Rafe Cameron would never be yours.

Not really.

You had been his best friend forever, the one person who never left, no matter how bad things got. You saw every part of him—the reckless anger, the late-night confessions, the boy he was before Ward twisted him into someone else. And no matter what, you stayed.

But it didn’t matter.

Because Rafe was too busy chasing her.

“She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts, She’s cheer captain, and I’m on the bleachers.”

She was the perfect Kook girl—golden hair, designer clothes, the kind of effortless beauty that fit into his world like she was made for it. She knew how to act, how to belong.

And you?

You were just the one who waited for his calls at 2 AM, who stitched up his busted knuckles after fights, who saw the broken pieces of him that no one else did.

But he never chose you.

Not in the way you wanted.

Because even when things between him and her were bad, even when he was pissed off, drunk, telling you she didn’t understand him—

He still went back. Every. Damn. Time.

And you told yourself it didn’t hurt.

But then you saw them together—his arm slung around her waist, his lips on hers—and it felt like a knife to the gut.

Maybe he’d never see it.

That the one person who truly knew him, who loved him as he was, not as who he tried to be—

Was standing right in front of him.