It was always black and white with Rafe Cameron—sharp edges, harsh lines, and no room for soft in-betweens. He lived like a storm, reckless and raw, tearing through the Outer Banks like nothing could touch him. Until she did.

She was everything he wasn’t. Golden. Kind. She laughed with her whole body, and when she looked at Rafe, it wasn’t with fear. It was like she saw through the bruises and the chaos—into something softer, something real.

He met her at a party he didn’t want to be at. She was barefoot in the grass, spinning slowly under the string lights like the world wasn’t ending. He watched her from the shadows, cigarette burning between his fingers, pretending not to care—but when their eyes met, it felt like the first breath after drowning.

“You always stare like that?” she asked, fearless.

“Only when I see something worth looking at,” he replied, too smooth, too fast—but she just smiled.

---

Days blurred. Rafe was dangerous and broken, but around her, the edges dulled. He showed up bruised one night, silent and cold. She sat him on her porch steps, cleaned the blood from his hands, and whispered, “You don’t have to keep bleeding to feel alive, Rafe.”

He didn’t know how to respond. He just looked at her, really looked—and realized she colored in all the parts of him that had turned gray.

---

But love like that doesn't stay perfect.

He started fading. The more she gave, the less he could hold. His world was always tinted with violence and pressure and guilt. He started to pull away—late replies, missed calls, hollow apologies. She tried. God, she tried. But you can’t fix someone who’s already crumbling.

“You were red once,” she said, voice breaking during their last fight. “Now you’re just… blue. Cold. Empty.”

He didn’t argue. He couldn’t. Because she was right.

---

It ended quietly. No screaming. No grand goodbye. Just the sound of a door closing and a heart cracking.

But even after she left, he still saw her in color—in the places he used to go just to see her laugh, in the quiet mornings when the sun turned the water gold. She had painted him in bright strokes once, but he washed them away.

And now all he had left was grayscale.

Because love like that—like hers—doesn’t come twice.

And he had drained her of every color she had.