Page 38 of My Fake Relationship With the Popular Boy (Port Lane Romances #1)

twenty-five

Graduation was such a busy affair that Jaxon and I didn’t get the chance to say more than ‘hi’ to one another before the ceremony.

Then, afterwards, our families insisted on taking so many pictures that I felt like I was going to have a smile permanently affixed to my face for life.

We finally managed to sneak away for a moment alone when our parents got caught up talking to one another.

Jaxon pulled me into the small nook where the unused side door to the school rested. We kissed briefly but I pulled away after a minute.

“What’s wrong?” Jaxon asked. I looked carefully over my shoulder to where our parents were on the field.

“I’m just worried about someone coming looking for us,” I said. I looked at him again. “Catching us kissing isn’t exactly the memory I want my father to have of this day.”

Jaxon laughed and rested his forehead against my shoulder. It would have been a cute action if he didn’t have to lean so far forward to manage it. Even when I was wearing heels, he was much taller than me.

“Fair enough,” he said once he stood up again. He pecked me on the cheek. “Better?”

“Much,” I said.

The smile slipped off his face as he stared at something over my shoulder. I was worried somebody was coming towards us, but when I glanced back, I realized he was just looking at Lewis, who was standing with his family.

There was a small pang in my heart as I took the scene in.

I loved Lewis’s parents; they were some of the sweetest people I’d ever met and had always been so good to me when I was a kid.

I had no idea how such great people ended up with a son like him.

Ever since our fight, I’d been trying to figure out if there was a way for me to stay close with them while avoiding Lewis at all costs but I didn’t see a way that it was possible.

Even if I could find a way to stay in contact with them that easily, I doubted they wanted to speak to me.

No doubt Lewis had told them a fake version of the story, in which I hurt him somehow.

And even if they knew the truth, their loyalty probably laid more with their son than with me.

Lewis must have felt our eyes on him because he turned to look at us.

He and I made eye contact, and he just stared at me for a minute, before he finally raised his hand in greeting.

I was so close to waving back out of politeness, but instead, I just turned back around.

I owed him nothing and I definitely had nothing to say to him.

“Ignore him,” I said. “That’s the only way we can get it through his head that we want nothing to do with him.”

Jaxon nodded and focused all his attention of me again.

“I hope you know that I don’t care about him, anymore,” he said seriously.

“Did you ever?” I asked, my eyebrows pulling together. The two of them had never exactly been chummy.

“I mean, I don’t even care enough to shove it to him,” Jaxon said. He pecked me on the lips again. “And I don’t care about the bet.”

“You really mean that?”

“I do,” he said. “You’re not some trophy, Violet. You’re not something for me to win. You’re a beautiful, loving, fantastic girl… and I am so incredibly lucky that you chose me to be yours.”

“You’re a charmer, Jaxon Andrews,” I murmured. I leaned my forehead against his. “And I can’t believe that you chose me too.”