chapter 29
May 8, 2025
The room exploded.
It wasn’t polite applause anymore — it was full chaos. Stomping. Whooping. Some freshman in a pink tux actually started chanting “ZOE! ZOE! ZOE!” like I was leading a rebellion.
I just stood there, blinking like my brain had short-circuited.
“Wait. What,” I said out loud, because apparently my internal monologue had given up completely.
Jaxon shrugged, impossibly casual for someone who had just been crowned King of Public Scandals. His crooked grin was pure disaster.
“Guess people love a comeback story,” he said, like this was all perfectly logical.
The principal, poor, long-suffering Mrs. Crane, stood frozen at the side of the stage, holding the ballot cards like they’d personally betrayed her. She looked like she was doing complicated math in her head, trying to figure out if she could legally overturn the vote on moral grounds.
She couldn’t.
Votes were anonymous. Final. Democratic chaos at its purest.
A senior council member, wearing a sash that said Prom Chair and the haunted eyes of someone who’d seen too much, stumbled forward with the tiara and crown. Someone else shoved a bouquet of wilting roses into my arms, like this was a beauty pageant from hell.
They placed the tiara on my head, slightly askew because obviously, and dropped the plastic crown onto Jaxon’s mess of hair with about as much ceremony as tossing a frisbee.
He immediately saluted the crowd like he was accepting a Purple Heart for Crimes Against Good Judgment.
I laughed so hard I almost dropped my punch all over my heels.
Photos were taken. A lot of photos. Someone tried to hand me a scepter. I declined politely but firmly.
And in the back of the gym, past the flashbulbs and confetti and pure teenage anarchy, I spotted Madison standing with Liam.
She didn’t look mad.
She didn’t look jealous.
She just looked… relieved.
I watched as she leaned into Liam’s shoulder, resting her head there like it was second nature. Like she’d never really been fighting for the crown at all.
“Let them have it,” she said, her voice just barely carrying to where I stood. “I’ve got everything I want.”
Liam, ever the human golden retriever, nodded vaguely, still looking confused but going along with it.
Maybe that was Madison’s real victory after all.
And me?
I adjusted my tiara with the kind of precision that said yes, I survived an entire social apocalypse, and yes, I still look incredible, thank you for noticing.
Then I grabbed Jaxon’s hand like it had always been mine to take and pulled him toward the dance floor.
The next song started — slow, syrupy, way too dramatic even by prom standards.
“This song sucks,” I muttered as we shuffled into a lazy spin.
“It’s a prom classic,” Jaxon argued, his hand warm on my waist.
“It’s objectively trash,” I said, stepping on his foot just for the principle of it.
He spun me anyway, grinning like an idiot. “Then let’s ruin it together.”
I snorted, half in disbelief, half in pure giddy relief.
“At least now if I tank my GPA,” I said, “I can officially claim I peaked at prom.”
He dipped me — badly, recklessly, like he hadn’t watched a single YouTube tutorial about how to do it properly — and I shrieked, clutching his shoulders to avoid faceplanting into the gym floor.
“Prom queen and public menace,” he said proudly as he righted us. “We love a dual-threat.”
I smiled up at him, crown slipping over one ear, mascara smudged halfway down my cheek.
For the first time all night, I didn’t feel like a scandal walking on borrowed time. I didn’t feel like the ex-girlfriend. Or the traitor. Or the headline. I just felt like the main character. And honestly? It suited me
