You never liked the cold. But with Rafe, you learned how to live in it—bare skin against stormy winds, breath fogging up glass, silence louder than words. He was winter without warning, all sharp edges and chapped lips, and you were the fool who walked barefoot into the blizzard.

He loved you like a secret, kept in the back of his throat. Never said it out loud. Never had to. It was in the way he touched you like he didn’t deserve to, in the way his voice cracked when he asked you to stay.

“You said you wanted warmth,” he murmured once, cigarette smoke curling between you, “so I gave you all I had. My hands. My heart. My goddamn hoodie.”

But it was never enough.

You saw it in the way his eyes flicked to the door when things got quiet. In the way he flinched when you asked him to tell the truth. Rafe Cameron was a thousand contradictions wrapped in leather and ghosts—wanting you, ruining you, needing you to put him back together just so he could break again.

Now, he stands in the rain like it’s penance. Soaking. Shivering. Still too proud to come inside.

“You always liked sweater weather,” he says, more to himself than you, “but I’m the reason you’re cold now.”

And you don’t say a word.

You just close the door.