They walked in silence.
The kind that hurt.
Their shoes scraped against the damp pavement, the streetlight shadows dragging behind them like ghosts. Hughie shoved his hands deeper into his jacket, still reeling from the party, still carrying the scent of perfume that wasn’t hers.
She couldn’t take it anymore.
Not the laughing. Not the way he let other girls touch him. Not the way he still always came back to her like nothing was wrong.
She stopped walking. Her voice came out tight, shaking.
“Tell me that there’s nothing going on between us.”
Hughie paused mid-step, turning slowly. “What?”
She was trembling—not from cold, but from the pressure building under her skin for weeks. “Tell me this thing—whatever this is—is just in my head. That I’ve made it all up. The touches. The looks. You holding my hand when no one’s watching. You crawling through my window at night just to sleep beside me. That it’s all just some stupid story I told myself.”
“Sunshine—”
“No,” she snapped, voice cracking. “Don’t you call me that unless you mean it.”
Hughie’s mouth opened, then closed. His expression unreadable.
“If I’m wrong,” she whispered, “just say it. Say I’m crazy.”
Her eyes welled, and she hated herself for it. “Because if you say that, I’ll walk into that house, laugh with our friends like nothing happened, and we never have to talk about this again. Ever.”
Silence fell like snowfall.
But it wasn’t peaceful.
It was suffocating.
Hughie’s jaw was clenched so hard she swore it might shatter.
“I didn’t mean—” he started.