It was the look that did it.

The way his eyes softened when she entered the room, as though his body remembered her before his mind did. That flicker of something unspoken but undeniable — history. Not the kind of history you could compete with, the kind rooted in childhood, shaped by pain and chaos and first everything. The kind that etched itself into someone’s DNA.

You stood beside him, arm loosely looped around his, pretending not to notice the way his body subtly shifted at the sound of her laugh. You’d grown used to the ache, the one that pressed itself into your chest when Lizzie was near. It wasn’t jealousy — not really. It was grief. The quiet mourning of a love you never fully had.

You were the placeholder.

The safety net.

He kissed you, but his eyes always scanned the room, searching for her. You told yourself it didn’t matter. That he chose you. That you were the one he came home to. But it did matter. Every time he called you “babe” with absent-minded affection, your heart shriveled just a little more. You craved something deeper. Something she’d already taken from him.

And Lizzie?

She knew.

She wore her resentment like armor, wielding it like a blade with every passive-aggressive remark, every fake smile, every calculated glance. She didn’t love him enough to stay, but hated you too much to let him go. You could feel her disdain burning into your skin when you stood too close to Hughie. When he laughed at your jokes. When he held your hand.

She didn’t have him, but she hated that you did.

And Hughie?

He never defended you. Never corrected her. Never acknowledged the way her presence twisted knots in your stomach and poisoned your thoughts. He just let it happen. Because part of him still belonged to her, even if he didn’t admit it.

You started counting the nights he forgot to say I love you back. The mornings he stared too long at his phone. The way he looked out windows as though expecting her to appear.

You weren’t losing him.

You never really had him.

Not the way she did.