I’m going to miss you.”
There it was again.
The thing he did so easily that still wrecked me: making the truth sound simple instead of dramatic.
I stepped closer and rested one shoulder lightly against his chest. “That’s inconveniently sweet.”
“Yeah.”
“You could try being less lovable for one weekend.”
“No.”
I laughed softly.
He wrapped an arm around me and leaned his chin briefly against the top of my head. We stood there like that for a minute, quiet and warm and stupidly young for how old the future felt.
Then he said, “I had another thought.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“Probably.” He looked down at me. “Come with me tomorrow.”
I frowned. “To Halston?”
He snorted. “No. To get coffee. To sit somewhere that isn’t school or my kitchen and talk like normal people before we both leave.”
The invitation settled low and soft in me.
“Are we not normal people now?”
“No. We’re emotionally compromised.”
“That’s fair.”
He smiled. “So?”
I pretended to think about it. “Only if the coffee is good.”
“It won’t be.”
“Then why would I agree?”
“Because you love me.”
I stared at him.
Then I shook my head. “You’re getting cocky.”
“Still true.”

Friday after school, we drove to the little coffee place near the river and took our drinks down to the waterpath, ending up on the same bench where we’d once kissed with the whole future hovering over us like weather.
The trees were turning now, leaves bronze at the edges. The river moved slow and silver beneath the late light.
For a while we just sat there.
I liked that with him. That silence didn’t mean absence. It meant room.
Jaxon broke it first. “What are you most scared of?”
I looked over. “You really know how to make coffee romantic.”
He smiled faintly. “Answer.”
I traced the cardboard sleeve on my cup with one finger. “Being the one who gets more attached to the missing than the moment.”
His expression changed immediately. Softer. “Mila.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“No.” He turned slightly toward me. “It sounds honest.”
I looked out at the river. “What if we do this right and it still hurts?”
A beat passed.
Then he said, “It probably will.”
I turned back, startled.
His mouth flattened a little. “Not because we’re doomed. Because caring and distance usually hurt some. I just don’t think hurt means wrong.”
That landed somewhere deep.
Because I’d spent so much of my life treating pain as evidence I should have protected myself better. Chosen less. Wanted less.
But that wasn’t what this was.
I looked down at my cup. “You make everything sound tolerable in the worst possible way.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “That’s my gift.”
We sat with that for another minute.
Then I asked, “What are you most scared of?”
His jaw shifted.
Finally he said, “That you’ll get there and realize your life is going to get so much bigger than this town…” He glanced at me, then away. “And I’ll suddenly feel like a small part of it.”
The ache that moved through me was immediate and fierce.
“Jaxon.”
He kept his eyes on the river. “I know that’s not fair.”
“It’s not unfair.” I set my cup down on the bench beside me. “It’s just the scary part you don’t usually say first.”
He smiled without humor. “Trying new things.”
I turned toward him fully. “You are not a small part of my life.”
He looked at me then.
And because this was us now—scared, honest, trying—I kept going.
“You are not this town. You are not convenience. You are not just the person who happened before my future started.” My throat tightened, but I pushed through it. “You’re in the future when I picture it. I don’t know all the details yet, but you’re there.”
Something open and almost stunned moved across his face.
“Mila,” he said quietly.
I touched the front of his hoodie, just over his heart. “So don’t make yourself smaller in my head either.”
That was it.
That was the sentence that undid him.
He caught my hand and kissed my knuckles once, eyes closing for half a second like he needed the second to steady himself.
Then he looked at me and said, “Okay.”
I smiled a little. “That’s all?”
“That’s all I can say without sounding insane.”
“You usually risk it.”
“True.”
I laughed, and then he kissed me, warm and sure and a little grateful, like the truth I’d given him had weight.
When we pulled apart, the river still moved, the leaves still turned, and the weekend still waited.
Nothing had been solved.
But something had been named.
And heading into our first real separation, that felt like its own kind of promise.