Chapter 30
Graduation day.
My robe is pressed. My head is high.
The sun blazes down on the quad like it knows today means something. Parents crowd the metal bleachers, shouting names, holding signs, and snapping pictures like their kids are about to win gold. But I don’t look at them. I don’t look at anyone. My name is called, and I walk. One step after another. Controlled. Calm. My gown swishes around my ankles. I don’t stumble. I don’t smile. I just breathe.
Because this walk? It’s mine.
My diploma feels heavier than it should—like it carries every fight I’ve had this year in its paperweight frame. The public humiliation. The photos. The cafeteria stares. The family threats. The heartbreak. All of it led here. To this podium. To this moment.
I don’t look for validation. I am the validation.
I step off the stage and into the swarm of students, flashes of robes and tassels swirling around me. Voices rise in cheers and laughter, but it all sounds distant. Muffled. I move through it like I’m wading through water. Until I see him.
Grayson waits at the edge of the crowd.
No cap. No robe. Just jeans, a black dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and a rose so red it looks like rebellion. He just watches. And that’s somehow worse. His eyes pin me in place like I’m the only graduate that matters.
He holds two things in his hands.
A single red rose.
And the Room 3B key.
The key glints in the sun. The same one from the beginning. The room that started everything.
I stop in front of him. My pulse bangs against my ribs. The crowd thins. A few people whisper. I don’t care.
He holds them out to me. “Still sure you’re saving your last kiss for marriage?”
My heart stutters. I want to laugh, but it’s caught behind everything I feel for him. Every version of us—broken, burning, trying again.
“I’m saving forever,” I say. My fingers brush his. I take the rose. Then the key. I stare at them in my hand, the past and the future clashing in my palm. “But for now…”
I pull him in.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t ask. I just move.
And kiss him like it’s the first time.
Because this time, I’m not scared.
This time, it’s not secret or forbidden or desperate. It’s deliberate. Mine. His hands slide to my waist like muscle memory, but he doesn’t rush. He just melts into me, breath hitching against my lips like I’ve knocked the wind out of him.
People gasp.
Someone shouts, “Is that Juliet Alden?”
Another voice laughs, “About damn time!” A camera clicks. Another records. I don’t flinch.
Grayson pulls back just enough to whisper against my mouth, “You sure?”
I nod. “So sure it hurts.”
And then we kiss again.
I hear the chaos around us—whispers, snaps, applause, even a few gasps of horror. I feel the eyes. The judgment. The phones. But for the first time, I’m not performing. I’m not running. I’m not folding myself small enough to be palatable.
His lips are warm. Sure. Familiar and brand new all at once. And as the kiss deepens, so does the clarity.
He’s no longer the boy who mocked me. I’m no longer the girl who hid.
We’re something else now. Something earned.
When we finally break apart, he’s breathless. “I didn’t think you’d want to do this in front of everyone.”
“I don’t,” I admit, eyes fierce. “But I’m tired of hiding.”
He smiles slowly. “God, I love you.”
I don’t say it back. Not yet. Not because I don’t feel it. But because this moment isn’t about him.
It’s about me.
About standing here, robe on my shoulders, diploma in hand, lips tingling from a kiss I chose. It’s about surviving the fall and still deciding to fly.
This kiss isn’t the ending.
It’s the first page of a different book.
Because this time, I’m not breaking.
This time — I’m choosing.
