It’s fucking pouring. Like biblical, end-of-days levels of rain. I’m soaked to the bone, my boots are squelching, and my hands are clenched so tight I might snap my own fingers—but none of that even registers.

Because she’s standing there. On the middle of the feckin’ rugby pitch. Looking at me like I’m the problem. Like I’m some stranger who wandered into her storm and not the lad who’s been trying—desperately, pathetically—to love her for months.

And I just—snap.

“Why do you keep running, huh?” I shout, voice cracking over the wind and the rain and the absolute chaos tearing through my chest. “Why do you keep pushing me away like I’m fuckin’ nothing to you?”

She flinches. Good. Let her flinch. Let her feel even a fraction of the shit clawing through my ribs every time she looks at me like I’m disposable.

“Like I don’t—” I choke on the words, because they feel like glass in my throat. “Jesus Christ, you make me insane. Do you even care how much this fuckin’ hurts?”

She opens her mouth. “Gibs, I—”

“No.” I cut her off, shaking my head like a madman, because I am one at this point. “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to brush it off again. Not this time. Not after everything.”

I take a step closer. My heart’s beating like a drum in my ears. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t not say it anymore.

“You drive me mental,” I whisper, soaked and shaking. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I’m one bad day away from writing you a feckin’ poem and reading it at assembly.”

I laugh—harsh and hollow and a little unhinged.

“I want to scream, I want to punch a wall, I want to throw myself into traffic every time you look at me like I’m just… just your mate.”

I stare at her. Everything in me is burning.

And then it slips.

“But I love you.”

Silence.

Her eyes go wide.

And just like that, the panic kicks in.

I scrub a hand down my face, blinking water out of my eyes—definitely rain, not tears—and take a step back.

“Forget I said anything,” I mutter, voice raw, already regretting every syllable.