The pavement shimmered under the streetlights, rain falling in hard, cold sheets. Shoes sloshed through puddles as Johnny Kavanagh stomped down the footpath, jacket soaked through, fists clenched at his sides.

She hurried beside him, hugging herself for warmth, mascara smudged just slightly from the rain — or maybe from before that. From the party. From everything.

Johnny hadn’t said a word since they left. Not when he saw her dancing with that guy in the kitchen. Not when he caught her laughing too hard at someone else's joke. Not when she watched him flirt with a girl he didn’t even know the name of.

But now, under the weight of the storm and the silence, something snapped.

He stopped.

She did too, blinking at him through the rain.

He turned, eyes wild with something too big to hold in anymore. “What do you want from me?”

She opened her mouth — nothing came out.

“Because I can’t keep doing this,” Johnny said, voice rising with every word, breath visible in the chill between them. “I can’t keep pretending it doesn’t bother me when you look at other guys like that — when you touch their arms and laugh like it’s nothing—”

Her brows furrowed. “Johnny—”

“—No. No, let me say this.” He shoved his hand through his soaked hair, rain streaming down his cheeks like sweat or maybe something closer to pain. “I flirted with that girl tonight and I didn’t even like her. I didn’t care about her. I only did it because you were doing it first. Because I wanted to make you jealous. Because—”

He paused, chest heaving, eyes burning into hers.

“Because I’m in love with you. And I don’t know how not to be.”

The rain poured down harder. She stared at him, completely still, water pooling at their feet, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

She didn’t say anything.

Not a single word.

Johnny’s face fell just a little — enough for her to see it, enough for it to hurt. He looked down, then nodded once like he was answering himself.

“Yeah,” he muttered, quieter now. “That’s what I figured.”