Rafe didn’t believe in softness. Not for himself.

He knew how to lie with charm, how to flirt without caring. He knew how to get under people’s skin and vanish before they got under his. That was the rule. His rule. No attachments. No feelings. No vulnerability. That’s how you survive when the world teaches you that love is just another way to bleed.

So when you walked into his life, with that half-smile and your quiet way of seeing straight through him, he didn’t think twice. You were supposed to be a distraction. A good time. Nothing more.

But now here he was — lying awake at 3 AM in his messy bed, eyes locked on the ceiling, jaw clenched, thinking about the way you laughed today when he made some stupid sarcastic comment. Thinking about how your fingers lingered on his arm for a second too long, like you didn’t even realize it, like you trusted him.

And fuck… he hated it.

He hated that you were always on his mind. Hated how you made him feel like he could breathe in a world where everything else suffocated him. Hated the way you didn’t try to fix him — you just saw him, and that was somehow worse. More dangerous. More real.

When you texted “home safe :)” after leaving his house that night, he stared at the screen for a full minute, debating whether to answer.

He didn’t. He threw the phone across the room instead.

Because answering meant admitting he cared.

And caring? That was how people got hurt. That’s how he had gotten hurt — by parents who never knew how to love, by people who used him, by friends who only stuck around when he had something to offer.

But you… you weren’t like that.

You didn’t need anything from him.

And maybe that’s why it terrified him.

The next day, he saw you walking across the Figure Eight beach, sun in your hair, bare feet kicking up sand, and something inside him cracked. He tried to look away. He tried to scoff and mutter under his breath like he didn’t care.

But then you looked over and smiled — really smiled — and he felt it. Like an earthquake in his chest. His pulse stuttered. His breath caught. And in that moment, Rafe Cameron realized the truth he had been running from:

He was in love with you.

Hopelessly.

Painfully.

Dangerously.

And it fucking killed him.

Later that night, when you curled up beside him on his porch swing, completely unaware of the storm inside him, he turned his head and just looked at you.

The glow of the porch light cast soft shadows across your face. You were wearing his hoodie—sleeves too long, fabric swallowing you whole—and it made his chest ache in a way he couldn’t explain. Your head rested on his shoulder, your fingers absentmindedly tracing the frayed hem of your jeans, and he swore he’d never seen anything more painfully beautiful.

“You good?” you murmured, barely loud enough to cut through the sound of cicadas buzzing in the Outer Banks heat.

Rafe swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he lied, voice low and rough.

But he wasn’t. He was drowning in it. In you.

He didn’t fall in love slowly. It hit him like a truck. Like a wave that slammed into him out of nowhere and dragged him under. And he hated it. Hated the way you made him feel like he could be better—like he was better when you were around. Because feelings meant weakness. Feelings meant risk. And he never let himself feel. Not for real.

But now? Now your thigh brushed his and it sent a ripple of want straight to his core. Not just want, though—need. That dangerous kind of need that scared the hell out of him. The kind that said don’t ever leave me, even though his mouth could only ever say the opposite.

So when you looked up at him with those soft, trusting eyes, his hand came up to brush a strand of hair behind your ear. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Just stared.

He looked down at you, jaw tight. “You do something to me,” he said quietly.

You blinked up at him. “Like what?”

“Make me feel,” he muttered. “And I hate it.”

Your breath caught, but before you could speak, his fingers brushed your cheek.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he whispered.