Worth the Fall

Chapter 26

No one ever warns you that falling in love doesn’t always happen in one big moment.

Sometimes, it happens quietly.

In pieces.

In the in-between.

In coffee cups and late-night calls and borrowed hoodies and the way someone starts becoming part of your routine before you even realize it’s happening.

That was what Landon became to me.

Not all at once.

Not in some dramatic, movie-worthy instant.

But slowly.

Steadily.

And then all at once in a way that made it impossible to remember what life felt like before him.

At first, it was just little things.

A text every morning.

A “did you eat?” in the middle of the day.

A “goodnight, pretty girl” before I fell asleep.

Then it became him waiting by my locker after class, stealing my backpack before I could protest, walking me to lunch like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, people stopped asking if something was going on between us.

They just assumed.

And the worst part was—

they were right.

Because even if Landon and I hadn’t said what this was yet, everyone around us could already see it.

Maybe even before I could.

By the second week, he had somehow memorized my coffee order, my class schedule, and the exact look on my face that meant I

was one mildly inconvenient event away from losing my mind.

“You’re doing the eyebrow thing,” he said one afternoon, dropping into the seat across from me in the library.

I looked up from my debate packet.

“The what?”

“The angry little eyebrow thing.”

I blinked at him.

“I do not have an angry eyebrow thing.”

He grinned.

“You do when you’re stressed.”

“I’m not stressed.”

He reached over and turned my open notebook toward him.

Written across the top of the page in very aggressive handwriting was:

WHY IS EVERYONE IN THIS SCHOOL ILLITERATE?

He looked up slowly.

I crossed my arms.

“Okay, maybe a little.”

He laughed quietly, and I hated how much I liked making him laugh.

Liked how easy it was becoming.

Liked how different he felt when it was just us and not the version of him everyone else seemed to know.

He looked down at my notes.

“You’ve been in here for two hours.”

“I have regionals to prepare for.”

“You also have a pulse to maintain.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It makes enough sense.”

Then, without warning, he reached across the table, plucked my pen from my hand, and snapped my notebook shut.

I gasped.

“Landon!”

“You’re done.”

“I am not done.”

“You’ve highlighted the same sentence three times.”

“That is because it’s important.”

“That is because you’re spiraling.”

I tried to grab my notebook back, but he held it just out of reach with a smug expression that made me want to both kiss him and report him to the authorities.

“Give it back.”

“Come take it.”

I glared at him.

“You are so unbelievably annoying.”

“And yet,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “you’re smiling.”

I immediately stopped smiling.

Which only made him laugh harder.

I hated that he was getting good at this.

At reading me.

At knowing exactly how to pull me out of my own head before I could disappear into it.

At making me feel seen in all the ways that mattered.

And maybe that should have scared me more than it did.

But instead—

it just felt good.

Too good.

Dangerously good.

He started driving me home more often after debate.

At first, I told myself it was practical.

My parents were busy.

Traffic was a nightmare.

And he always acted like it was no big deal.

Like driving an hour out of his way just to see me a little longer was the most casual thing in the world.

But after a while, even I couldn’t pretend that was all it was.

Especially not after he started lingering.

Because Landon never just dropped me off.

He parked.

Then sat there with the engine running and one hand on the wheel while we talked about absolutely nothing and somehow everything at the same time.

Music.

School.

Our families.

His little sister, Aurora, who according to him had “the soul of a dictator in the body of a twelve-year-old.”

My twin sisters, Stacy and Sierra, who had already decided Landon was “suspiciously pretty for a boy.”

Nathan, who had taken one look at him and declared him “too moody to be trusted.”

“My family hates me,” I said one evening, laughing as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

Landon looked offended.

“Your sisters adore me.”

“They adore chaos.”

“Same thing.”

I laughed again, and he smiled like he’d won something.

Like making me laugh was still a victory every single time.

And that—

that was what kept getting me.

Not the flirting.

Not even the obvious chemistry.

It was the way he looked at me when I was laughing.

Like he wanted to remember it.

Like he was collecting little pieces of me when I wasn’t paying attention.

Like he already knew I was going to matter.

(Chapter Theme Song: So Easy (To Fall In Love) by Olivia Dean)