Page 130 of Code Word
Luke slid his hand onto my thigh. “You okay?”
I took a deep breath in and exhaled and nodded for him. “Yeah.”
Jeremy cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. He held up his beer bottle. “We should raise our drinks to these two dickbags for finally, and I meanfinally, getting their act together.”
Luke’s cheeks tinted pink. “Uh, thanks.”
I held up my beer. “To the ten years it took for me to realize.”
“You never were that bright,” Wes said to me, and everyone laughed.
I nodded along because he probably wasn’t wrong. Luke slid his hand into mine.
But then Maddox raised his beer. “To new beginnings, wherever, whatever that means.” He grinned at me. “Can’t wait to hear the new music.”
That earned us a few looks. “New music?” Jeremy asked. “How come this is the first I’ve heard of that?”
“Because we’re not sure what we’re gonna do with it yet,” Luke said, looking at me. I gave him a reassuring nod, and he continued. “About the promise we made back when Atrouswas starting. We said it was all of us or none of us but—” He looked around the table. “Things are different now.”
“They are,” Wes said. “I can’t go back, sorry.”
“Me either,” Maddox said.
“Yeah, no,” Jeremy said. “I’m out.”
As sad as that was, I was also a little glad.
“I get it,” I admitted. “I really do. But what Luke said is right. Things are different now. For us, anyway. And we don’t know what we’re going to do, or if we’ll do anything. The thing is, we have no company controlling us, no rules. We can do what we want.”
Luke looked at me fondly. “We’re just happy to be writing again.”
“It’s been a while since it was fun, ya know?” I added. “And playing to smaller crowds, like at the airport. Impromptu, like that. It was awesome.”
“Mm,” Steve hummed. “I saw the ‘small’ crowd waiting for you at the airport that I had to get you both out of.”
“The internet still hasn’t recovered,” Roscoe added. “You’ve seen that, right?”
I shrugged. “Uh, not really. I stopped looking at my phone a while ago. I don’t give a crap about that stuff anymore.”
“I can’t wait for you two to go public officially,” Wes said with a grin. “Then you will break the internet. It’ll be mayhem across the Bluke fandom.”
“You’re gonna need security,” Steve said with a shrug. “Sorry.”
Roscoe nodded. “And managers, PAs and PR, legal, and?—”
“Stop, stop,” I put my hand up. “It’s too soon.”
Luke was watching me. “We could write songs for other artists to sing. A production company kinda thing. Or just release songs online. We don’t need the hype, the fame, or the money. We’re just doing it for us, right?”
I grinned at him. “Right.”
“And if you wanna sing at a bar or something, we can do that in Mexico,” Luke said. “Or wherever we end up buying something.”
I was still grinning at him, still giddy knowing he was mine. “I fucking love you,” I said, leaning over and kissing him.
He blushed scarlet, but he was beaming.
“Ow,” Jeremy muttered. “My eyes.”
