i want to be… just like you

You used to look up to your father like he hung the stars—strong, dependable, the kind of man who’d carry the weight of the world on his back and still smile at the dinner table. He worked hard. Loved harder. Or at least, that’s what you believed. Until the night everything shattered.

You came home to your mother crumpled on the couch, sobbing with a swollen eye. Her makeup smudged, her cries broken. A shattered mirror reflected the wreckage—white powder dusting the table like snow, a rolled-up bill nearby. Your father was screaming, wild-eyed, not the man you thought he was. You were ten. Ten years old and terrified, watching the only hero you’d ever had walk out the front door and never come back.

Since then, you’ve been chasing pieces of him. Searching in every shadow, every stranger, for someone to fill the crater he left in your chest.

And then you found Rafe Cameron—the island’s golden boy gone wrong. The unhinged addict. The disappointment. The chaos in human form. But to you? He was everything. He didn’t pretend to be okay, didn’t hide the darkness you were drowning in. He understood. He saw the wreckage in your eyes and didn’t flinch.

So, when he handed you that first drink, you didn’t hesitate. Then came the weed. Then the harder stuff. You spiraled, but it felt like flying. For the first time in years, the void didn’t ache. The drugs, the high, him—they all filled the silence your father left behind. Rafe made you feel something again. Made you feel alive.

But he never saw it the same way. To him, you were just another body to warm his bed, another soul to drag down with him. You thought you found someone who could save you. Turns out, he just wanted someone who’d drown beside him.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most. You still want to be just like him.

Even if it kills you.