daddy's girl ❥ luke hemmings ✔️

04. "daddy loves his little girl"

LUKE

I am at a mental war with myself and I really need to go to fucking sleep. I've been awake since 3am and it's killing me. My mind just can't seem to stop overthinking and it's putting me at unease.

Sighing, I drape an arm across Sophie's waist, pulling her in close. She smells like she always does; of strawberries and sugar because of the weird yet wonderful shampoo she uses, and the warmth is radiating between our bodies as we lay in my dimly lit bunk of the tourbus.

Sleep doesn't come as easily to me as it does to her. In some ways, I'm glad; I get to make sure that my little girl sleeps soundly throughout the the night because I know how much of a light sleeper she is. In other ways, I feel like downing a few of those pills I see Sadie knock back two at a time every evening, like tictacs from a yellow pill bottle.

I try to yawn but nothing comes out, much like how I force my eyes to water but end up with mothing. If it weren't for the fact that I have my arm under Sophie's head and it would be much too cruel to wake her up by shifting, I would be pacing the floor of the moving tourbus by now.

It's very rare that we get to spend nights together alone like this. We went out for a meal, she was giddy the whole time, we walked by the pier and she begged me to get her a bag of just green M&M's despite there not being a convenience store anywhere near us that sold the green ones on their own. Nevertheless, I drove to the closest 7/11, searched the aisles, and bought her two bags of the stuff just in case she finished the first one because whatever baby wants, Daddy gets.

"You spoil her far too much, Luke." Rachel had sighed, shaking her head as we watched an eight year old Sophie run across the lawn.

She had my You Complete Mess shirt draped over a shiny silver skirt, tainted with mud and grass and playground stains from endless hours of climbing the jungle gym, yet she still managed to look as pristine as ever.

I just shrugged, turning back to my notebook with a small smile on my face. I loved her so much that I could care less whether or not she ruined something I owned. I'd buy her a hundred of those You Complete Mess shirts if I could, and I'd even build her the entirety of an elementary school's playground course if it meant getting to watch her face light up.

I think about now, about the green M&M's and the one hour drive spent searching for a 7/11, and the way her hair blew in the wind of the car's air conditioner because she complained that it was too cold to let the actual breeze in. I think about how when traffic hit and I was slowly starting to get impatient, she plugged her phone into the aux cord and began to play songs I'd never heard of but would most definitely listen to in the future if that's what she wanted.

She sang along to those songs and I watched her, and I felt a pang in my chest, a gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach because I knew how innocently she viewed the world. I've been sheltering her from it for so long that I'm afraid it's too late to go back- hell, I don't even let her have social media in fear of her messaging a random stranger and getting tricked into meeting up with him.

She'd never know the dangers of those sorts of things because Rachel's never had the time to stop and warn her about it and I've never had the heart to. I hate seeing her sad and I know that if I even try to explain the whole thing about the world having it's variations of good and bad people, her beautiful eyes would water and I'd find myself taking it all back.