MAY 13

I smiled as I approached my family after the ceremony. Willow was right beside me, heading toward her own mother, who was standing by my mom. They had cheered very loudly for both of us when our names had been called.

Mom flicked the tassel on my cap when I reached her. There were tears in her eyes. Actual tears. "I'm so proud of you, Stryker. I can't believe you're old enough to be a high school graduate."

"I know. It's crazy. I can hardly believe it myself."

"It seems like it wasn't that long ago that I was graduating, and you were sitting in the audience, loving the noise."

"You really did love the noise," Mamie added.

Kathy pulled me and Willow into a tight hug, ruffling our hair.

"Mom," Willow complained, pulling away. "Come on, you're embarrassing me in front of my boyfriend and his family. Stop it."

Kathy rolled her eyes. "I'd believe that if you ever actually got embarrassed."

Willow didn't argue. Her mom had a point. Willow very, very rarely got embarrassed.

Pappy smiled and lightly punched my arm. "Well, Stryker. You're officially done with high school. How do you feel about that?"

I grinned. "I'm so freaking happy." It wasn't that I'd hated high school. Most of the time, I didn't mind it at all. But I was still happy to be done with it. "I'm glad to be moving onto that next step. And Willow and I have finally found a place to rent. It's nice, with two bedrooms. The bathroom's pretty big, and so is the kitchen. The best part is that it's only two blocks away from the university."

"I'm still not thrilled about you two living together," Kathy informed us.

Willow rolled her eyes. This wasn't the first time she and her mom had had this conversation. Kathy wasn't exactly disapproving of our plans. But she wasn't exactly approving of them, either. I think she was mostly resigned about it. "Mom. Don't worry so much. We're being safe."

Jaxson and Cayson both frowned at me as Bexley pretended to gag. "Safe about what?" Cay asked, cocking his head to the side.

Mom arched an eyebrow at me, smirking slightly. She totally had an evil streak in her heart. "Yeah, Stryker. Safe about what?"

Dad gave her a look. "Mac," was all he said.

I shook my head. I knew it wouldn't do Dad any good to try to reprimand her or anything. "We're being safe about our house, Cay," I said.

"Oh, okay." And that was good enough for him.

Jon pulled me into a hug, setting Roman on the ground. My youngest half-brother waddled up me and hugged my legs. "Congrats, champ. I'm proud of you."

Charlie gave both me and Willow a hug. "We're proud of both of you. Now, let's get some pictures of the new graduates. Why don't we start with some of just Willow and Stryker?"

And so for the next hour or so, we took pictures. There were several of me and Willow taken. I think my mom even managed to snap one when I tried to sneak a kiss with Willow, while I thought everyone was distracted by Kensley doing something cute. Then we took some individual pictures, then some with Kathy. My parents. My grandparents. Jon and Charlie. All my siblings.

At one point, as we were getting ready for a picture with all of my siblings, Willow leaned over and whispered, "I love that you have such a big, amazing family, but my feet are absolutely killing me. Do you think we're almost done?"

Before I'd bene able to answer, Kensley had somehow ended up in Willow's arms, and Willow was distracted.

Finally we were finished with all the pictures. "So I can take the stupid graduation gown off?" I asked, already unzipping it.

Mamie laughed. "You remind me of your mother, at her graduation."

I just grinned and slipped out of the gown. Willow was doing the same beside me. "So what's the plan?" I asked. "We're doing a dinner, right?"

Mom nodded. "At our house. We'll head over there now. We're just having a barbecue. And your friends are coming over at nine, right?"

I nodded.

Mom pinched my nose, probably just to be a brat. "Let's go celebrate our graduates."

I'm sorry my chapters are getting shorter. Really, really sorry. I'm gonna try to make sure that the next one is longer.

Thanks for all the reviews! I'm glad you guys are liking it. I was worried that you'd all started to hate it, so I'm glad that's not the case. I was even thinking about threatening to break them up, even though I hate it when authors do stuff like that.