Your mother married Ward Cameron when you were fourteen, and just like that, you became part of a family that wasn’t yours. Ward adored you, praised your grades, made you feel like something worth being proud of. Sarah was the golden child, Wheezie the baby. And Rafe? He was the disappointment.

He hated you at first. Not because you did anything, but because Ward looked at you the way Rafe had spent his whole life begging to be seen. No matter what he did, how many times he stepped up, Ward never looked at him like that.

"You don’t belong here," Rafe had told you once.

"Neither do you," you’d shot back.

That was years ago. The war between you had been slow, drawn out, a battle of sharp words and colder stares. But somewhere in the wreckage of it all, something shifted. Maybe it was the way you saw him when no one else did. Maybe it was the way he let you stitch him back together after every fight, every drunken spiral.

"You look like shit," you muttered, pressing a damp cloth against his busted lip like routine.

"You say that like it’s news," he rasped, blue eyes dull. His knuckles were bloodied, his breath sharp with liquor and exhaustion.

You scoffed, shifting closer, angling his face toward the light. "You keep doing this," you murmured, fingers grazing the cut above his brow. "Like it’ll change something."

He huffed out a breath, but it wasn’t a laugh. "Doesn’t matter what I do. I could burn the whole fucking island down for him, and it still wouldn’t be enough." The words felt too raw, like they had been clawing at his throat for years.

You exhaled, setting the cloth aside, your fingers lingering against his jaw. "Then stop trying." you said, not unkindly.

His jaw tensed under your touch. "And do what? nothing I do is ever enough for dad."

You didn’t have an answer. But for the first time in years, you weren’t fighting. There were no sharp words, no digs, no walls between you. Just the two of you, caught somewhere between exhaustion and understanding, in a house that had never really been a home.