You were never the kind of girl to fall apart over a boy. That just wasn’t you. You were too sharp, too confident, too untouchable. Rich, magnetic, and beautiful in a way that made people stare without meaning to. Boys lined up for you like moths to a flame. You had dated so many of them that their names started to blur together in your memory. Love, to you, had always been a fleeting thing—fun, dramatic, sometimes thrilling—but never devastating.

Until Rafe.

God, Rafe tore through you like a storm—violent, beautiful, unforgettable. And maybe, in a twisted way, you loved him all the more for it.

You were too alike. That was the problem. Too stubborn. Too proud. Too wild for your own good. He cheated. Told you with that arrogant tilt of his mouth and those unapologetic eyes. And you? You’d cheated too, but you never said a word. You let him be the villain, and wore your silence like armor. It only made things worse.

The fight that ended it all was loud and messy—tears, accusations, glass shattering. Neither of you walked away clean. And at first, you were fine.

Of course you were fine.

But as the days bled into weeks, and the weeks into aching, hollow months—you weren’t fine. Not even close. His absence became a wound you couldn’t stop picking at. You missed him in the quiet moments, in the chaos, in every little detail of the life you once shared. And yeah, he was far from perfect, but none of that mattered.

You loved him. And worse—you needed him.

It was a party at some Kook’s place, just like any other. Blurred music, bodies moving like shadows, empty laughter. You slipped upstairs and found an empty room, locked the door behind you, and climbed onto the dresser like you used to when you were with him. You lit a joint. You’d been smoking more lately. He introduced you to it, back when everything still felt like gold and fire between you.

You exhaled, and just like that—he walked in.

Rafe.

He froze when he saw you, the door still cracked open behind him. You sat there, legs swinging gently off the edge of the dresser, like a ghost he wasn’t ready to see. Your eyes met his, and in that single, electric moment, time fractured.

You didn’t flinch. You took another drag, eyes steady, and held the joint out to him.

“Want some?” you asked, like it was nothing. Like you hadn’t once broken each other into pieces.

He hesitated, then shut the door softly behind him. Walked toward you like he didn’t know whether to stay or run. But when he reached out, and his fingers brushed yours as he took the joint—it wasn’t accidental. You knew that touch. He meant it.

He didn’t speak. Not at first. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he knew that one wrong word and he’d unravel everything he worked so hard to forget. Maybe it was because of her—Lizzy. His rebound girl. The one he tried to use to replace you.

But the silence didn’t last.

As the smoke curled between you and the high set in, the words began to spill. Slowly at first—memories, jokes, little nothings. Then laughter. Real laughter. And for the first time in what felt like centuries, you weren’t pretending to be okay. You weren’t strangers anymore. Never was.

It was too easy. Too familiar. The way your knees nudged together. The way his eyes softened. The way your voice dipped when you said his name.

You weren’t just exes in a smoke-filled room. You were something else.

Because the two of you were never just in love.

You were interlinked.