❛ For Now, If You Feel Like You Have To Keep The Deception Going, I Am Hardly In A Position To Contradict

❛ For now, if you feel like you have to keep the deception going, I am hardly in a position to contradict you. ❜ luka → chloé ♡

( the cruel prince prompts / accepting !! )

𝐋𝐔𝐊𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐅𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐘 𝐒𝐇𝐄'𝐃 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐄𝐓. Unlike most of the others at school, he didn't scramble to get out of her way in the hallway, or on a good day, offer to carry her books. Worse than that, he didn't seem to be completely enamoured with her by her mere presence in his boring, unfulfilled life. Didn't he know who she was?! In fact, Luka seemed to be completely unphased by anything Chloé did.

Not for lack of trying, though. She had, at one time, tried to make him angry. Had tried to push his buttons, poking and prodding so much that she ended up being more mad herself in the end than he was. Luka was, in fact, so calm as she threw a fit, she wondered if he even knew how to be angry. It wasn't like Juleka's quiet calm. Juleka was quiet to the point of painful shyness. Luka just seemed to be relaxed no matter what the situation was. Chloé would have been impressed if she weren't so annoyed by it.

They only ever saw each other in passing at school. At least at the start. Sometimes, on the rare occasion she could be convinced by Adrien to come hang out with everyone at the Couffaines — sit in on band practise, or whatever else they had going on — she'd stand off to the side and pull faces every time Luka so much as glanced at her. He always smiled, though. In that easy sort of way that got under her skin and made her want to jump into the Seine.

Do you... like him, Chloé? Sabrina had asked at one point as she caught the blonde staring at Luka's retreating figure in the cafeteria, timid because she knew that the other girl would likely blow up at the accusation. And she had. Of course she had.

Infuriating. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous!

That was how they ended up here. In the park. She'd bee-lined for him as soon as she saw him, a girl on a mission because there was no way she, Chloé Bourgeois, had a crush on someone like Luka Couffaine. Luka was strumming away at his guitar; blissfully ignorant — or, perhaps, choosing to ignore — Chloé as she went on another one of her tirades.

She paced back and forth in front of him, gesticulating wildly as she seethed.

❝ —— And Sabrina had the gall, the utter audacity, to insinuate I might have a crush. On you! Can you believe it?! ❞

Do you?

❝ Excuse me? ❞

Do you have a crush on me?

She felt the heat rising to her cheeks, though it was less fuelled by anger and more by sheer embarrassment at his forwardness to even ask. He was looking at her curiously. No thread of judgment in his expression. Chloé scowled.

❝ Of course I don't. Don't be ridiculous! ❞

Mm.

❝ I don't have a crush on you. ❞

For now, if you feel like you have to keep the deception going, I am hardly in a position to contradict you.

Chloé's hands balled into fists at her side. She stamped her foot and didn't care how childish and unreasonable it made her look. ❝ Couffaine... ❞

Chloé.

❝ You — You — I'm leaving! ❞

She stormed off without another word, barely registering his soft laugh and murmured 'See you at school, Chloé'. It wasn't until she was out of the park and couldn't hear the gentle strumming of his guitar anymore that she finally stopped and pressed a hand to her heart. It was thrumming so wildly, she thought it might burst out of her chest. Adrenaline, she told herself. It was just adrenaline. She did not have a crush on Luka.

❝ ...Ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! ❞