You had liked him for years. Not the shallow kind of like, not the crush you could brush off in a week, but the steady, patient kind. The kind that rooted itself inside you when you weren’t even paying attention, until suddenly it was there—unyielding, quiet, inevitable.

Back then, Rafe Cameron was fire. His skin was alive, sun-warmed, his laugh loud enough to draw every eye. He was reckless, sometimes cruel, but always burning. You liked the way he never backed down, the way his fists spoke before his words ever could.

But lately… he changed.

The fire dimmed.

Now when you saw him, it was like looking at a ghost of the boy you once knew. His skin had gone pale, drained of that golden life you remembered. His eyes—those sharp, cutting blue eyes—hung heavy, rimmed with shadows he never explained. When people muttered things under their breath, things they used to say just to see him snap, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t fight back. He let the words land. He let them stay.

And you hated it. Not because you missed the fights—God knows you never liked the blood—but because it wasn’t him. Not the Rafe you knew. Not the Rafe you… loved, though you never said it out loud.

One evening you caught him sitting alone by the docks, shoulders slouched, staring at the water like it held every answer he couldn’t reach. You almost didn’t go to him. He looked so far gone. But your feet moved anyway.

“Rafe,” you said softly.

He looked up. And in that moment, you realized the worst part wasn’t that he had faded. The worst part was that he knew it. He knew, and he didn’t know how to stop it.