Chapter 5 Chapter 5
Kendra went pale first.
It was subtle. Just a flicker beneath perfect makeup, a crack in the smug expression she’d arrived with. But Mila saw it.
Jaxon was still walking up the driveway, football duffel slung over one shoulder, practice shirt darkened with sweat. He looked tired, flushed from drills, and in no mood whatsoever to entertain whatever game Kendra thought she was playing.
“Kendra,” he repeated, each syllable clipped. “Get off my porch.”
Kendra recovered fast enough to lift her chin. “I came to talk to you.”
“And instead you showed up at my house to harass Mila.”
A shocked silence followed that.
Not because of what he’d said. Because of how easily he’d said her name. Like it belonged in his mouth. Like saying it in defense of her was no longer a struggle.
Mila hated that she noticed.
Kendra let out a sharp laugh. “Harass her? Please. I knocked on your door. She answered. You’re acting like I committed a crime.”
Lucy’s voice drifted from inside, small and uncertain. “Mila?”
Jaxon’s eyes sharpened instantly. “You brought this to my house with Lucy inside?”
Kendra looked annoyed now rather than wounded. “Oh my God, Jax, stop being dramatic.”
He dropped his duffel by the truck and came the rest of the way up the walk. The porch light caught the hard line of his jaw, the anger in his expression, the quiet control in the way he held himself. Mila had seen him laughing in hallways, shrugging off teachers, taking up space like the world welcomed him.
She had never seen him like this.
When he reached the steps, he stopped just below the porch, gaze fixed on Kendra. “You need to leave.”
Kendra crossed her arms. “Or what?”
“Or I tell your mother exactly why you were standing on my porch trying to start something with an eight-year-old in the house.”
That landed.
Kendra’s eyes flashed. “This is because of her?”
Jaxon didn’t even glance at Mila. “This is because of you.”
For one moment, Kendra looked less mean than humiliated. Less cruel than desperate. It didn’t soften Mila much, but it made the scene uglier in a quieter way.
Kendra laughed again, brittle this time. “Unbelievable.”
Then she turned to Mila, and the sweetness vanished completely. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Mila didn’t flinch. “I’m enjoying you leaving already.”
Kendra’s glare could have stripped paint. But after a beat, she spun on her heel and stalked down the driveway, heels striking the pavement like punctuation.
Jaxon waited until she was in her car and backing out before he moved.
Then he came up the porch steps and looked at Mila directly.
“You okay?”
The question hit strangely after all that.
Mila folded her arms. “I told you if she came here, I was leaving.”
“I know.”
“And she came here.”
“I know.”
“So?”
His expression shifted, not defensive exactly, but careful. “So I’m asking you not to go.”
Before Mila could answer, Lucy opened the door wider and peered out from behind it. “Did the scary barbie leave?”
Jaxon exhaled through his nose. “Lucy.”
“What? She has villain energy.”
That almost ruined Mila’s grip on her anger.
Almost.
Jaxon crouched to Lucy’s height. “Go back inside for a minute, okay?”
Lucy narrowed her eyes at him, then at Mila, clearly calculating whether adults were about to make terrible choices. Finally she nodded and retreated into the foyer.
Jaxon stood again. The porch suddenly felt too small.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Mila looked at him. “For what part?”
“For her showing up. For not stopping this sooner. For all of it, probably.”
That last part was quiet.
Too quiet.
The fall air moved between them, cool and restless. Somewhere farther down the block, a dog barked once. Mila kept her voice even with effort.
“You don’t get to apologize in bulk and call it repair.”
His eyes held hers. “I know.”
That should have satisfied her. It didn’t.
She was still wound tight from seeing Kendra on the porch, from hearing Lucy call her from inside with confusion in her voice, from the ugly familiar feeling of being followed by cruelty into spaces that were supposed to be safe.
“I meant what I said,” Mila told him. “I won’t do this if she keeps turning up.”
“She won’t.”
“You don’t control her.”
“No.” He stepped a little closer, lowering his voice. “But I control who gets access to my house. And she just lost it.”
Something in his tone made her believe him.
That was dangerous too.
Mila looked away first, toward the darkening street. “Lucy heard enough to know something was wrong.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She asks questions when she’s worried. Usually too many.”
Despite herself, Mila said, “That tracks.”
A faint smile touched his mouth and disappeared. “Thanks for stepping outside.”
She frowned. “What?”
“You could’ve shut the door and waited for me. Instead you kept her from hearing the worst of it.”
Mila shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “She’s a kid.”
“I know.” His gaze stayed on her face. “That’s exactly my point.”
Silence stretched again, but it was different now. Less jagged. More aware.
Mila hated that too.
Inside, Lucy called, “Are you two done being emotionally repressed? I’m hungry.”
Jaxon shut his eyes briefly. “She gets that from my father.”
Mila snorted before she could stop herself.
His head lifted. “There it is again.”
She immediately scowled. “Don’t start.”
“Wasn’t starting anything.”
“You were absolutely starting a thing.”
He looked at her for a second too long, and warmth moved low and unwelcome through her stomach.
Then he reached past her and opened the front door.
“Come on,” he said. “Dad won’t be home for another hour, and Lucy’s going to eat the blanket fort if we don’t feed her.”
Inside, the house felt warmer than before, softer around the edges. Lucy was back in the living room, sitting cross-legged inside the fort with the robot in her lap.
“Is everyone done being weird?” she asked.
“No,” Mila said.
“Not even a little,” Jaxon added.
Lucy nodded. “I respect honesty.”
Dinner was grilled cheese, cut strawberries, and tomato soup reheated from the fridge. Mila expected awkwardness at the table, but Lucy filled every silence with stories about school, robotics, and a girl in her class named Emma who had “zero loyalty and extremely bad scissors.”
By the time dishes were in the sink, some of the tension had worn off.
Not all of it.
Just enough to make the rest more noticeable.
Jaxon stood beside Mila at the counter while she rinsed Lucy’s bowl. His forearm brushed hers when he reached for a dish towel, and the contact was light, accidental, probably meaningless.
Her body noticed anyway.
She set the bowl down harder than necessary.
Jaxon glanced at her. “You good?”
“Fantastic.”
“That sounded aggressive.”
“Maybe because you asked a question with your entire upper body in my personal space.”
His brows went up. “This is my kitchen.”
“That doesn’t make it less of a kitchen.”
For one beat, he just looked at her.
Then, maddeningly, he smiled.
Mila pointed the sponge at him. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look pleased with yourself.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Try harder.”
Lucy wandered in and looked between them. “So are you enemies, or is this like, foreplay for emotionally damaged people?”
Mila nearly dropped the sponge.
Jaxon choked on air.
“Lucy!” they said together.
She shrugged. “I read.”
At seven-thirty, the front door opened and Mr. Reed came in, tie loosened, face tired but kind. He blinked at the scene before him: Lucy in pajamas, Mila at the sink, Jaxon drying dishes badly.
“Well,” he said. “This looks functional.”
Lucy pointed at Mila. “She saved the house from scary barbie.”
Mr. Reed looked at his son. “Do I want details?”
“No,” Jaxon said immediately.
“Yes,” Lucy said at the same time.
Mila laughed before she could stop herself, and this time when the sound slipped free, no one stared at her like she’d done something unusual.
They just smiled.
That unsettled her more than Kendra had.
Because standing in that kitchen, warm from soup and dishwater and borrowed domesticity, Mila felt the first dangerous crack in her resolve.
This was supposed to be a job.
Temporary. Necessary. Controlled.
But Jaxon kept looking at her like she was more than a problem he regretted too late.
And Mila was beginning to realize the real risk wasn’t that he would make her uncomfortable.
It was that, in this house, with Lucy and late dinners and too much accidental closeness, he might start to make her feel wanted.
