Page 44 of Faking It With My Pucking Protector
Chapter Twelve
JACKSON
“Okay, Liam, hold it steady. No, other way. Don’t cover the lens.”
“It’s not covered!” he protests. “It’s just my thumb.”
I try not to laugh. Ava’s already laughing, her shoulder warm against mine as she leans closer, whispering, “We should’ve hired a professional.”
I chuckle, adjusting so my head’s not halfway out of frame. “Alright, one more. Noah, you try this time.”
Noah takes the phone like he’s handling a grenade and squints one eye closed. “Say lava dragon!”
“Lava dragon!” Ava and I say in unison.
The shutter clicks. Then again. And again.
When we check the photos, half of them are blurry, two have a finger across the lens, and one has Noah’s nose dead center in the shot.
But there’s one near the end, taken just as Ava laughed at something I said, her head slightly tipped toward mine. We’re not posing. We’re just… there. Real.
“This one,” she says softly, tapping the screen.
I nod once, already pulling up my socials. “You sure?”
She glances up at me, a flicker of nerves passing through, and then she straightens, steady now. “Yeah,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
I upload the photo, thumb hovering over the caption box for a beat longer than I should.
I type: “Right where I want to be.”
No emojis. No tags. Just that.
I hit post.
Ava’s fingers move across her own screen as she types, then pauses. Her jaw locks for a second, then relaxes.
Her tagline:“Turns out what comes next is better than what came before.”
I can’t help it. A little snort escapes.
She posts it. Then, with one quiet breath, she taps and updates her relationship status.
In a relationship with Jackson Hart.
I do the same. It takes two seconds, but everything shifts in that moment. Like a dial clicking into place.
We don’t say anything. The twins have already lost interest and are sword-fighting with paper towel rolls in the corner.
Ava hands me back my phone. “Well,” she says, a half-smile tugging at her mouth. “I guess we’re together now.”
I pocket the phone, trying to keep my voice even. “Looks like it.”
She sits on the arm of the couch, eyes on the photo still pulled up on her screen.
I’m looking at her instead.
Not because of the post.
