Rafe had never felt at home in the storm. It was loud, chaotic, and unpredictable. But there was something about it tonight that felt oddly fitting. The wind howled against the beach house windows, the rain pounding against the roof like a drumbeat.

You weren’t supposed to be here. He knew it. You knew it. It was a mix of bad decisions and worse timing that had led them here, locked in a room with nothing but the weight of their shared silence hanging between them.

They’d been on and off for months. They weren’t supposed to work. He was a Cameron. She was a Pogue—one of the people his family had always looked down on. But in the moments when he wasn’t being suffocated by his father’s expectations, when he wasn’t spiraling into his own darkness, they found each other. And somehow, in the middle of all the mess, there were moments where he wanted nothing more than to hold her, protect her, and pretend that they could be something normal.

It wasn’t supposed to be anything permanent. And yet, here they were, tangled in more than just emotions.

When you told him you were late, his stomach dropped.

He hadn’t thought much about it when it was just a missed period, when it was just one more thing to push to the back of his mind. But tonight, sitting across from her as she looked at him with wide eyes, he understood what a late period meant.

A child. His baby. The idea was incomprehensible to him, as impossible as trying to fix everything he’d broken in his life. He had never seen himself as the kind of person who could be a father. He was too lost, too tangled in his own problems to even consider taking on something that massive.

But there you were, sitting in front of him, your fear and vulnerability laid bare. You weren’t asking him for anything. You weren’t demanding anything from him. You were simply trying to survive a storm that had come too fast for either of them to prepare for.

“We don’t have to keep it. We don’t have to do anything we’re not ready for,” he said, voice shaking.