The beach was loud.

Summer break meant the usual: kooks slinging footballs, beer cans cracked open before noon, Topper yelling at Kelce for cheating, Kelce yelling back just to stir shit, and Rafe—sun-kissed, shirtless, cocky as ever—half-laughing, half-heckling, because he lived to be in the middle of it all.

You were stretched out on a beach towel a few meters away, slick with sunscreen and all sunkissed in a bikini Rafe had made you try on in the store last week. (“Just wanna see you in it, baby,” he’d said, half-whining, half-commanding, dragging his fingers along your spine as you stood in front of the dressing room mirror. “That’s all.”)

Now, Sarah and a few of the other girls surrounded you, chatting shit and giggling about some boat party this weekend, but your eyes were locked on him. Always him. There was something about the way Rafe threw that ball—arms flexing, jaw set just so, those low, smug grins he’d toss when he caught someone looking. The sun turned his hair lighter, like gold. He looked like a boy who’d never been told no.

He looked like yours.

"Rafe," you called out, lazy and syrup-slow, chin tucked into your arms as you laid on your stomach, hips arched just slightly—knowing exactly what you were doing.

He turned to you like it was instinct. Like your voice was the only thing he could hear over the crash of the waves and the boys yelling and the rest of the damn world.

“Yeah, baby?”

There was that grin again. Crooked. Boyish. Downright feral when he caught the way his bikini top rode up on your back. He squinted against the sun and took a few steps toward you without even thinking—football completely forgotten, Topper groaning behind him like “Bro, what the fuck—” but Rafe didn’t care.

He was watching you with that look that said: You gonna ask me for something? Go on, I’ll do it.

Because that was the thing. He knew you didn’t need him. You were perfectly capable of rubbing in your own sunscreen or getting your own drink or stringing up your own towel—and he liked that. Respected it.

But God, something in his stupid little caveman brain twitched when you called for him like that. When you made him feel important. Needed. Yours. It did something nasty to him.

You pouted, lips glossy from chapstick. “Can you—”

He was already moving. Already crouching down beside you, one hand flat on the sand as he hovered close—too close—fingers dragging up the back of your thigh, slow and absent, as if he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

Rafe was possessive like that. Not loud about it, not clingy, just… there. A presence. A heat behind your shoulder, a hand curling around your ankle, a quiet hum of mine in the way he touched you.

“You hot, babe?” he muttered, voice low, eyes trailing down the slope of your back like a wolf about to pray. “Want me to grab you somethin’? Water? Another towel? Ice cube down your back?” He smiled at the last one, already reaching for the cooler like he knew you’d say yes.

Across the beach, some kook you didn’t know lingered a second too long—eyes flicking toward the curve of your ass, bikini fabric barely-there—and Rafe went still. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. His stare alone was enough to send the guy looking away fast, all flustered and apologetic.

Then, as if nothing happened, Rafe leaned down again, lips brushing the shell of your ear.

“You know you look real fuckin’ good in that, right?” he murmured, hand slipping just under the knot of your bikini bottoms, thumb pressing into the dip of your lower back. “I bought it for a reason.”

You didn’t even have time to answer before he added, quieter, “Might need to take you home before the sun goes down. Don’t like the way these guys are lookin’.”

But he pulled away all nonchalant, scratching the back of his neck and standing again like he wasn’t seconds away from spiraling. Like his mind wasn’t already running laps around the idea of someone else seeing too much of you. Touching you. Thinking they could have you.

As if.