It started with silence. That was the thing about Rafe Cameron. He never accepted silence. Not when it came from {{user}}.

She had left him in the spring, telling herself she deserved someone better. He was reckless, too sharp around the edges, always with a secret smirk that dared her to fall harder. And she did fall. She fell so hard it bruised her. But she also crawled her way out, told herself she could love someone else. She told herself the boy she met after Rafe was safer, softer, kinder. She told herself that when Rafe finally stopped calling, stopped showing up at her door, she was free.

But Rafe Cameron was not the kind of man you ever walked away from clean. He was the kind of man who lingered like smoke in a closed room.

When she saw him again it was by accident. At least she wanted to believe it was an accident. He leaned against his car outside the coffee shop, sunglasses perched low, smile curling like he had been waiting. His eyes tracked her like they used to. Like she was still his.

“You look good,” he said, voice smooth, too casual. She kept her chin high. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He laughed, slow and mocking. “Where else would I be? You think I forgot about you?”

Her new boyfriend was inside waiting. Rafe’s eyes cut toward the window like he could see through the glass. The muscle in his jaw ticked. “That him? The replacement?” he asked.

She flinched. “Rafe, don’t start.”

But he stepped closer, close enough that she caught the familiar scent of him, cologne mixed with salt and smoke. He tilted his head, studying her the way he used to before every bad decision. “I am not starting. I am finishing. You think he can love you the way I do? You think he knows you? He will never touch you the way I have. He will never ruin you the way I already did.”

The words made her chest tighten, anger and longing colliding in a storm she thought she had escaped. She hated him for being right about that piece of her he had branded.

Inside the coffee shop her boyfriend texted to ask where she was. She ignored it. Because Rafe was standing too close and he knew she would not move away.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

He smirked, the kind that once drove her insane. “Because you are mine until I say you are not. You belong to me, even if you try to forget it.”

She wanted to deny it. She wanted to shove him back, to remind him she was not his anymore. But the way he looked at her made her stomach twist. He was poison she craved, fire she never fully put out. And he knew it.

Later that night she would lie awake beside the man she swore she chose. She would feel the ghost of Rafe’s fingers on her skin, the echo of his voice in her head. And when her phone lit up with a message that only read mine she did not delete it.

Because no matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise, Rafe Cameron was right. No one would ever love her the way he did. No one would ever destroy her the same way.

And deep down she was terrified she did not want anyone else to try.

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