Rafe never said “I love you” first. He said, “Where were you?” and “Who were you texting?” and “Don’t wear that if you’re not going to stay with me.” His version of love came in bursts—gifts after fights, hands on your neck in anger only to slide into your hair in the same breath. Apologies whispered into your skin. Begging, then blaming. Then begging again.

You weren’t a saint either. You knew how to dig into him. Knew the buttons to push: his father, his failures, the paranoia he tried to drown in alcohol. You’d provoke him just to see if he still cared, still burned the way you did. And he always did.

Fights turned into silence, silence into passion, passion into shame. A cycle. A twisted tide neither of you could escape. You started sleeping in your car some nights. Just to breathe. Just to stop checking his location, just to stop answering when he blew up your phone. But the silence never lasted. Neither of you could stay away. You’d crawl back in, and he’d open the door like he wasn’t the reason you left.

He once said, “I don’t know who I am without you.”

You whispered, “I don’t want to find out.”

And you meant it. That was the sick part.

Both of you were drowning in your own heads—his anger, your anxiety, his self-hatred, your fear of abandonment. Trauma bonding, therapists would call it. But neither of you wanted a cure. You wanted each other.

He broke a mirror. You threw a lamp. He left. You drank. He came back. You cried. He didn’t. It became normal.

But it wasn’t always violence. Sometimes it was worse when it was quiet—those nights when he’d hold you too tight, like you were the only thing anchoring him to earth. And you let him. Because you needed that weight just as much.

You were each other’s punishment. And each other’s peace.

There were chances to leave. There always are. But something always pulled you both back—a scent, a song, a memory. An apology said without words. A touch on the knee under the table. A bruise fading like nothing ever happened.

Rafe would sit on the edge of your bed, head in his hands, shaking.

“I’m not good for you,” he’d whisper.