unfortunately ✫ luke hughes
˚˖𓍢ִ໋❀ luke hughes x fem!reader. childhood frienemies, jealousy & unspoken feelings, angst, just luke being an asshole, not revised & english is not my first language.
in which luke hughes hates you. or at least you thought so.
The lake house existed in your memory before you even understood memory could be a thing.
Before you could start retaining information, there was just Michigan: the house, the dock and the smell of sunscreen permanently baked into old wood. Every July, like clockwork, both families migrated north for three weeks of absolute, unchecked chaos.
The Hugheses always arrived first. One massive SUV rolled into the driveway packed so full it looked physically impossible to fit inside. your brothers always requested to drive separately, claiming they needed “more leg room,” when really they just wanted an excuse to race each other down the roads and arrive dramatically late.
Then the adults settled into their yearly performance of pretending this vacation was restful.
They’d sit on the deck with wine glasses while seven children tore through the property like raccoons with access to sports equipment. Someone was always bleeding a little or yelling. Sticky popsicle fingers, mosquito bites and he permanent sound of laughter echoing at night.
It has always been summer.
Your brothers blended into the Hughes family so perfectly that somewhere along the line, everyone stopped distinguishing whose kid belonged to who.
Quinn taught your older brother how to throw a punch after some asshole at summer camp shoved him into the boards, holding his shoulders afterward and going, “Okay, that was embarrassing for everybody.”
Jack and your younger brother got banned from the jet skis for an entire week after deciding tying a tube to the back with three people on it sounded, in Jack’s words, “scientifically necessary.”
“It was a structural experiment,” your brother argued while both moms yelled at him from the dock.
“You just launched Jack into a tree.”
And you… You fit into that house like you’d been built into it.
Hoodie stolen from somebody, usually Quinn, occasionally your older brother, thrown over your swimsuit after night bonfires, falling asleep on couches with while the older boys stayed up playing hockey in the basement.
Ellen called you sweetheart more than your own name. Jim and your dad saved you the corner pieces of brownies because they knew you liked them best. Quinn treated you like a little sister, all forehead kisses and protective arms around your shoulders whenever somebody looked at you too long in public.
Jack knew exactly how to annoy you into threatening bodily harm within thirty seconds. Quinn automatically handed you the blue Gatorade because the red one “tastes like sadness.”
It wasn’t even friendship at that point. It just became part of you.
Luke Hughes had hated your guts for as long as you could remember, though “hate” probably wasn’t even the right word for it. What Luke felt toward you was quieter than that, built out of years of eye rolls and the deeply irritating habit he had of acting like your existence personally inconvenienced him.
Nobody else ever noticed it because Luke was never outright cruel. He never shoved you into the lake or made you cry on purpose or excluded you in any dramatic villain sort of way.
When you were eight, he told you that you threw a baseball “like somebody’s grandmother” after you missed a catch during one of the boys’ backyard games. You still remembered the exact feeling of humid Michigan air sticking to your skin while Quinn groaned, “Dude, she’s eight,” from somewhere near second base.
Luke, meanwhile, had simply shrugged and crossed his arms like he was delivering objective analysis instead of emotionally devastating a third grader.
“She’s still bad,” he’d said flatly, and when you snapped back a furious little “I hate you,” he barely even blinked. “Yeah,” he’d replied, already turning away.
At eleven, you slipped running down the dock after Jack sprayed everyone with lake water and split your knee open hard enough to send blood immediately running down your shin.
You cried instantly, sobbing that echoed across the water while your dad picked you up before you could even stand properly and Jack sprinted toward the house yelling,
“SHE’S DYING,” despite the fact that you very obviously were not dying.
Luke stood in the kitchen doorway the entire time eating a blue popsicle with the kind of expression people had watching mildly inconvenient weather.
“The screaming’s kinda theatrical,” he informed you while your dad sat you on the counter to clean the cut.
You’d stared at him through tears in genuine disbelief. “I’m bleeding!”
“Luke, just shut up please,” said your dad, focusing on cleaning the wound. Jack threw the Band-Aid box directly at Lukes´ face, and Luke actually laughed while dodging it, leaning back against the fridge with that stupid crooked grin that somehow made him even more annoying.
But later, when everybody got distracted again, you remembered him quietly pushing the antibiotic cream closer to your dad without being asked. You remembered him handing you paper towels when your tears got embarrassing.
He never said anything comforting, or apologised. But he stayed in the kitchen until you stopped crying. That was what made Luke impossible to understand even back then. He was mean in ways that somehow still felt careful.
And then came the eyeliner incident, which remained one of the most humiliating experiences of your teenage existence, unfortunately preserved forever in your memory. You were fifteen, freshly armed with YouTube makeup tutorials and a dangerous amount of false confidence, and you’d spent nearly two full hours upstairs trying to make your black eyeliner even before dinner.
The bathroom mirror had fogged from everyone showering after the lake, your brothers had threatened violence through the door at least six separate times, and by the end of it your back hurt from leaning over the sink…
But when you finally walked downstairs, you actually felt pretty. Which was rare enough at fifteen to feel almost magical.
Jack looked up first from the couch and immediately grinned. “Whoa. Okay. You look pretty.”
Quinn agreed instantly from the kitchen island with an easy, “Aw, look at you,” that made warmth bloom embarrassingly in your chest.
Then Luke glanced up from his phone. Just once. One quick look from beneath damp curls still wet from his shower, and your stupid traitorous heart immediately started beating harder because apparently you enjoyed suffering.
He stared for maybe half a second before saying, completely deadpan, “You took two hours for that?” Silence swallowed the room instantly. Jack choked on his drink. Quinn physically closed his eyes like he was experiencing spiritual exhaustion.
And you just stood there feeling every ounce of confidence leak directly out of your body.
“You are such an asshole,” you muttered, grabbing a bag of chips aggressively enough to crinkle the entire thing. Luke frowned slightly like he genuinely didn’t understand the reaction.
“No,” Your older brother cut in immediately, pointing at him with a tortilla chip. “You’re being deeply annoying. Shut up.”
The truly pathetic part, the part you would literally take to your grave before admitting out loud, was that none of this stopped you from falling hopelessly in love with him anyway. Because every once in a while, Luke accidentally let himself care about you, and those moments were somehow worse than the insults.
Like the summer you got stung by a jellyfish and panicked so badly you could barely walk back toward shore. Everybody had started yelling over each other immediately while pain shot up your leg in sharp, horrible waves, but Luke reached you first.
One second you were stumbling through the shallow water trying not to cry, and the next he was lifting you into his arms with startling ease, his grip firm against your legs while wet sand clung to both of you.
“You’re fine,” he muttered automatically when you buried your face against his shoulder with a shaky gasp.
“It hurts,” you’d manage miserably.
“I know.” And weirdly, Luke sounded angry. Angry in that quiet way he got sometimes, jaw tight and shoulders tense like he needed something to blame for the fact that you were hurting. You thought about that for weeks afterward like an idiot.
At some beach bonfire when you were sixteen, a random guy from another town called you annoying after you corrected the rules of a drinking game.
Which, okay, maybe was slightly annoying behavior on your part, but before you could even roll your eyes, Luke stepped forward so fast it startled everybody around him.
“What’d you say?” he asked sharply, and the entire mood shifted immediately. The guy laughed awkwardly, holding his beer up defensively.
“Relax, man. I’m kidding.”
For one insane second, you genuinely thought he might punch him before Quinn grabbed the back of his hoodie and physically pulled him away muttering, “Absolutely not. We are not catching assault charges in beach chairs tonight.”
The rest of the evening Luke acted like nothing happened at all, but your pulse stayed embarrassingly uneven for hours afterward.
Movie nights were somehow the worst of all because Luke got softer when he was tired. One night you fell asleep halfway through some terrible action movie with your head resting against Luke’s shoulder completely by accident.
At least you thought it was an accident.
You woke up three hours later to a dark room lit only by the TV menu screen, a blanket tucked carefully over your body, and Luke gone entirely from the couch.
You stared at the blanket for a full minute afterward feeling your stomach twist painfully because that was the problem with him. Luke made no sense.
He acted like you were the most irritating person alive right up until somebody else upset you. Right up until you got hurt or fell asleep against him.
Eventually, you stopped trying to understand him, or at least pretended to. But even years later, after all the summers and all the fighting, some stupid part of you still searched for him automatically in every crowded room.
And honestly? That was probably the most humiliating thing of all.
Unfortunately, Luke Hughes still had the ability to ruin your mood with a single look. Which was exactly why the entire day had felt like psychological warfare specifically designed to test your patience.
The boys woke up that morning and collectively decided your suffering would be the main group activity, which honestly wasn’t even unusual. Most summers at the lake house operated on a rhythm of insults, near-death experiences on the water, and somebody getting humiliated before noon.
Normally you could handle it. You’d grown up with them. You knew how to fire back fast enough to survive.
But Luke was in one of his moods today, which meant every comment out of his mouth somehow landed harder than everybody else’s combined.
You shuffled downstairs still half asleep, oversized sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, hair twisted into a messy bun that was actively giving up on itself.
The kitchen smelled like coffee and maple syrup and sunscreen because somehow there was always sunscreen involved at this house no matter the hour.
Sunlight poured through the giant windows overlooking the lake while absolute chaos unfolded around the island.
Your younger brother was trying to steal bacon directly off Quinn’s plate. Ellen was telling someone not to sit on the wet counter. Jack was halfway through making a smoothie loud enough to qualify as construction work.
Then he looked up and gasped dramatically.
“Oh my God,” Jack said, clutching his chest. “You look terrifying.”
You didn’t even pause on your way toward the coffee pot. “Thanks, Jack. You look like a divorced father.”
Quinn barked out a laugh so suddenly he nearly choked on his coffee while Jack pointed at you in outrage. “That’s unbelievably specific.”
Your younger brother immediately leaned over the counter, eyes narrowed critically at your face. “No, wait. She kinda looks like she’d haunt children.”
You grabbed a mug from the cabinet. “Interesting. Because you look inbred.”
Jack nearly dropped his orange juice laughing. “OH, that was nasty.”
“I can’t,” Quinn admitted, visibly fighting a grin. “He does look a little genetically suspicious today.”
Your brother yelled something offended while everyone started talking over each other at once, the kitchen instantly dissolving into noise the way it always did. Usually, moments like this felt easy. Familiar.
You’d spend your entire life surrounded by this exact kind of chaos: constant teasing, constant movement, everyone talking too loudly and stealing food off each other’s plates like wild animals.
Half the time insults were basically terms of endearment in this house.
But today Luke kept inserting himself into every conversation involving you. And somehow, his comments always found the exact spot underneath your ribs that made annoyance feel embarrassingly personal.
At lunch, you reached across the table to steal fries off Quinn’s plate without asking, because Quinn had accepted years ago that anything placed within your reach immediately became community property.
Luke noticed instantly. “Can you stop stealing everybody’s food for five seconds?”
You didn’t even look up. “No.”
“She’s biologically incapable,” Jack added helpfully from beside him.
“Actually feral,” Luke muttered under his breath before taking a sip of his drink.
You rolled your eyes dramatically, even though heat crawled unpleasantly up your neck anyway. “You people are obsessed with me.”
“Unfortunately,” Luke replied immediately.
The conversation moved on around you almost instantly, Jack launching into some story about nearly wiping out on the jet ski, but the word stayed lodged stubbornly in your chest anyway.
Like your existence was something he tolerated rather than wanted.
Which was ridiculous, honestly. You knew Luke, and this was just how he talked: dry, sarcastic, unimpressed with literally everything around him. If anything, he teased you more because he was comfortable with you. Quinn had pointed that out before. Your mother too.
There was something uniquely awful about wanting someone so badly while constantly feeling like they barely even liked you. And maybe that wasn’t fair.
Because Luke did care about you. Deep down, underneath all the sarcasm and emotional constipation and whatever weird complex he had about expressing affection like a normal human being, he cared. You knew he did.
But sometimes he looked at you with this expression, this exhausted, exasperated little stare whenever you got too loud or dramatic or emotional, and it made your stomach twist painfully anyway.
The worst part was that Luke probably had no idea he was doing it.
He just leaned back in his chair afterward, sunlight catching on his stupid unfairly pretty face while he listened to Jack ramble, one hand drumming lazily against the table, completely unaware that one dumb comment had managed to sour your entire mood.
And because the universe hated you personally, he caught you staring. His eyes flicked toward yours for half a second, one eyebrow raised slightly:
You looked away immediately, grabbing Quinn’s abandoned ketchup bottle just to have something to do with your hands.
Luke stared another second longer like he didn’t believe you.
Then, too quietly for anyone else at the table to hear, he muttered: “You’re being weird today.”
Which almost made you laugh, honestly. Because if anyone had been acting weird, it was him.
By dinner, something already felt wrong inside you.
Nothing obvious enough for anyone else to point at and ask if you were okay. Just that fragile kind of sadness that sat quietly beneath your ribs and made everything feel sharper than it should’ve.
Every joke landed harder.
You kept telling yourself to stop letting Luke Hughes affect your mood like he had any right to, but unfortunately your brain had apparently dedicated the last years of its existence to caring what he thought of you.
The kitchen glowed warm in the orange Michigan sunset, windows thrown open to let the evening breeze drift through the house carrying the smell of lake water and barbecue smoke.
Someone had music playing softly from a speaker near the sink, nearly drowned out by overlapping conversations and the sound of your dads arguing over hockey stats out on the deck.
Ellen kept slapping Jack’s hand away from the food before everyone sat down while Quinn laughed hard enough at something on his phone to nearly fall backward in his chair.
It should’ve felt normal.
Instead, you sat there picking apart the corner of your burger while your chest felt tighter by the minute. Quinn was halfway through telling some story from high school when it happened.
“I’m telling you,” he said, grinning into his drink, “she rejected him so fast I almost felt bad.”
Luke looked up immediately from across the table. “I did not get rejected.”
“Oh, no?” Quinn leaned back dramatically. “‘You seem emotionally unavailable’ sounds pretty rejecting to me.”
Jack physically collapsed against the kitchen counter laughing.
“No because that’s INSANE,” he wheezed. “Like she clocked you in under thirty seconds.”
Quinn pointed across the table. “Which, honestly, might be the most accurate read of Luke Hughes ever recorded.”
Even you laughed at that, you couldn’t help it. Luke being called emotionally unavailable by a random girl felt cosmically correct. The sound escaped you before you could stop it, small and real and genuine, and Luke’s head turned toward you instantly.
Something shifted in his face the moment he heard you laugh.
Then your younger brother suddenly sat up straighter across the table, eyes lighting with the kind of evil excitement that only siblings possessed.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Tell them what happened at the marina yesterday.”
Instant dread flooded your body. “No.”
Jack looked up immediately. “Wait. What happened?”
Your brother grinned wider, absolutely delighted by your suffering. “This guy was flirting with her while she ordered ice cream and she genuinely thought he wanted her number.”
“He DID want my number,” you defended immediately.
“He asked if you wanted a receipt.”
Jack doubled over laughing. Quinn slammed a hand against the counter. Even Ellen looked like she was trying not to smile while your face burned hot enough to qualify as a medical emergency.
And okay, okay, maybe it was objectively funny.
Even you laughed a little despite yourself, ducking your head in embarrassment while your brother pointed at you like he’d just won something. Then Luke leaned back in his chair beside Quinn, smirking faintly into his drink.
And casually, like the words meant absolutely nothing, he said: “Guys don’t flirt with her. She just hears basic human kindness and starts planning the wedding.”
Quinn’s laughter stopped a second too late. Your older brother glanced toward you automatically, and something inside your chest dropped so hard it physically hurt. Heat climbed up your throat instantly, thick and humiliating.
Usually, Luke being a dick rolled right off your shoulders. You threw something back at him. Roll your eyes. Kept the bit going. That was your entire relationship, wasn’t it? Years and years of teasing and insults and him acting allergic to sincerity.
But tonight the comment landed directly where it hurt most. Maybe because part of you still cared what Luke thought of you in the most pathetic, embarrassing way imaginable. Or maybe because deep down, some horrible insecure part of you had always worried he was right.
That nobody could actually want you like that.
You forced out a laugh anyway because that was easier than letting anyone see the truth on your face. “Right,” you said quietly.
Luke didn’t notice the difference in your voice.
You stood up too quickly, chair scraping harshly against the floor. “I’m gonna go.”
Nobody stopped you immediately, but as you turned away, you caught Quinn watching you with a slight crease between his brows like he knew something had shifted. The second your bedroom door shut behind you, your composure shattered completely.
You pressed both palms against your eyes hard enough to hurt as tears spilled instantly down your cheeks, hot and humiliating and impossible to stop.
This was what broke you? Luke Hughes making one sarcastic comment? Again?
You were nineteen years old crying over a boy who’d spent half your life making fun of you. At some point, this genuinely had to become your own fault.
You buried your face into the pillow to muffle the sound, shoulders shaking hard enough to make breathing difficult. Downstairs, life kept moving without you. Voices carried faintly through the floorboards. Someone shouted at Jack. A burst of laughter followed.
The world continued normally while you lay upstairs feeling like your chest had been peeled open.
A knock sounded against your door maybe twenty minutes later.
You ignored it immediately, curling tighter beneath the blanket with your face buried deeper into the pillow. Your head hurt now. Your chest hurt worse.
Crying always exhausted you in the most humiliating way possible, leaving you feeling raw and childish afterward, like you’d peeled your own skin off emotionally and now had to deal with the embarrassment of existing.
Another knock echoed through the room.
Something twisted painfully in your chest at the sound of his voice alone. You squeezed your eyes shut harder, fresh tears burning immediately despite how desperately you wanted them to stop.
For one hopeful second, you thought maybe he actually would. Maybe he’d retreat downstairs where things were easy again, where Jack was probably yelling over cards and Quinn was laughing and nobody was crying over one stupid comment at dinner.
Then, quieter this time: “No.”
A miserable little laugh almost escaped you because somehow even Luke’s apologies sounded argumentative. You heard the door handle turn a second later before the door creaked open slowly behind him.
You kept your face turned toward the wall.
For a long moment, Luke didn’t say anything at all. You could hear him hovering awkwardly near the doorway instead, probably taking in the disaster of you curled beneath the blankets with swollen eyes and shaking shoulders.
The room suddenly felt too small for both of you. Too intimate. Outside the open windows, the lake air drifted softly through the curtains while cicadas buzzed somewhere in the dark, and downstairs somebody burst into loud laughter completely unaware that your entire emotional stability was currently disintegrating upstairs.
Then the mattress dipped carefully beside you. “I brought contraband,” Luke said awkwardly after another long silence.
Despite yourself, you glanced over. He held up a melted ice cream sandwich from the downstairs freezer, already dripping slightly down the wrapper onto his fingers. It looked pathetic. Half ruined from the walk upstairs. The sight of it almost hurt worse somehow.
Because it was such a Luke apology.
No dramatic speech. No immediate emotional honesty. Just showing up quietly with your favorite ice cream sandwich because somewhere along the line he’d memorized what comforted you and decided that counted as communication.
You turned your face back toward the wall immediately before fresh tears could spill over.
“I’m serious,” you whispered thickly. “Leave.”
The joking disappeared from his voice instantly.
God. That tiny little oh destroyed you, and tears started falling down your face, and then suddenly Luke sounded panicked. Like the reality of you actually crying over something he said had finally hit him all at once.
Luke shifted beside you awkwardly, mattress creaking beneath his weight. You could practically feel how lost he was without even looking at him. Luke could handle injuries. Fights. Pressure. Cameras. Thousands of people screaming at him in an arena. But this?
You crying alone in your bedroom because of him? No.
“I didn’t think you were actually crying.”
A watery laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
“Congrats,” you whispered miserably. “Now you know.”
Somewhere downstairs Jack yelled, “YOU CHEATED,” immediately followed by Quinn shouting back, “THAT’S NOT EVEN THE RULE.” Life kept moving beneath your bedroom floorboards while the two of you sat frozen upstairs in the wreckage of something neither of you knew how to fix.
Meanwhile Luke sat beside you looking like he’d genuinely rather face physical violence than this conversation. “I was joking,” he said finally, voice quieter now.
You stared down at the blanket twisted tightly between your fists. “You always are.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Your throat tightened painfully. “That’s also always the problem with you.”
You heard it in the sharp exhale Luke let out beside you, quiet but immediate, like the words punched straight through him. When you finally looked over, he already looked wrecked by it, baseball cap gone now, curls messy from dragging frustrated hands through them over and over again. His elbows rested against his knees while he stared hard at the floorboards like they’d personally betrayed him.
“You really think I hate you?” he asked eventually.
The question caught you so off guard you almost forgot to breathe.
You blinked at him. “What?”
Luke swallowed hard before finally glancing over. “You said that once. To Quinn.” His jaw tightened slightly. “That I hated you.”
Your chest twisted immediately because apparently Quinn remembered everything.
You frowned through lingering tears, chest still aching hard enough to make every breath feel uneven. “Luke, you’ve treated me like I’m annoying since we were kids,” you whispered shakily. “You don’t get to do this.”
Luke let out a low groan and dragged both hands over his face in frustration, fingers disappearing into his curls before gripping hard at the back of his neck. “I know.”
“No,” you said quietly, voice cracking despite how badly you wanted to stay composed. “I really don’t think you do.”
Luke went completely still after that. The room suddenly felt painfully quiet.
Outside, waves crashed softly against the dock in slow rhythmic sounds that had filled every summer of your childhood.
“You make everybody else feel easy,” you admitted finally, each word scraping raw on the way out. “Jack makes me laugh. Quinn makes me feel safe. Your parents treat me like family.” Your throat tightened hard enough to hurt. “And you just…” You swallowed shakily. “You make me feel stupid all the time.”
The second the words left your mouth, something in Luke’s expression broke. His eyes dropped immediately to the floor and for the first time maybe ever, Luke looked completely stripped of every easy defense he usually hid behind. No sarcasm.
No dry comeback waiting in the wings. Just silence and this awful guilty tension sitting heavy in his shoulders.
“I don’t mean to,” he said quietly.
You believed that Luke genuinely never meant to hurt you, and that was the problem. He did it naturally. Like making you feel small had become muscle memory somewhere along the way.
You laughed weakly and wiped angrily at your face before more tears could spill over. “Well,” you whispered, staring down at the blanket tangled in your lap, “you do.”
For a long moment, neither of you spoke again.
Luke leaned back slowly against the headboard beside you with a frustrated sigh, one arm thrown over his eyes for a second like he physically couldn’t stand being perceived right now. The mattress shifted slightly beneath his weight. You could hear him breathing beside you, slow and uneven, while downstairs life kept moving without either of you.
Eventually he dragged his arm away from his face again and stared up at the ceiling.
“I’m really bad at this.”
You frowned slightly. “At what?” This time when Luke looked over at you, your heartbeat actually stuttered. Because for the first time in your entire life, Luke Hughes looked nervous around you.
Raw, uncomfortable nerves that sat visibly in the tension of his jaw and the way his fingers kept flexing against his knee like he didn’t know what to do with them.
“You,” he admitted quietly.
The word hit you harder than it should have. You just stared at him for a second, genuinely confused. “Me?”
Luke huffed out one short humorless laugh and looked away immediately, shaking his head once like he already regretted opening his mouth at all. “Yes, you,” he muttered. “Jesus Christ.”
Your pulse was loud enough now that you could hear it in your ears.
Luke dragged a hand through his curls again, visibly searching for words in a way you’d never seen from him before. Luke always had words, smart-ass little comments tossed over his shoulder like breathing.
But this version of him looked almost miserable with honesty.
“When we were kids, you followed us everywhere,” he said finally, eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards now. “Everywhere. Me, Quinn, Jack—you were always just…” He gestured vaguely. “There.”
You sniffed once. “Wow. That’s so touching.”
“I’m trying to explain something.”
“You’re doing a terrible job.”
A tiny laugh escaped him despite himself. Then his expression softened again almost immediately after. “And then one summer,” he continued more quietly, “you just stopped being a kid.”
The air left your lungs. Luke swallowed hard, jaw tightening slightly before he forced himself to keep going.
“You got older and suddenly everybody looked at you differently.” His voice dropped lower. “And I hated it.” Luke laughed once under his breath, but it sounded miserable. Frustrated with himself.
“You know how many times Quinn’s had to physically stop me from being an asshole to guys around you?”
Your eyebrows pulled together slightly. “What?”
“That guy at the bonfire last summer?” Luke glanced over finally. “The blond one?”
“The one from Michigan State?”
“Yeah.” His jaw flexed once. “I almost punched him because he touched your waist.”
Your mouth fell open slightly. You remembered Luke glaring from across the fire all night. Remembered Quinn dragging him away at one point while Jack yelled something about everyone needing psychological help. At the time, you’d thought Luke was just being overprotective.
Luke looked exhausted now. Completely emotionally cornered by his own honesty.
“I don’t hate you,” he said softly. “I think I’ve just been jealous of literally everyone who gets your attention since I was like sixteen.”
All at once, the pieces shifted into place so suddenly it almost made you dizzy.
“You’re serious?” you asked quietly.
Luke’s mouth twitched faintly, something tired and self-deprecating flickering across his face.
