All the Way Back - Luke Hughes

All The Way Back

The apartment hadn't changed much.

Same gray couch. Same crooked picture frame she never bothered to fix. Same scent of lavender and Luke's old hoodie, folded in a corner of her closet.

But everything else was different.

It had been six months since she left for LA.

Six months of red-eye flights, on-camera segments, cramped hotels, and late-night phone calls that turned into three-hour FaceTimes.

Six months of missing him.

And now she was back.

Not for a visit.

Not for the weekend.

For good.

She dropped her bags by the door and walked into the living room, heart thudding.

Then she saw him.

Luke, standing barefoot in the kitchen, a dish towel over one shoulder, like this was any other Tuesday. His hair was damp. His eyes were wide. And when he saw her, he didn't say a word.

He crossed the room in four steps and kissed her like he hadn't taken a full breath in months.

⸻

Later, curled up on the couch, her head in his lap and his fingers in her hair, neither of them had much to say.

They didn't need to.

Everything had already been said.

In calls. In letters. In the silence between the hours apart and the slow unravel of everything they'd carried through distance.

"I missed you every day," Luke said quietly.

Ella looked up at him. "Even the days I didn't text back?"

He smiled. "Especially those days."

She sat up, took his face in her hands. "I don't want to leave again."

"Then stay."

"I already did."

⸻

They didn't rush into anything.

She didn't unpack the same night.

They didn't call it moving in.

But she started waking up in his bed every morning. Her toothbrush appeared beside his. Her keys landed in the bowl by the door. Luke learned her coffee order again because it had changed (again).

And that was how she knew this wasn't a chapter.

It was a beginning.

⸻

Three weeks later, on a slow Sunday morning, Ella found a box on the table.

Inside: a note.

"Because you always said I was bad at saying things out loud. So I wrote it instead."

She unfolded a letter.

Luke's handwriting, messy and sure.

Ella,

You walked into the lake house like a storm, and I haven't breathed the same since.

I don't know how to explain it except that I've never wanted anything the way I want you—messy mornings and long distance and burned pancakes included.

You didn't just change my summer. You changed everything.

And I want you here. For all of it.

Stay.

If you want.

—L

She didn't cry.

Okay, maybe a little.

But only because it was everything she hadn't let herself believe she deserved.

⸻

That night, she looked at him across the couch and said, "This is it, right?"

Luke paused the movie. "What is?"

"You and me."

He smiled slowly. "It's always been you and me."

Ella leaned into him.

And this time, when he kissed her, there was no doubt.

No distance.

No lake between them.

Just love.

All the way back.