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wolfiec · 3 months ago

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LOVED YOU AT YOUR WORST - r.c series - FIFTEEN

pairings: ex!sweethearts; rafe x thornton!reader; rafe x sofia. chapter warnings: angst; mentions of abortion, grief & health issues;

Rafe was a hundred percent sure the lack of oxygen made him delirious.

His palms were still clammy from the panic attack earlier—vision spotty, heart galloping so hard it scared even him. Sarah had stared at him like he was a mangled dog limping on the freeway and for once, she hadn’t said anything smart or mean, just driven him home without a word. No fight with her that night, he hadn’t screamed at her, hadn’t said something he’d regret—he kept his shit together for once. He said thank you, but his sister didn’t need it when she’d grown up watching him break down and build back up a thousand times, never quite whole.

Therapy hadn’t miracled him into some new person or whatever. He wasn’t going to start quoting mantras and hugging strangers in the street. He was trying, alright? Not to ruin everything he touched, not to say shit that hurt people only because he was hurting. It wasn’t gonna happen overnight—he knew that, it might not even occur in a year. But cleaning the water with you, of all people, that was something, a start and he had to start somewhere, or he’d drown.

That’s why he was parked outside your place, headlights off, keys still in the ignition, trying to talk himself out of going in. His fingers hovered over his screen guessing you’d follow up your text with a quick “nvm” or “that was a mistake.” But nothing came, just that green bubble, staring back at him, fucking terryfing.

This had to be some kind of trap, you hadn’t said two nice things to him in the past four months, except tonight, but his brain was foggy.

Rafe rubbed his face, still buzzing with adrenaline, a headache forming low behind his eyes, he should just go home, stop chasing something that always seemed to blow up in his face. But his hand was already on the door handle, legs half-numb as he stepped out into the night air. His heart started doing that thing again—erratic—and he wondered if he was about to pass out on your front steps.

That’d be poetic.

He was idling outside your gate, the one that used to open the second his Range Rover pulled up, he knew the code, now he had to buzz, like a stranger.

Rafe hated that.

He pressed the button, swallowing hard, already regretting it. He half-expected silence, or your voice telling him to go to hell. Instead, there was a click, then the slow swing of iron, groaning open like it, too, couldn’t believe you’d let him in. By the time he reached your front door, his hands were damp again, chest aching with everything he wasn’t saying.

Then—door swings open.

You didn’t make him knock, there you were barefoot, dressed in some enormous hoodie he hadn’t seen in months. Hair twisted up, eyes dark from either crying or just not sleeping. You weren’t supposed to look like that.

“Hi.”

“Hi?” he echoed, like a fucking idiot. It came out raspy, his throat wasn’t working right, still scratched up from earlier. His lungs hadn’t fully clocked back in from that panic attack and now this. “…You let me in.”

“You rang the gate.”

You seemed tired, not just physically, and he did that thing again, almost stopped breathing because air wasn’t a thing he deserved around you.

You stepped aside, sighing. “Come in. Before I change my mind.”

He did, swallowed hard, and crossed that threshold like he was sixteen again, sneaking in past curfew, scared your dad would catch him, but now it was just the two of you. You sat curled into the corner of the couch across from him, arms wrapped around your knees while Rafe sat stiff on the edge of the opposite one, elbows on his thighs, hands clasped like he was praying.

(He was.)

He dragged a hand down his face, his lungs were feeling funny again, but it wasn’t a panic attack this time, it was you, sitting right there, after all this time. He wanted to say something, but everything in his brain came out wrong before it even hit his mouth.

So he sat and you stared. This is probably where she slaps me, or tells me to get the fuck out. Or worse, says nothing, he thought.

He wanted to tell you that he hadn’t slept right in weeks, sometimes he thought he saw you out of the corner of his eye, and his body would react like you were real—as if he could still fix it. He wanted to admit he’d been spiraling, white-knuckling his days just to get through without texting you, begging or showing up like this.

"You're not gonna say anything?"

You looked like you’d bolt if he breathed wrong.

Rafe blinked, looking away. "I don’t know where to start."

That made your mouth drop, not quite a frown but close, he tracked it, all the little changes in your expression like they were landmarks in a city he used to live in. He didn’t know if that map still existed for him anymore.

“Start somewhere.”

Where the fuck was “somewhere”? Before the fight? Before he said all that shit he didn’t mean because it was easier to make you hate him than admit he couldn’t live without you?

“I didn’t think I’d be let in.”

“I didn’t think you’d show up.”

Everything felt surreal, as if he’d left his body behind in the car and now he was just watching this shit play out on a TV screen. You across from him, this house, this conversation—civilized, if you could even call it that. He didn’t know how to be calm around you, maybe this was hell, he died somewhere between the panic attack and your driveway and this was just the afterlife: stuck in a loop with the one person he couldn’t stop loving but always hurt.

“I don’t know how to talk to you anymore,” He confessed, his leg bouncing, nervous energy bleeding out of him. None of you were yelling, crying, rolling your eyes like usual, that scared him.

He kept seeing it in his head, how things used to be—even after a screaming match, you’d curl into him like nothing ever broke. you'd text him "come over" at 2 a.m. and he’d be there in ten, because it was understood. It was always understood.

Even when the world felt like it was falling apart, when his dad was on his ass, when he was fucking up every other part of his life—you were the one place he didn’t have to explain himself. This didn’t feel like the two of you, more like strangers in borrowed skin.

Rafe hated that he kept looking for you—the old you, who would tilt her head and laugh through her nose and throw a pillow at him when he said something stupid. The girl who could read him in a second and didn’t need him to find the right words. You didn’t look like her anymore, that was a good thing.

What the fuck happened to us.

He was what happened, if he hadn’t shut down, pushed back, said the worst thing at the worst time—he dropped his gaze to the floor, hands flexing again against his thighs. There was so much he wanted to say, but none of it would change what he’d already done.

You still weren’t uttering a single word, and he was starting to feel like he couldn’t sit here another second without doing something—saying something, but then, as if you'd taken a peek inside his excuse of a brain—

“I think we should get our excuses out of the way.”

He looked up.

Your hands were fidgeting—thumb picking at your sleeve, eyes not quite on him. God, he remembered those hands, you used to touch his face like he was something soft, you hadn’t touched him at all in months.

“I mean it. No more bullshit.”

“What are you talking about?”

You met his eyes.

“I mean, I’ve got my own shit to say,” you said. “So if you’ve got something to say, I want to hear it now.”

He suddenly felt sick, his ears were ringing again, the way they had earlier when Sarah pulled the car over and told him to “breathe, Rafe, it’s anxiety, not a heart attack”.

“…I don’t know how to say it right,” he muttered almost swallowed by the quiet. “Every time I try, it comes out fucked.”

“Give it a try.”

You didn’t say anything else, the you go first was visible in your eyes.

That was the least he could give you, right? He’d been taking and taking, his soul already hurt from just the thought. But you were offering him honesty, one chance, without the screaming, the throwing things.

Rafe cleared his throat, eyes glassy and wild and stupidly, desperately hopeful. Alright, somewhere. Fuck it.

“I regretted it the second you left.” It it hurt to say it, “I didn’t say it then. I was too—” He laughed once, humorless. “—too proud. Too fucked up, drunk.”

He rubbed his palms against his jeans, focusing on everything he hadn’t said properly for months. It haunted him, how your face had crumpled but you still didn’t cry in front of him—too proud or too hurt or both. The sound of the door slamming after you was louder in his head than the gunshots from his worst nights.

“The shit you said that night… messed me up. I know I messed you up too, but—” He stopped, jaw flexing. “I didn’t think it would come from you.”

That was the part no one ever understood.

He could take the hits, the rumours, Ward yelling in his face, his so-called friends talking behind his back. Even Sarah calling him an asshole—he could take all of that. But you? He’d spent so long thinking you saw him, even when he didn’t deserve it, especially then.

When you threw his pain back at him that night, when you looked at him like he was just another spoiled rich boy crying over his daddy—fuck, he’d felt something in him break in half.

“I thought you’d get it,” he admitted, swallowing hard. “That’s the part I couldn’t stop thinking about. You—of all people. You lost your whole family. You know what that’s like. You were there when my mom died. We were kids, but you were the only one who talked to me about it. I thought—” He shook his head. “I thought it would be like that again. That when my dad—when he was gone… I thought if anyone would understand what that felt like, it’d be you.” His mouth twisted. “But you didn’t.”

He blinked, and his vision went fuzzy again—not from panic this time, just pain, remembering too vividly.

“I deserved it, I really did. But that night?” he said, “I couldn’t forgive you. You weren’t wrong—" He bit his cheek, hard, until the taste of blood hit his tongue. “—but it was you. And I didn’t want to stop loving you. That’s why I didn’t chase you, just drank, a lot, figured I’d black out enough nights and eventually stop thinkin' about it.”

Another dry laugh.

“Didn’t work, if that wasn’t obvious.” He leaned forward again, elbows on his knees, “I kept waiting for you to come back, thinking any day now, you’d text me. Say you were sorry too. But you didn’t and I didn’t know how to fix somethin' you were the one who broke last.”

His pride had cost him everything, but it was never stronger than his hurt. And even now, with your hand resting on your stomach and his gut screaming, he was still reaching for the version of you who used to understand him without either of you saying a word.

Rafe swore that was it—you were gonna walk out, leave him sitting there like some pathetic, washed-up version of the guy you used to love.

“Is that why you started seeing Sofia?”

"I didn’t…" He paused, shaking his head, dragging a hand down his face. “I didn’t see her like that.”

You didn’t say anything, just nodded, slow and silent: go on.

“She was the bartender at the club. I’d see her when I went in—most of the time I was drunk off my ass anyway. Half the time I didn’t even remember what I said to her. I didn’t know her name for a while.” He hated himself for saying it out loud. “She was just there.”

His leg started bouncing again, and he didn’t even notice.

“She asked if I was okay once. That’s all it took, one person acting like they gave a shit. And I was pissed at you, I was pissed at everything, but mostly I was pissed at myself for not being okay and for needing you anyway.”

His hands came up, gesturing vaguely between you.

“I kept thinking—you left me. You left. When I needed you the most, and I knew I’d done so much wrong, pushed you so far that you didn’t have anything left to give me, but… I still thought you'd understand. I thought if anyone was gonna sit with me in grief, it’d be you. But you didn’t, you treated me like I was a fucking monster, it didn’t matter that I’d just buried my dad. All I was, was Ward’s son, and not just some kid trying to make sense of losing the only parent he had left.”

You looked like you wanted to interrupt. You didn’t.

“And I know he was a bad man. I know that, ’m not fucking delusional,” Rafe snapped, voice rising for a second, frustrated with himself, before softening again. “But he was still my dad. The guy who used to drive me out on the boat at sunrise and teach me how to cast without tangling the line. He was still the man who told me I could be something. Even when he lied through his teeth—he still said it.”

He dropped his eyes to floor again, voice going nearly hoarse.

“And I missed him. I still do, even when I hate him, I miss him. You made me feel like that was something to be ashamed of.” When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “That’s when it clicked. You were gone, you weren’t coming back. And I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me. I didn’t even realize you were already hurting, mourning me while I was still sittin' right fuckin' next to you.”

His eyes lifted slowly to meet yours again.

“That’s why I didn’t stop her,” he said, quietly, defeated. “When she kissed me the first time… I didn’t stop her. Because I wanted you to know what it felt like, to feel what I’d been feeling every second since the door slammed behind you. I wanted it to hurt when you found out.”

Rafe saw your jaw twitch, you were trying not to cry or scream or both while he admitted what you’d already known in the deepest part of your chest. He hated that you were sitting so far away, arms wrapped around yourself when all he wanted was to cross the space and warm you up with everything he hadn’t known how to say until now.

He hated that he’d ever wanted to hurt you.

“You didn’t have to make it worse.”

His head dropped, ashamed, nodding. He knew, fuck, did he know.

“You could’ve called. Texted. Showed up like this—months ago.”

“I didn’t know how.”

“You did. You just didn’t want to.”

You were right, he had let pride drag him deeper into the hole, let the silence rot what was left between you because at least in the silence, he didn’t have to see your eyes look at him like that.

That night—shit, that night—he’d said things he didn’t even remember, the kind of bullshit you don’t come back from. It scared him sometimes, what he’d become. He’d wanted to win the fight more than he wanted to keep you, twisting his grief into something cruel the following weeks, just to make you bleed a little too.

Rafe swallowed hard, voice low now, ashamed. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“I didn’t even like her,” he admitted, a little more broken. “Not like that. She was just… there, a good friend. She wasn’t you, didn’t ask questions, didn’t expect anything from me. And I hated myself more every time I saw her because I knew what I was doing. I was punishing you, for something I couldn’t admit was my fault too. I didn’t think there was anything left to fight for.”

His voice cracked for real this time.

“That’s the difference between us,” You muttered. “You give up when it’s hard. You made it look easy.”

“I needed you to hate me enough to stop trying.”

You let out the breath you’d been carefully holding.

“Congrats. It worked.”

“I didn’t want it to. I was a mess. Still am. I never stopped—”

“I thought I was going to die when I saw you together, Rafe.”

Your eyes weren’t angry or accusing, just….sad.

“I—I saw you in the bathroom,” you continued, “Thought I was going to throw up right there in the hallway.”

Rafe’s heart stopped.

“The door was open just a crack, enough to see her.” You swallowed hard, and he could see how your hands were shaking now. “She had her arms around your neck. You were smiling, laughing even. You kissed her neck, she was touching. You fucking let her.”

His soul caved in.

“I stood there for maybe ten seconds. Long enough to see you tie the strings of her bikini behind her back like you’d done it a hundred times already.” You let out a little laugh, but it sounded so wrong. “It used to take you five tries to tie mine without getting flustered.”

He felt sick to his stomach.

You shook your head slowly, eyes closing.

“It felt like someone had just reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. I couldn’t breathe, my face went cold, and all I kept thinking was you didn’t even flinch.”

Rafe opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His heart was fucking breaking.

You tilted your head, blinking up at the ceiling, trying to keep it together. “I slept on the bathroom floor that night, in your hoodie, because it smelled like you. Didn’t eat for two days.”

A pause.

“And I still would’ve taken you back if you’d just shown up. Said you were sorry.”

Rafe couldn’t take it anymore. “I was sorry,” he said, hoarse. “Every second. I swear to God, I just didn’t think I—”

“—deserved it?” you finished for him, not unkindly. “You didn’t.”

He flinched.

“But I would’ve still tried,” you whispered. “Because I loved you that much.”

No vindication or closure. Rafe pressed his fingers to his temples, exhaling hard, his whole body burning with guilt.

“I didn’t like her,” he repeated, knowing it couldn’t erase what he’d done.

"You liked her enough to keep her around."

“She was there. That’s all it was, she wasn’t you. I couldn’t even look at her without thinkin' about you.”

You shook your head, eyes gleaming. “Then why didn’t you leave?”

He looked at you, words choking in his throat. “Because I was scared you’d already moved on. You were gone for two months, I felt like a stranger."

You let out a bitter breath, “You were a stranger. The moment you let her touch you like that… you stopped being mine.”

The silence that followed was suffocating, a punishment, he deserved worse.

“I didn’t know how to come back from it,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“You don’t come back from something like that."

He nodded, devastated. “I never stopped loving you, that never changed.”

You looked at him for a long time, it almost hurt worse than all the yelling in the world — because you weren’t angry anymore. You nodded once, slowly. “I know. But that doesn’t make it hurt less.”

Your eyes were still fixed on him, lips parted like you wanted to say something else but weren’t sure where to start.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said that night.”

That pulled his eyes back to yours.

You nodded to yourself, needing to work up to it.

“I was angry. I was—I was tired.” You sat back, and pulled your knees tighter into your chest. “From watching you ruin yourself over and over again for someone who didn’t give a single fuck. You were breaking your own heart every day, and I couldn’t do anything but watch.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched you like he was trying to breathe you in all over again.

“I knew he was your dad, what that meant. But watching you keep chasing something you were never gonna get from him—his love, his pride, a real apology—it made me so fucking angry, it was killing you and I couldn’t save you from it. Every time I tried, we fought, when I tried to be patient, you snapped. Even when the good moments were good, they started to feel like pit stops before the next fight."

You bit your lip, eyes glossy.

“So yeah, I said shit I shouldn’t have said. I threw your grief back in your face, it wasn’t right. It was fucked up. And I hate that I did it, because I do get it—I do know what that kind of loss feels like and I still made it about me in the moment. That’s not fair, you didn’t deserve that, especially not from me. I'm sorry."

You weren’t done.

“But you’re not the only one hurting” you continued, “You weren’t the only one grieving. I lost you, little by little, every time you pushed me out and let Ward pull you in. It felt like I was loving someone who didn’t want to be loved anymore and I broke, too.”

Rafe blinked fast, chest rising with shallow breaths while you were still picking at your sleeve, eyes down.

“And you were right, back then. When we were younger, you were always the one to fix it. Every time we’d break up, even if it was just for a week or two, you came crawling back. Even when I was the one who started the fight, even if I flirted with someone else afterward to piss you off.” Your voice wobbled, but you didn’t stop. “You were always the one who showed up.”

His head dropped for a second, eyes squeezed shut.

“I told myself that made me better than you somehow,” you murmured. “I had the upper hand because I could make you come back, but that was just me being a bitch, you weren’t the only one who needed to grow up. You weren’t coming back and I didn’t want you to.”

That was the part no one ever understood.

Not the Cut High Society who asked what kind of psycho gave up a Cameron. Or your old friends from college who wondered why you weren’t mourning louder. None of them got it, you didn’t stop loving Rafe, you’d just spent so long dragging his broken pieces out of the fire that eventually, you forgot you were burning too.

You both looked at each other, older than you used to be, still cracked in all the same places, bleeding a little. “I had to be better on my own and I have been.”

You didn’t say it with pride, but you had learned how to exist without him, even when it broke you. Rafe’s eyes flicked to your stomach.

You rubbed your hand over it, “I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t keeping it.”

You weren’t keeping it.

He couldn’t blame you, not when he’d made it feel that way. His gaze dropped to your hand resting gently over the swell that wasn’t there yet, still small, but he saw it now. He wasn’t supposed to know. that’s what killed him most still, you hadn’t even told him because he’d already proven he wasn’t worth telling.

“You weren’t gonna keep it,” he repeated, like saying it might help it sink in.

You gazed up at him again, eyes wet, but no tears spilling. “No.”

“Because of me?”

You didn’t need to answer. He already knew.

His heart was splitting open, right there on the floor between you both, and he still couldn’t move or close the gap. Couldn’t hold you the way he wanted to because you’d already had to learn how to live without him.

“It wasn’t fair,” you tried not to twist the knife even as you twisted it. “To bring a baby into that… into what we were.”

Rafe nodded once, a jagged little motion because it hurt to agree, so fucking bad. You weren’t wrong, but that didn’t make it easier.

“I would’ve been better,” he sounded completely desperate now, his voice breaking. “If I’d known, if I’d—fuck, if you’d just told me, I swear to God, I would’ve been—”

“You don’t get to promise that now,” you said, but there was no venom in it, only resignation. “That’s why I was so upset when Topper found out, called the clinic.”

“Have you talked to Topper?” Rafe asked, he already knew the answer but needed to hear it from you.

You shook your head. “Not yet. I will.”

He nodded once, “He meant well.”

“I know,” you said quietly. “He’s not a bad person. Just… socially dumb.”

That almost made Rafe huff out a laugh, but it didn’t quite land.

“I think he was trying to protect you.”

“And I didn’t need protecting,” you snapped, “I needed someone who wasn’t gonna treat me like a bomb about to go off.”

That shut him up, because it was true. You’d needed stability, and all they ever gave you was a headache. He knew better than to push you when it came to family matters, so he changed the subject again.

“You didn’t go through with the abortion."

“I was past the legal limit in North Carolina. The place he called was in New Mexico.”

“New Mexico?”

“I had to fly there.”

“But you didn’t.”

“There were… complications.” You didn’t elaborate, your voice was already trembling, “They said it might mean I can’t… that I might not be able to…It wasn’t my choice anymore.”

Your voice died, you didn’t say it, but Rafe heard it.

He felt like he’d been shot.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice pitched up, breath hitching, "Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”

“Because you weren’t mine anymore, Rafe.”

He blinked, and it hit him all at once. The beach clean-up, you fainted, he manhandled you into the car, yelled at you in the parking lot. Told you to stop being dramatic. Dragged you to the hospital because he thought you were being reckless.

He forced you there when you were already in pain.

“I didn’t know I was sick then. I thought I was just tired, it wasn’t until the bloodwork came back that they realized something was wrong. Dr. Harris said it was severe anemia, that if I had gone through with it… I might not have made it through the bleeding.”

Rafe’s breath left his lungs like he’d been punched. “Jesus.”

Your lip trembled even though you were trying so hard to stay composed. “They said even keeping the baby might… it might not save me either. Giving birth could be just as dangerous. And the baby might not make it.”

Rafe wanted to crawl away.

“And you’ve been going through this alone?”

“I’ve had Sarah. She’s the only one that knows.”

His eyes flicked to the side like maybe if he didn’t look at you, it would hurt less to absorb all of it, the guilt drowning him.

“She should’ve told me,” he muttered, but even that felt weak, it wasn’t Sarah’s burden to carry.

“I told her not to,” you said softly. “I begged her.”

That part gutted him all over again, you were in pain—but you didn’t trust him with it, you’d believed so deeply that he wouldn’t show up, that you chose to suffer in silence.

“I don’t know how I let it get this bad,” he whispered.

“I do,” you said, without accusation. “You stopped seeing me. I was standing in front of you, hurting, and you were too busy trying to be someone else’s son.”

Rafe pressed a hand to his face, red-rimmed eyes that happened when he was trying not to cry. “I see you now.”

A weak apology wrapped in a confession he should’ve made months ago. It was a small thing, such a simple sentence, but it cracked something in you, too.

You swallowed hard, “It doesn’t change everything.”

“I know.”

You both sat there in that painful stillness. So much unsaid even after everything, the past had finally caught up to both of you and didn’t know where to go from here.

“Were you scared?”

“Terrified.” You didn’t let him look away. “I was scared every second. Of what was happening, of what it meant, of what I was gonna do. And I was more scared of telling you than I was of bleeding out.”

He winced but you didn’t stop.

“If I told you, and you didn’t show up, it’d break me in a way I wouldn’t come back from. And if you did show up just to make it about you, to throw it back in my face like you did everything else that scared you—” You shook your head, blinking hard. “I couldn’t survive that version of you.”

“I wouldn’t have—” he started, then stopped. “I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

He rubbed both hands over his face, then through his hair like he was trying to physically pull the memory of who he’d been out of his skin.

“I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

It was the first time in a long time you felt like you weren’t bleeding out alone.

You watched him, and for the first time in months, he didn’t look like the boy who broke your heart. He was a man trying to find a way to put it back together—piece by piece, even if it was too late.

You took a shaky breath, “I don’t want to get back together.”

Rafe didn’t flinch outwardly, but inside, there was a bomb. It was fair, and he knew that, he expected it. The words ricocheted in his head, over and over. It made sense. Fuck, it made perfect sense. He’d been a ghost of himself, lost in Ward’s shadow, drowning in every toxic version of what he thought strength was supposed to be. He’d made you feel alone when you were most vulnerable, hadn’t seen you when you were falling apart.

“I didn’t say all this so you’d take me back. I just…” He exhaled shakily, head in his hands. “I need you to know I’m sorry. And that I—I’m still here. I can’t change how bad I fucked up, but I can show up now. However, you’ll let me.”

He observed you again, eyes rimmed with guilt and love that had aged in the dark, misshapen but still there.

“I’ll drive you to the appointments. Sit in the parking lot if you don’t want me in the room, do the night runs for ginger ale or whatever the fuck else you need. You don’t owe me anything back.”

He wasn’t offering to fix it so he could be your boyfriend again, he was offering because he could finally see past himself.

“I don’t want you to go through any more of this alone.”

He was a boy you'd loved so hard you forgot how to live without him once. And now here he was, offering to stand beside you, to hold space, to carry what you couldn’t anymore.

“You say that now, but you have no idea how bad this could get. I might not make it,” you reminded him. “There’s a real chance this ends with me gone, and if it doesn’t, it could still mean I’m sick."

You weren’t trying to be cruel, he understood that, you were being honest.

“I know it’s serious, but—”

“No,” you cut in, “You don’t know. This doesn’t end with you waiting outside the delivery room and me holding the baby with a tear-streaked smile.” Your voice failed you. “This could end with a funeral, mine, the baby’s, or both. And if that doesn’t happen, if I survive, it still might not feel like a win. I might never stop resenting that I didn’t get to choose.”

He hadn’t just failed you, he’d failed everything he ever said he’d protect. He could taste the bitterness in his mouth, that acrid sting of regret, it made his bones ache. Of course you had a right to be angry.

Rafe’s fingers twitched in his lap, itching to reach out. To touch your knee, your hand, your shoulder, anything, but he didn’t dare.

“They took that from me, my body did,” you admitted, “I don’t know who I’ll be when this is over. I don’t know what will be left of me, if I’ll still be someone who can look at you without seeing every moment I didn’t get to make for myself.”

He didn’t know who he’d be either. What if you died? He couldn’t unsee it now—your body going limp, blood-soaking sheets, hospital lights, helpless. What if you lived and he lost you anyway? Could he watch you walk away—alive, whole—but still broken in all the places he helped crack? He loved you so fucking much it made him hate himself.

And that love—it didn’t ask for pretty endings or promise healing, it watched you, knowing the most honest thing he could do was not fix it, but feel it with you.

“We can be friends, maybe.”

Friends.

It wasn’t a bad word, but for him, it wasn’t neutral when it came to you. He’d tasted your breath and held your dreams and mapped the small places only lovers know, he’d once believed you were it for him.

But that’s what you needed and that’s what you could give, this time—this fucking time—he wasn’t going to take what wasn’t his.

“I’ll be your friend.”

The words nearly choked him. It was how it started, wasn’t it? All those years ago—mud-streaked knees and popsicles melting down your wrists, sunburns and scraped palms, long summer days, nights spent hiding from the storm under porch roofs, hearts still too young to know what they'd grow into.

He stared at you, the girl he’d known since she wore glitter nail polish and refused to eat the crust on her sandwiches. The woman you were now, trembling and brave and a thousand kinds of soft steel.

“I’ll be whatever you need.”

So what if he only ever got to be the one who drove you to your appointments and waited in parking lots and left ginger ale on your porch when you were too sick to eat? That was love too. Rafe let out a breath like he’d been holding it since he was seventeen.

He could do that, he would do that. It wasn’t closure, it was a better version of grace from two people who’d seen the worst of each other.

“Sarah told me you’re in therapy.”

Rafe blinked, like you’d spoken in a language he hadn’t heard in years, the conversation rerouted so quickly it gave him whiplash.

“…How does she know I’m in therapy?”

You gave a half-hearted shrug, “Wheezie.”

A dry chuckle escaped him—one of those stunned, of course kind of laughs. He shook his head slowly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Should’ve known,” he muttered, more to himself than to you. “Girl has ears like a bat. Probably listened through the vents.”

That tugged a smile out of you.

“It’s not…a big deal,” he added, “I mean, I guess it is, but it doesn’t feel like it yet. It’s just me sittin' there trying not to lie to someone who’s already read through all my bullshit before I’ve even said it.”

“It is a big deal, Rafe.”

He peered down at his hands, they were shaking. He tucked them under his legs. “I only started recently. Didn’t think I’d make it past the first session, almost didn’t go in.”

“But you did.”

“I kept hearing your voice—old stuff. Before I started proving you wrong.”

It stung because you remembered those days too, when you believed in Rafe so fiercely it made you blind.

“I wanted to be that guy again,” He confessed, and the guilt in his voice was so sharp it could’ve cut glass. “Not for you. Well—yeah, okay, maybe a little for you. But mostly for me. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror anymore.”

You reached over then—hesitating for only a second—and placed your hand over his.

His breath hitched, the tears coming suddenly, stinging the backs of his eyes before he could shut them down. He stared down at your hand resting on his, a goddamn miracle he didn’t deserve.

Jesus Christ, he thought, I forgot what this felt like. It was pathetic, really. He’d gone so long without this kind of softness form you, he didn’t know how to take it. You were still offering him pieces of something when you had every right to keep it to yourself.

Rafe was so touch-starved for you, from how you used to bump into him in the hallway, or grab his wrist mid-argument to make your point, or how your leg would press up against his under the table and you didn’t move away. He missed all of it.

He turned his hand slowly, almost scared you’d pull away. When you didn’t, he slid his fingers through yours like muscle memory.

“I’m glad you went.”

He sniffed hard, wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, “Yeah, turns out I really am fucked in the head.”

“Don’t say that. I’m serious,” you said, squeezing his hand once more, then pulling away before it became too much. “You’re not fucked in the head. You’re hurting, that’s not the same thing.”

Rafe almost whimpered. He swallowed it down fast—the sound sat heavy in his chest. Your hand left his like it had never been there, and he ached in the space it used to be. His fingers twitched, they hadn’t gotten the message you were gone.

He wanted to grab your wrist and put your hand back.

He didn’t. He sat there, palms burning with the echo of your touch, trying not to look as desperate as he felt. Get a grip, he told himself. He wondered if you felt it—how much it had cost him not to lean in when you pulled away.

His throat burned. “Feels the same. Still got a million things wrong with me, still get mad too fast, still got shit I haven’t unpacked.”

“I know. But it’s not the same, is it?”

Rafe gave a small nod, that wry little smile faltering as fast as it had come, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Nah, it’s not.”

He knew you two were broken people, bruised by what they’d done and what they’d lost, sitting in the ashes of something that might’ve once been beautiful, trying to decide if they could still survive what was left.

Rafe wanted to try, more than anything.

It was the closest thing to forgiveness you could offer and it would have to be enough. Healing wasn’t going to come as an apology or a promise. It was going to be long, ugly, forged in therapy sessions where he had to say things out loud that he’d spent years trying to ignore beneath anger and loyalty and all the wrong kinds of pride.

“Why tonight?” He gripped his own thigh like if he let go, he’d lose the nerve. His voice scratchy, “Why’d you answer my text tonight of all nights?”

You spine straightened like it was a question you hadn’t wanted to ask yourself, either.

“Was it ‘cause you felt bad for me? A-after the gala?”

“Rafe—”

He exhaled, eyes wet again. “W-Was it pity?”

“I missed you.”

You missed him.

It was enough for the part of him that still woke up reaching for a body that hadn’t shared his bed in months, that still kept your contact saved with a heart next to it, even after you’d blocked him.

He recognized that tilt of your chin when you were holding in too much. He used to kiss that jaw. Bite it, even, when you were play-fighting on sun-drenched bedsheets. Now all he could do was watch.

Rafe’s shoulders hunched, chewing on the inside of his cheek, “I missed you more.”

“I’m scared. That even this—whatever this is—"

“I’m scared too,” he cut you off, with that same wreckage in his voice.

It nearly destroyed him, the way you were looking at him—memorizing him. You used to kiss like that. It felt almost wrong, like opening a box you’d locked for good.

It wasn’t reunion or redemption or the kind of love that got wrapped in ribbons and returned in the third act. It was grief, stretched between two people who used to finish each other’s sentences and now could hardly finish a conversation without bleeding all over it.

Then, almost like it wasn’t real, you asked, “Do you ever wish we’d never met?”

Rafe looked at you like you’d just shot him with a rifle, his breath hitched, his lips parted— “No. Fuck, no.”

You nodded slowly, maybe you did, he wouldn’t blame you if you had wished that, no matter how good it started, it left bruises when it ended.

“I think about that sometimes. Not because I didn’t love you. But because I did and lost myself in you. And then I lost my body and the baby. And now… I don’t know who I am without all that loss.”

He was shaking his head. “You didn’t lose the baby.”

“Not yet.”

Rafe had no words that wouldn’t sound like hope, and that felt cruel now. You’ll be okay, or the baby’s strong, or we’ll get through this, those were promises made in ignorance. And his therapist had told him just three days ago, “ignorance isn’t innocence. It’s just fear in nicer clothes”, and while he hadn’t understood it at the time, he understood it now.

“Do you h-hate me?”

“No.” It hurt more than a yes would’ve. “I don’t hate you, Rafe. I just… don’t trust you.”

“Do you think—” he started, stopped, tried again. “Do you think I could ever be the kind of person you’d let in again?”

You looked at him, long and sad.

“I think you could be, I just don’t know if I’ll be around to see it.”

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