Chapter 55 Chapter 55

Chapter 55 Chapter 55
Coming home should have felt simple.
It didn’t.
It felt charged.
Like the whole weekend had stretched something between us and now all I could think about was what it would feel like when that distance disappeared again.
My mother drove us back Sunday afternoon, the fellowship folder tucked neatly in my lap and my overnight bag at my feet. I answered her questions about workshops and mentors and the engineering building and tried not to look at my phone every thirty seconds like I was waiting for weather updates from my own heart.
At 3:14, Jaxon texted.
back in town. you alive?
I smiled so fast it almost hurt.
barely. orientation was academically aggressive.
His reply came immediately.
come over?
I looked over at my mother.
She glanced at my face, then back at the road. “Go.”
“That’s suspiciously generous.”
“You’ve spent forty-eight hours pretending not to miss him in my passenger seat,” she said. “I deserve peace.”
I laughed and texted back.
yes. but if lucy treats this reunion like a documentary i’m leaving.
too late. she already has questions.
Of course she did.
The Reed house felt exactly the same when I walked in.
That nearly undid me.
Not because I needed it to be unchanged. Because I had spent all weekend stepping into a bigger version of my future, and there was something so tender about returning to this place and finding it still warm, still loud, still slightly chaotic in the exact ways my body had started to think of as safe.
Lucy was on the couch with a blanket, two markers, and what looked like a hand-drawn survey.
She looked up. “Excellent. You’ve arrived. I’m collecting data.”
“On what?”
“How separation impacts romantic morale.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “I hate this house.”
“That’s not what your face says.”
From the kitchen, Jaxon laughed.
I turned.
There he was.
Leaning in the doorway in a dark T-shirt and jeans, hair still slightly damp like he’d showered before I got there, hands shoved in his pockets like he was trying very hard not to make the moment bigger than it already was.
It was already enormous.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then Lucy looked between us and sighed. “If you’re both going to stand there like literature, please do it quietly.”
That broke it.
I laughed, and Jaxon crossed the room.
The second he got close, all the noise in me settled. Not disappeared. Just arranged itself around the fact of him.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey.”
His eyes moved over my face, taking me in with that same steady warmth that still got me every time. “You okay?”
I smiled. “You really ask that like you bill hourly.”
“Occupational hazard.”
I should have said something smarter.
Instead I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around his waist.
He made a small sound like I’d surprised him and then held me tight, immediate and warm and so familiar now that my whole body seemed to exhale at once. I pressed my face against his chest and let myself have the relief of it.
He smelled like clean soap, laundry, and home.
That was a dangerous realization.
His chin rested briefly against my hair. “Missed you too.”
I laughed into his shirt. “I hate when you’re right.”
“Still true.”
Lucy cleared her throat loudly. “For the record, this is very compelling, but I did prepare a questionnaire.”
Jaxon didn’t let go. “You can ask us nothing.”
“That sounds anti-science.”
Mr. Reed appeared from the kitchen carrying a mug of coffee and the expression of a man who had accepted that his household was now run by emotionally unstable minors.
“Good trip?” he asked me.
“Yeah.” I stepped back from Jaxon just enough to answer like a person with social skills. “Actually, really good.”
His smile warmed. “Good.”
Lucy waved her paper. “And Halston?”
Jaxon glanced down at me before answering. “Also good.”
There it was again.
The double edge of it.
Good for him. Good for me. Good and still a little painful because real things keep asking for space.
Lucy squinted. “You both look like growth happened.”
“That’s because you’re exhausting,” Jaxon said.
“She says, from the couch where she engineered this scene,” I added.
“That’s leadership,” Lucy replied.
Later, after Mr. Reed bribed her into doing homework and then took her upstairs to review math, Jaxon and I ended up alone in the kitchen.
Of course.
Somehow every important conversation in our relationship seemed to demand a counter, low lighting, and the possibility of interruption.
I leaned against the island while he opened the fridge and handed me a bottle of water. Our fingers brushed.
Even that felt different after the weekend. Less casual. More noticed.
“How was the last day?” he asked.
I twisted the cap loose. “Better. Less terrifying. I met people. Real people. Not just aggressively polished scholarship children.”
His mouth tilted. “That sounds promising.”
“It was.” I looked down at the bottle in my hands. “I could see myself there.”
He nodded once, like the words mattered and didn’t scare him. “Yeah.”
I looked back up. “How bad are the Halston guys really?”
He laughed softly. “Worse than I reported.”
“That’s comforting.”
A quiet settled between us then. Not awkward. Just full.
Finally he said, “I could see myself there too.”
The room seemed to still around that.
Not because I didn’t know it already.
Because hearing it again in person made the truth heavier. More solid.
I nodded. “Okay.”
He studied my face. “That sounded brave.”
“It was mostly survival.”
A faint smile touched his mouth and faded. “Mila.”
I looked at him.
“I don’t want us to act like seeing futures means losing the present.”
That hit me hard, mostly because it named exactly what I’d been afraid of all weekend without knowing how to say it.
I set the water down. “I know.”
“Do you?”
I stepped closer, slow enough that he could read it as choice and not need.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I just think I needed to come back here and stand in front of you before I could believe it.”
Something open and almost aching moved across his face.
Then his hands came to my waist, warm and certain.
“That,” he said softly, “is very fair.”
I smiled a little. “I do that sometimes.”
“Not enough.”
He kissed me then. Not rushed. Not desperate. Just long and grounding and real enough to make the whole weekend fold into something survivable.
When we pulled apart, I rested my forehead against his chest for one second and let myself breathe.
“We’re okay,” I said.
His hand slid up my back, slow and steady. “Yeah.”
I looked up at him. “No, I mean… really okay.”
He smiled, and this time there was relief in it too. “I know.”
From the stairs, Lucy yelled, “If this is reconciliation, I want credit!”
I burst out laughing.
Jaxon dropped his head back with a groan. “She’s going to blackmail us emotionally for the rest of our lives.”
“That sounds accurate,” I said.
And standing there in the kitchen with his hands still on me and the whole noisy, impossible future waiting just outside the edges of now, I realized we had done the first hard thing.
Not perfectly.
But together.
And that made the ending feel close enough to touch.