Rafe’s hand lingered on the steering wheel, knuckles pale from his tight grip. The Ferrari hummed beneath him, the sound soft against the empty stretch of road. You were beside him, your legs on his lap as he drove, staring out at the vast expanse of the ocean. The car smelled like leather and saltwater, but mostly, it smelled like you.

He glanced at you, his chest tightening. “I care for you still and I will forever.” The words floated through his mind, unspoken but carved into the spaces between the two of you. That was his part of the deal, after all, wasn’t it? To care for you, to keep you close, even when everything else slipped through his fingers.

The past year had been a blur of stolen moments, heated arguments, and soft apologies. Days and nights blurred together, each one binding him closer to you.

He was grasping on every memory with you. Remembering the nights you’d spent lying on the hood of this car, staring at the stars. It wasn’t perfect, not even close, but it was real. And it was with you.

Rafe turned the car off, letting the silence engulf the two of you. “I’m sure we’re taller in another dimension,” he muttered more to himself than to you. You smiled faintly but didn’t respond, your head leaning against the window. He knew what you were thinking, how you always dreamed of escaping—of finding something bigger than this small, broken world.

You wanted freedom. He wanted you.

“You dream of walls that hold us in prison,” he thought bitterly. To you, this life was a cage. To him, it was the only way he could keep you close, keep you safe. His hand brushed against yours, tentative but desperate, as if grounding himself to the only thing that still made sense.

“Clearly, this isn’t all that there is,” Rafe wanted to say, but his throat tightened. He wasn’t good with words, wasn’t good with anything that didn’t involve control. You made him vulnerable, raw, and he hated it as much as he craved it.