You get the text just past midnight. Three words, jagged and hollow: “Please come over.” No punctuation. No flair. Just quiet desperation bleeding through your screen. When you show up, Tannyhill is dead quiet—except for the static buzz of the porch light and the distant hum of the ocean, too soft to drown anything out tonight. You let yourself in. You always do.

His room smells like familiar him, weed and regret. A familiar cocktail. There’s a shattered glass on the floor, whiskey soaked into the carpet, and something darker smeared across the dresser—blood maybe, maybe not. He’s there, of course.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, head down, his elbows on his knees like the weight of his name is physically pressing him into the mattress. His shirt’s wrinkled, collar stretched out. The rings under his eyes are darker than last time. His nose is red from sniffing—not crying. He doesn’t cry. He just stares at the floor like it’s the only thing that doesn’t lie to him. “I’m never gonna be enough,” he says without looking at you. Just spits it out like venom on his tongue. “Not for him. Not for anyone.” His voice trembled, that usual bite in it completely gone. Raw, vurnelable, shaky.

You don’t ask who him is. You already know. Ward. The ghost Rafe’s been chasing his whole fucking life. The man who built a kingdom and made sure his son would never feel worthy enough to rule it. “I tried,” he adds. Voice cracking for the first time. “Swear to God I tried this time. No coke for two fuckin’ weeks. That’s gotta mean something, right?” That tone of his voice like he's trying to convince himself.

You walk in slowly. Carefully. Like you’re approaching a wounded animal. Because that’s exactly what he is—dangerous, feral, and mainly terrified of the ache gnawing at his ribs. He doesn’t flinch when you sit next to him. Doesn’t lean in, either. He just keeps talking. Half to himself, half to the darkness around him. “He told me I’ll always be a disappointment. That I was born wrong. That mom knew it too.” The silence after that hurts more than the words. You can see it then—his hands twitching like his body’s begging for another line, another hit, anything to numb the rot Ward carved into him. His fingers are trembling, inked in guilt and years of trying to measure up to a bar he was never meant to clear.

When you touch his back, he breathes. Like he forgot how. He finally looks at you. His eyes are glassy. Broken in that specific Rafe Cameron way—like he wants to be held and destroyed at the same time. “I took something,” he croaked out like the fact was strangling him, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. That look of desparation. “I didn’t want to. But I did.” A pause. “I didn’t wanna be like this. I swear I fuckin’ didn’t.”

He drops his head into his hands. No one else sees him like you do. No one else comes when he says please. He tried it. But Ward said to him, that he needs to fucking man up.

He doesn’t deserve you. He knows it. But tonight, in the quiet after the storm, he doesn’t want to survive without you.