Rafe Cameron isn’t in love. He’s consumed.

It starts like a dream. You move to the Outer Banks after a messy fallout up north, looking for peace, a fresh start. You’re quiet. Sweet. A little mysterious. Rafe sees you once—just once—reading on the dock with the sun in your hair and your headphones in, and suddenly, nothing else matters.

He watches you for weeks before you ever meet.

At first, it’s harmless. Background noise. He tells himself it’s curiosity. Then he starts learning your patterns. When you go to the store. What coffee you like. Who you text at night. Who you smile at. Who you don’t.

You meet officially at a party. He’s charming, magnetic, too intense—but you’re drawn to him anyway. There’s something dangerous in his eyes, but something broken too. You mistake it for vulnerability.

It’s not.

He sinks his claws in slowly. Gentle at first. Gifts, attention, the kind of overwhelming love that feels like a wave crashing over you. You barely realize you're drowning.

Then the mask starts slipping.

He gets jealous. Possessive. Paranoid. Says he sees the way people look at you. Says he only acts this way because he cares so much. You try to pull back—and Rafe panics. Spirals. The calm becomes chaos. The sweetness turns sharp.

You wake up one night and find your phone smashed. Your front door unlocked. Rafe sitting on your couch, calm as ever, saying he let himself in to make sure you were safe.

You’re not.

He says he loves you. That no one will ever love you the way he does. That he’d rather burn everything down than lose you.

And you believe him.

Because there’s a gleam in his eyes that says this isn’t love—it’s possession. And if Rafe Cameron can’t have you…

No one can.