The rain had been falling for hours. Not hard — just steady, soft, like the sky was grieving something no one dared to name.

Rafe sat in his truck outside your house, headlights off. The windshield fogged at the corners. His phone was in his lap, your contact open, thumb hovering over the call button like that might bring you back.

But you wouldn’t answer. Not anymore.

You were gone.

Not moved away. Not on a break. Not “taking time to figure things out.”

Gone.

And the silence you left behind was so loud it rattled in his chest like a storm he couldn’t shut the windows against.

He could still hear your voice in pieces.

“I’m trying, Rafe. I’m really trying.” “It’s like drowning in slow motion and no one sees it.” “Just hold on for me, okay? Promise me you’ll hold on.” He’d promised. He thought you had too.

The day they told him, he didn’t cry.

He drove. Past the Cut, past the north dock, out to the cliffs where the water hit the rocks in crashing bursts that matched the weight in his skull. He wanted to scream. He wanted to punch something. But all he did was sit there.

Staring at the ocean like it might answer.

The world felt too quiet without you in it.

You had been the one person who saw him. Not just the reckless Kook prince or the screwup in a white button-down with his father’s shadow stitched into his spine. You saw his fear. His desperation. You touched it, didn’t flinch.

And now you were gone, and no one knew how deep that emptiness cut except him.

He’d been angry at first. At you. At himself. At everyone who said they should have known.

But grief isn’t clean. It doesn’t move in stages. It folds and unravels and returns like a tide.

And some nights, like this one, all Rafe could do was sit in the dark and whisper your name to no one.

He finally stepped out of the truck and walked to the porch. The light was still on.

Your mom left it that way, like maybe you’d just gone out and would come back through the door again, shoes muddy, hair wet, a tired smile on your face.

But you wouldn’t.

Rafe sat on the porch swing and pulled out the note. The one you’d left him. It was wrinkled and stained at the edges, creased down the middle from being opened too many times.

“I’m sorry. Please don’t think this was about you. You were the one thing that felt real in all of this. But I can’t carry the weight anymore. I’m tired. I just need the pain to stop. Please — hold on. Even if I couldn’t.” He pressed the letter to his chest, eyes burning.

The rain poured down harder.

“Hold on,” he whispered, like maybe if he said it out loud enough, it would bring you back. Like maybe it could reach across whatever distance existed between the living and the not.

But it didn’t.

It just echoed against the empty night.

And Rafe sat there, soaked in rain and silence, holding on to the last piece of you he had left.