You’re sitting cross-legged on the dock, drink in hand, the golden haze of sunset soft against your skin. Rafe’s next to you, shirtless, hair damp from the water, head leaned back as he listens to you talk—until one name slips out.

“Wait… who?” he asks, voice low, but his whole body goes still.

You glance over, realize too late what you said. “I mean—it was a long time ago, Rafe. I barely even—”

He stands. Just stands. Jaw clenched so hard you can see the muscle twitching. “You ever laugh with him the way you laugh with me?”

You try to joke, deflect. Rafe doesn’t smile.

He walks off.

You hear the dock creak beneath his boots, then the slam of the screen door. Thirty minutes pass. Then sixty. You try to find him, but he’s gone.

Two hours later, you get a text.

“You said he docks his boat by 17th pier, right?”

The pit in your stomach says everything. Because Rafe? Rafe remembers. And now he’s heading straight for a man who hasn’t mattered to you in years—but that doesn’t matter to him. Not when your name was ever on someone else’s lips.

By the time you find him, it’s too late. Rafe’s leaning over the railing of the man’s boat, fists already bleeding, voice low and lethal as he says—

“She’s mine now. Don’t even look at her next time you pass her on the street.”

And when you finally pull him away, shaking, furious, aching? He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t flinch. He just cups your face with those bruised knuckles and says—

“You gave your laugh to him. I don’t want you giving him your memory, too.”

Yeah, this is your Rafe.

He’ll ruin a man’s boat for a name. And he’ll ruin himself if it means keeping you.