daddy's girl ❥ luke hemmings ✔️

24. "naked"

LUKE

I kiss her with so much force that I'm actually terrified of breaking her. I'm scared that once I pull away, she'll slip away, right between my fingertips. I'm afraid of waking up, shaking in an empty bed, a mattress void of the one little girl I'd give anything to keep mine forever.

Sophie kisses me back and I can tell she's hesitant. Her lips don't move quite in sync with mine but that's okay, that's perfectly okay, because her sharing a moment like this with me is enough.

I hold her, arms wrapped around her waist as she settles on my lap, fingers together behind my neck. It's wrong, I know that, but I disregard the guilt as soon as it comes up. If something that feels as good as this adds imaginary points to the balance that judges where I go when I die, then you might as well just drag me to hell already.

I don't know what to feel. I'm estatic, I'm conflicted, there's a bulge about to form in my trousers and my heart is beating at a very rapid pace in my chest. There are so many things I want to feel and so many things I want to think but they've all been surpressed, glossed over by the feeling of her lips against mine.

Kissing Sophie doesn't feel as wrong as I tried to convince her it would be. It feels right, it feels so right, and that absolutely terrifies me.

It feels like a weight has been lifted off of my chest and I can float upwards to wherever the fuck Cloud 9 is supposed to be, because right here, with my little girl in my arms and not a care in the world, seems to be Cloud 9 already.

Sophie shifts. She pulls back. My heart falls to the pit of my stomach as she frowns, reaches a thumb over, and wipes at my cheek.

"Daddy," she says, very softly. It's only now that I realize I'm not alone when it comes to being too scared to make the wrong move. "Why are you sad?"

I'm not sad. I'm just crying, tears spilling out of my eyes because I can't bear to think of a world where she isn't my little girl. I'm crying because all these years trying to convince myself that my feelings for Sophie have been completely platonic have now been washed away, wood into ashes the moment our lips met.

I'm crying because I want to hold her here and kiss her forever, have her mine, clasp her delicate hands in my own because she is my lifeline and I don't need anything else. I want a world where I am not her Daddy and she is not my little girl. I want to live in a fantasy where our relationship is new, a place where we can build from nothing because nothing is better than something corrupt.

I am crying and Sophie's eyebrows are furrowing together in concern. I don't want her to worry, but worry is all I seem to do myself so I can't be a hypocrite.

We move our positions without a single word. She climbs off of my lap, snuggles into the arm of the couch. It's weird not having her so close to me but I think we both need a second, maybe a minute, to adjust. To think things through without making anything too complicated.

Again, we don't talk. Not even when she yawns and beckons me over to the side of the couch. Not even when I lie down next to her, pressing our bodies close together.

And not even when she leans in for another kiss; a gesture I comply to by meeting her plump lips with my own.

11am is when I wake up and I feel refreshed, like all of my worries have gone straight down the drain. Sophie is no longer next to me but instead in the shower of the tourbus; I can tell by the sound of running water.