Worth the Fall

Chapter 29

There are some nights that don’t feel important while you’re living them.

They just feel light.

Easy.

Like laughter in your chest and perfume on your skin and the kind of anticipation that makes your stomach twist every time your phone lights up.

And then there are nights that feel different before they even begin.

Like something is waiting for you on the other side of them.

Like if you walk out the door, you won’t come back the same.

That was this night.

The kind that changes everything quietly before it changes it all at once.

And it started, of course, with Jasmine and Alexis treating my bedroom like a war room.

“No,” Jasmine said, yanking a black top off a hanger and throwing it onto my bed. “Too ‘I have a group project.’”

Alexis held up a silky emerald dress against me and narrowed her eyes critically.

“This one.”

I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

“It’s… a lot.”

“It’s called being hot,” Jasmine said, as if she were explaining basic algebra to a toddler.

“I don’t think I can breathe in that.”

Alexis deadpanned, “Breathing is optional. Looking incredible is not.”

I snorted.

The dress wasn’t over-the-top, but it definitely wasn’t something I would have chosen on my own. It was soft and fitted in a way that made me feel very aware that I had a body and not just a brain with anxiety and a color-coded planner. Thin straps. A slight dip at the neckline. Short enough to feel daring, long enough that my mother wouldn’t have a coronary.

It also made my eyes look greener.

Which felt rude.

“You look insane,” Jasmine said, stepping back with a hand over her heart.

“In a good way?” I asked.

“In a way that says if Landon Baxter doesn’t fall to his knees tonight, I’ll do it for him.”

I laughed so hard I nearly smudged the mascara Alexis had just threatened me within an inch of my life to sit still for.

By the time they were done with me, my hair was soft and curled at the ends, my makeup was simple but glowy, and I looked… older somehow.

Not older in a bad way.

Just softer.

More confident.

Like maybe this was the version of me that didn’t always overthink every feeling before she allowed herself to have it.

My phone buzzed on my vanity.

Landon: Here.

My heart immediately started acting like it had never been professionally trained before.

Jasmine gasped.

Alexis clutched my arm.

“Oh my God, go.”

“I hate both of you,” I muttered, grabbing my purse.

“No, you love us,” Jasmine called after me.

“Same thing,” Alexis added.

The second I opened the front door, I forgot how to act.

Landon was standing at the bottom of the porch steps, hands tucked into the pockets of a black jacket, dark hair messy in that unfair, effortless way that should’ve been illegal. The porch light caught the silver in his rings and the edge of the tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves.

He looked up.

And then just…

stopped.

Not dramatically.

Not cartoonishly.

Just enough that I knew I had actually stunned him.

His eyes moved over me slowly, and the heat that rose up my neck was immediate and brutal.

“Well,” I said, because apparently humiliation was free. “That reaction feels dangerous.”

His mouth twitched, but it wasn’t his usual smirk.

It was quieter than that.

Rougher.

“Yeah,” he said, voice lower than normal. “For me.”

I forgot every single prepared thing I had meant to say.

He walked up the steps like he was being physically pulled there and stopped just close enough for my pulse to lose all structure.

“You look…” He exhaled once, shaking his head faintly. “You look like I’m going to spend this entire night trying to remember how to be a person.”

That did not help.

At all.

I smiled despite myself, trying to play it off.

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“You have no idea.”

And then, because apparently he had no interest in letting me survive this evening with my dignity intact, he leaned in just enough to press a kiss to my cheek.

Not my lips.

Just my cheek.

Soft. Deliberate. Devastating.

“Hi,” he murmured.

I looked up at him.

“Hi.”

And just like that, I knew I was in trouble.

(Chapter Theme Song: Tenerife Sea by Ed Sheeran)