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atlabeth · 3 years ago

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okay so i normally leave my comments in the tags but this is so long (i have no idea how u can even write this much thank u so much for the gift) that i wanna be able to fit all my thoughts, and i dont think i can do that with the tag limit

“Year and a half,” he corrects, scoffing.

“Oh, are we skipping over the break-up this time?”

Rafe flicks your leg. “I know you love to tease me about that, but you’re the one who prefers our original anniversary, anyway.”

“Well yeah, because that makes our relationship a Cancer,” you explain.

this line sent me lmao. i love how much they tease each other about their relationship, like the "i think i'll just see you at the academy" and the breakup lol. it adds another level to how close they are and i love it

“I just… if we keep the original, then our anniversary is right around wedding season."

screaming. im screaming. do u hear me screaming. i lose it every time they talk about a wedding.

you're able to build tension so easily, like y/n's anxiety over going back to massachusetts its got me excited And nervous with only a few lines ! help

i feel so bad for rafe but him being so confused is so funny to me sdfjk. poor boy he didnt knowwwwww

“They’re gonna love you. C’mon, help me clear these plates. I want to get home before Dylan calls to cuss you the fuck out in approximately twenty minutes.”

PLEASE LMAO

aw omg rafe going to pick up dylan?? i love the relationship they have so much

"rafester" please

“Is she listening to her depression music?”

“What, Death Cab?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Rafe confirms.

“Oof,” Dylan groans. “Unsurprising.”

“Uh, excuse you. I’m an athlete, I gotta eat,” Dylan huffs. “And you love my sister, so if I take after her—Rafe, bro. Do you love me?”

i love dylan so much. underrated king with the younger sibling energy we need he has so many good lines just in this convo

“Top,” you groan. “What are the chances I convince you to wreck your car on the way to the ferry right now?”

sdfgjlkhasdl i feel her so hard

ahhhhhh more foreshadowing abt theo. im excited and nervous still

AWWW THATS SO CUTE. THE JEEP. NL RAFE MY KING

He grins sheepishly, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry, thought my daddy issues might lighten the mood.”

crying

AH WE FINALLY HAVE THE BACKSTORY idk if im ready

the comparison between theo and rafe is just written so well. like i dont know how to explain it but i love the way you did it, and it's the perfect way to introduce him. like he seems like a good guy but there's just that one thread, of him not wanting to be with her in public and not really being there for her and just him casually talking down on the things she likes. idk it's just very real

“You’ve been ghosting us all summer for that dude? Fuckin’ Young Republicans club president? Nice one.”

fuck him up kelce

You make eye contact with Rafe across the living room one more time as Theo tugs you outside with a hand in yours, and you ignore his text asking if you were alright later that night.

ooh ouch my heart

“I heard you,” he interrupts. “But, love. We’re not really… this wasn’t anything serious for us, right? At least not for me.”

ooh ouch my heart AGAIN

alright everybody # fuck theo this guy uh sucks

ughhhhhh rafe's whole thing of being worried for her and not liking theo but not knowing a lot but UGH thats all. lots of feelings. him cheering her up is so nice though king

“None of that,” he decides. “Now get back in the car. You look cute in my jacket, but I am not built for this weather.”

thank u for this line after making us all sad with theo and y/n's emotions

WILBURRRRRR YES the (new) light of my life

“I will be on my absolute worst behavior,” he says. “You know this. You’ve always known this.”

"But, I want you to know I’m absolutely going to. At least twice. I think three is overdoing it, no?”

bro im about the start the dylan fan club he is my man

oh god oh fuck it's theo time why am i actually nervous lmao

If Rafe was sixteen years old again and not currently in front of half of your family, including a baby, he might’ve lunged over the table and laid Theo out right then and there.

he should do it anyway tbh

rafe with kendra 🥺🥺🥺🥺 baby w a baby

wow okay we hate june too! everyone leave rafe and y/n alone pls and thank you

“Well, it’s just—you know. Last I heard, Y/N was still babysitting for a living,” she chuckles, gesturing toward Rafe again. “So, I mean. Development, finance, it’s lucrative. That makes sense to me, for someone of her caliber.” ( i actually gasped at this line lmao )

YES thank u rafe for standing up for her. my king. again

oh god. theo. why. stop being such an asshole

even though i hate him so much i love the way you write him. there are so many guys out there like him and ur doing him perfectly and i hate him with a burning passion

THANK U RAFE oh my gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood im so glad he finally got to throw hands lmao. violence isnt the answer except against theo

rafe trying to prove that he loved her first im in SHAMBLES 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 thank you for this fluff after the theo situation

You put it simply, anyway. “You’re my guy, Rafe. I choose you. Always.”

IM CRYING

okay again: hate ward, love william. only room for one w named dad in this town

“Shit—sorry, fuck. Sorry."

rafe ily

im screaming at that ending. im so happy that rafe's putting distance between him and his dad because #fuck ward but also bc he loves his girl!!!! and i love how much he loves her!!!! and i love them!!!!!!

god this was a masterpiece in every way. i have no idea how you do it every time. like this was fuckin 28k but i didnt feel bored at any part in it. there were so many extra characters in y/n's family but all of them felt so well built even though they were just side characters. this was amazing, im in love with nl rafe, and you continue to create perfection. thank you so much for this <3

new light: better man — rafe cameron

new light series masterlist

summary: rafe meets the first boy that ever broke your heart.

wc: 28k+

warnings: swearing, drinking, alcohol, misogyny, familial problems, a guy being kinda scary for a sec, minor violence, lazy massachusetts geography and complete disregard for winter weather in new england and an under-researched portrayal of the publishing industry

a/n: this is so long. so so so long. i almost feel bad about posting it all at once but here she is! i’ve been working on this for a solid month and i had a lot of fun taking on something this big for new light. you might catch up on this and this if you haven’t been keeping up with the blurbs or just want a refresher :) enjoyyy

“What’re you reading?”

Rafe’s soft questioning is complemented by a light hand on the top of your head, his ringed fingers sifting through the tresses of your hair gently as he comes to stand behind the arm of the couch you’ve rested your head upon in the early afternoon.

“Article about maritime laws. Really interesting—I should probably email it to Agnes,” you murmur, your finger holding the spot in the magazine splayed across your lap as you crane your neck to look back up at him.

Rafe smiles at you, still stroking your hair. “How are they?”

“Good,” you answer, nodding and turning back to the page you were on. You finger the flimsy page between your pointer and middle fingertips, trying to resume your reading momentarily before tilting your head back again. A smile stretches across your face that matches Rafe’s own as you think about your old job. “Beckham looks so tall from the pictures she’s sent. Barron’s gonna hate it, but I think Becks will outgrow him when they’re a bit older.”

“Y’know, I see that. Totally,” Rafe agrees. A kiss is pressed into your hair, and then Rafe is moving past you to sit down near where your feet lay, a book soon perched in his lap. One you passed off to him—you devoured it in less than a week, and Rafe had asked to read it, too. He was about half as fast as you, still stuck in the first few chapters, but committed nonetheless.

You read a bit further into your chosen article, taking breaks to sip your coffee that was freshly refilled by your boyfriend before he sat down. You enjoy the peace and quiet, and that sunlight that streams in through the glass door to your backyard, hitting the strip of skin on your shoulders that’s exposed by your low-cut sweater. Your socked toes dig into Rafe’s thigh but you both just keep on reading, until his left hand falls from his book to encircle your ankle instead, giving it a squeeze to signal that he wants your attention.

“Y/n Y/l/n, did you know that we’ve never been away together?” he suddenly asks.

You flip your magazine over immediately, bookmarked on your place. “Rafe, that’s ridiculous.”

He just keeps reading, even flipping a page. His right leg bounces up and down. “Think about it.”

“You used to come to California all the time. I visited you in Georgia, too,” you say, your foot pushing into his thigh.

“Okay, but like. Away,” he elaborates, book still open in his lap.

“Hold on, stop that,” you demand. “I hate that you can read and carry a conversation at the same time.”

“I can’t—I’m gonna have to re-read these pages later,” he admits, the book snapping shut in his hand. He sets it down on the arm of the couch, turning to face you slightly. “Keep going.”

“We did St. Barts for New Years’ last year.”

“With the guys and Blythe,” Rafe adds.

“Okay, well—we went to Aspen a little bit after that, remember?”

“Oh, right. How could I forget sharing a bed with you and Davis?” he jokes.

You level Rafe with a look at the mention of that. “That’s not fair, he was going through a really rough time after that guy—”

“Baby, I’m not—you know I hated that guy, too. Wren and I kicked him out of your birthday party, remember?” Rafe asks. “Just saying, Aspen wasn’t the most… romantic trip we’ve ever been on.”

“Well, what about Vegas? I know you don’t remember much of that one, but—”

“We went with my friends that time,” he explains. “But this is what I’m getting at—we’ve never gone somewhere where one of us didn’t live, just the two of us. Ever.”

That gives you pause, and you fully close your magazine now, the glossy cover page slapping loudly onto the coffee table in front of the couch where you toss it. You cross your arms over your chest, looking at Rafe in confusion. “That can’t be right. We’ve been dating for a year now.”

“Year and a half,” he corrects, scoffing.

“Oh, are we skipping over the break-up this time?”

Rafe flicks your leg. “I know you love to tease me about that, but you’re the one who prefers our original anniversary, anyway.”

“Well yeah, because that makes our relationship a Cancer,” you explain.

“Plus,” Rafe agrees, past the point of arguing with you about the merits of astrology. “Having an anniversary around Thanksgiving is too much for our social calendar.”

“That’s not even—hush, you,” you say, reaching over to push his shoulder while he grins. “I just… if we keep the original, then our anniversary is right around wedding season. Was that your plan all along?”

Rafe came into the living room with a purpose this morning, you know that much. But he’s derailed by you and your subtle insinuation, suddenly leaning over and pressing his red cheeks into your face, getting kisses in wherever he can. “Actually, the plan all along would’ve been asking you out years and years ago.”

You ignore the beat of your heart to match his tone and mess with him right back. “Imagine us dating in high school, just for a second.”

“Uh. I have, and I did, for years,” Rafe reminds you. He sifts a heavy hand back through your hair again, smoothing the same strands he’d mussed up just seconds ago.

“Okay, so, a year and a half,” you finally agree, giving him a peck before leaning back into your end of the couch. “And we’ve never gone anywhere together, just the two of us?”

“Nope.”

“Well… wait. We have to go somewhere, then,” you decide.

“Why do you think I brought this up, Y/l/n?” Rafe smiles, talking out of the side of his mouth as he pretends to turn back to his book again. His head hangs to the side momentarily, catching your waiting, adoring gaze. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Absolutely nothing. I’m all yours.”

“How do you feel about Massachusetts?”

You shouldn’t feel your body’s frame lock-up in anxiousness—Rafe knows about your family up there, of course he does—but you do anyway. You reach for your coffee cup on the table, taking a long sip. “That would be… fun.”

“Yeah? I was thinking we could go through Boston, then maybe drive out a ways—I was looking at some Airbnbs already, I can show you some right now,” Rafe says, hopping up to retrieve his laptop, his book finally forgotten for good. You stare into your coffee as you hear him poking around in the bedroom, your mind racing with the prospect of being that close to family you haven’t seen in years—family Rafe has never met in all of the time you’ve dated.

Your dad’s side of the family wasn’t one to come visit very often, and nobody in your immediate family was rather inclined to make the trip up. Except for your mom, whose passion to impress her in-laws had never faded, not since you could begin to notice it. Your mom’s family, on the other hand, lived in North Carolina, so you saw them all the time, and they were way more present in your life. Her parents came to your college graduation, they hosted dinners at their house almost every other week, and most importantly—they loved Rafe.

But your dad’s parents—your dad’s dad—that was an entirely different animal. And visiting their home state almost felt like entering the lion’s den, bringing your boyfriend along as unsuspecting prey.

“Topper actually had some recommendations, I guess he and Blythe kinda went all over when they were in school up there,” Rafe announces, coming back into the room with his laptop open. He’s typing rapidly with one hand, eyes reflecting the LED screen as he scans over the pages. Rafe looks really excited, and if you know him like you do, he’s probably had a Google Doc going for at least a few weeks.

You quickly shake your head to snap yourself out of those thoughts and set the coffee back down, making room for Rafe to come sit in between your legs.

Your boyfriend that you love worked very hard to do something nice for the two of you. And that’s the only way you had to look at it, for now. You can deal with the trickier emotions about your extended family and a certain family friend from your past later.

“Show them to me.”

—

Although you felt confident you were playing it cool about the entire thing, you forgot to clue Rafe in on one crucial detail: under no circumstances could your mother find out that the two of you were going to be anywhere within a one-hundred-mile radius of her in-laws.

To be fair, Rafe hadn’t really given you the opportunity to mention it. He knew your relationship with that side of the family was slightly strained—not unlike how he dealt with Ward—and nothing like that of your mom’s side. So you weren’t surprised that he didn’t ask if you wanted to visit them while you were up that way. Therefore, you never had the chance to tell him that he should keep a tight lid on it around your mother—who was the only person in your family that liked going up there.

And Rafe, the perfect boyfriend that he is, gave her the perfect opportunity to do just that when the two of you joined your parents for brunch the following morning.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to Massachusetts,” your mother accused from behind the kitchen island. You froze in the doorway, eyes shifting to where Rafe sat at the breakfast bar sipping his coffee with a small smile on his face. It quickly dropped once he saw your own expression—and your father’s from where he’d been following behind you from the garage, where he’d been asking your opinion on a Christmas gift for Rafe.

“Massachusetts?” your dad asks slowly.

“Yes, Will. Rafe says they’re going up this weekend. They’re staying only an hour from your parents,” your mom says, a glint forming in her eye.

“Oh no,” you mutter under your breath, head dropping back as you practically stalk over to take a seat beside Rafe at the counter.

“What?” he asks you, looking worried. But your mother steams ahead.

“Y/n Y/m/n, I can’t believe you didn’t tell us. You know Grandpa Ellis and Grandma DeeDee would love to see you. See all of us,” she amends, looking at your father again.

“Mom, we just planned it—like yesterday, and—”

“And I bet you weren’t even planning to see them, were you?”

“Shan, give her a break—”

You wince. “Well—”

“Nonsense. This is the perfect opportunity,” she says, cutting both you and your dad off with one word.

“Oh god, Shan,” your dad pleads.

“What?” Rafe repeats in a whisper, tugging on the bottom of your shirt like a child.

“This is perfect, Rafe can finally meet your side of the family—we can all take the jet. I’ll call Mel to see if they’ll want to fly out, too—I’m sure they will, we never make it up there anymore—god knows this is an occasion,” your mom says, already pacing around the kitchen, reaching for her cell phone. “The twins will have to come over, too. Dylan can come up from school for the weekend, can’t he?”

“Oh my god,” you groan, slipping down in your seat.

“Sit up straight, dear. The three of you can wrap up breakfast, I have phone calls to make. This will be such fun, Rafe—what a great idea!” she says, patting him on the shoulder on her way out. Rafe finds the composure to smile at that, but quickly returns to his perpetual confusion, gulping as he looks between you and your dad.

“Rafe…”

“You’ve done it now, kid,” your dad sighs, hands dug into his pocket as he stares at the same spot on the counter, his mind racing probably as fast as your own.

“I—what—I don’t… what did I do?” Rafe pleads. “Y/n/n, what?”

Your protective instinct kicks in, and you’re quickly soothing him, going on the defensive with your father.

“Dad, he didn’t know,” you say, your hand slipping to Rafe’s knee. He grabs your hand immediately, squeezing your fingers like a lifeline as he looks between the two of you, still hopelessly confused.

“I know,” your dad sighs, pouring a fresh cup of coffee. “You’re fine, Rafe. It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry—what just happened?”

“Well it looks like our trip just got hijacked, and now you get to meet Ellis and DeeDee, my dad’s parents,” you sigh, mentally preparing yourself for the weekend that now lies ahead. Your first weekend away with your boyfriend, gone in the blink of an eye—and replaced with something so unfavorable. “And probably all of the cousins, and—yeah.”

Rafe catches the awkward way your sentence cuts off but doesn’t question it in front of your father, even though you know he sees the two of you making eye contact again. You don’t know why that last part even came out of your mouth, there’s only a slim chance who you’re thinking of would actually be there anyway. But Theo wasn’t someone you’d ever be able to disassociate from your dad’s side of the family in your mind, it seems.

“I’m sorry—is that bad?” Rafe asks, still looking lost for words.

“Define bad,” your dad says.

“Dad,” you scold. “Don’t make him feel worse.”

“I am literally just so confused right now,” Rafe says. “Do we—is it… do we not like this side of the family?”

Your dad laughs at that, full and hearty. “Define like.”

You finally crack a smile despite your nerves, especially when you see how red Rafe’s cheeks are. Your dad laughs his way out of the kitchen, leaving you alone with Rafe and Wilbur, who’s been laying at your boyfriend’s feet this entire time, waiting for table scraps. “Hey, smooth guy.”

“Quick question: does your dad hate me now?” Rafe asks.

“No,” you chuckle, smiling sadly. “My dad hates his dad.”

You catch the way Rafe’s eyebrow furrows at that, wishing you could take the words back immediately—not taking a second to think it through from Rafe’s perspective. “Oh.”

“It’s not—he’s… it’s just complicated. Family, you know?” you explain, stroking his forearm where it rests on the counter. “It’s gonna be fine. It’ll be a lot, but fine.”

“I’m sorry it’s happening like this, sweetheart. But, I’d love to meet them all,” he says. “If they’re your family, it’s important to me. No matter what.”

You catch his earnest gaze, wishing you hadn’t kept this part of your past hidden for so long—because it was about to come surface whether you liked it or not.

“Well, good. Because it’s not like we have a choice now anyway,” you declare, standing up. Rafe tugs you into his personal space with his hands on the small of your back, his eyes still pleading for reassurance. You lean into him, practically eye level in this position, kissing his cheek. “They’re gonna love you. C’mon, help me clear these plates. I want to get home before Dylan calls to cuss you the fuck out in approximately twenty minutes.”

You smile as Rafe sputters again, before walking to the sink with hands full of plates and a sick feeling settling in your stomach.

—

A few nights later, you’d fallen asleep in the middle of your Y/l/n family tree crash course session with Rafe. He lets you snooze on his chest, it was late after all—but that doesn’t stop him from scrolling through the list of names he’d made on his phone, flipping between that and the picture you’d sent him from a few years back. (‘We like Aunt Mel—we love Aunt Mel. And EJ and Tiffany, her kids. We tolerate twin Uncles Charles and Zachary. They’re the ones fighting to take over for my grandpa when he passes. It was supposed to be my dad but he got out, and Aunt Mel was never given the chance. Uncle Zach is always dating someone my age—don’t call him Zach, he hates it. And Uncle Charlie’s kids from his first marriage, Michael, Dale, and Ingrid—the worst. Absolute worst, ask Dylan.) He keeps getting distracted as he zooms in and navigates around the photo, pausing every time he catches your smiling face among your family members, nestled between who he now knows are your Aunt Mel and your cousin Tiffany.

You told him that the picture is from high school—like he wouldn’t be able to recognize the girl he first fell in love with. If he stares for too long, before glancing down to where your head rests on his chest, one of his college shirts loose around your body—in the bed the two of you share, on the frame he built, wrapped up in the sheets you picked out, his head starts to spin.

The sound of your ringtone breaks Rafe’s reverie, his brow furrowing when he checks his watch to see how late it is. You stir just as he’s reaching over to answer it for you, shuffling around and accepting your phone from his hand. Your tired eyes widen and you roll over to turn on the light, holding the phone to your ear.

“Dyl? Y’okay?” you murmur into the receiver. Rafe’s hand falls to your side and you lay flat on your back again, your hand sliding over his own as an annoyed groan leaves your lips. “Seriously?”

“Everything okay?” Rafe whispers, his study session long forgotten as he watches you.

You nod at him, closing your eyes in resignation.

“Alright. Where are you?” Rafe watches you roll out of bed then, standing up and stretching your tired body. “Okay, don’t move. I can be there in fifteen—no, don’t be ungrateful. You know I hate driving on the island at night, Dylan. I’ll get there when I get there.”

You pad into the bathroom with a soft click of the door cutting off your next rebuttal (‘well, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten drunk on a Wednesday night—’) but Rafe doesn’t even wait to ask you, pulling on a hoodie and shoving a beanie over his pillow-messy hair before coming into the bathroom after you.

You’re off the phone now, your tired eyes barely open in the reflection of the mirror as you brush your teeth. Rafe’s not sure exactly why, but he knew you weren’t sleeping well these days.

“Hey, where’s he at?”

“What?” you ask, pink toothbrush hanging out of your mouth. Your eyes catch his new attire in the mirror, your shoulders sagging. “No, Rafe. You don’t have to go.”

“C’mon, go back to sleep. I’ve got him,” Rafe assures you. “Where is he?”

You turn around after spitting out your toothpaste in the sink and rinsing out your mouth, crossing your arms over your chest. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, baby. I wasn’t even sleeping yet,” he tells you, leaning in to kiss your forehead. “Want me to text him and ask?”

“No, his phone died. I’ll send you the pin he dropped for me—hopefully he doesn’t move.”

Rafe’s reassured in his choice to take over for you once he sees how far Dylan had ended up, at the strip of dive bars on the Cut that was over a fifteen-minute drive from your house—even further from your parents, where he’d have to drop Dylan off.

The boy in question is standing under a streetlight, thankfully unmoved by the time Rafe arrives, and he sees his face light up in surprise.

“Well if it isn’t the man himself,” Dylan slurs in greeting, unceremoniously throwing open the door of Rafe’s truck. “Sup, Rafester?”

“Get in the truck, bud,” Rafe says, resisting an eye roll at the nickname your brother had been calling him for over a year now. “C’mon, it’s late. Wanna get home to your sister.”

“I didn’t need to hear that.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shh,” Dylan shushes, thankfully getting in the car and buckling himself in immediately. “Y’know what, I’m glad she sent you. Got a bone to pick with you, my friend.”

“You picked it pretty well already. So did your dad and your sister,” Rafe sighs, sick of hearing it at this point.

“How’s Y/n/n?”

“Fine?” Rafe says immediately, before pausing to think about it. “Well…”

“Is she listening to her depression music?”

“What, Death Cab?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Rafe confirms.

“Oof,” Dylan groans. “Unsurprising.”

Rafe clenches his jaw involuntarily, trying to focus on the drive back to Figure 8. But he just can’t, and part of him wonders if your younger brother’s lessened filter (not that he ever had one to begin with) was a prime opportunity. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Why does she get like this? What’s so bad about this half of the family?”

“Wow,” Dylan breathes, sliding down into his seat. “Heavy hitter. Just—okay. You know how Y/n gets really nervous every time she has to see your dad?”

Rafe clears his throat, pointedly ignoring the way that makes him feel. “Yeah.”

“Probably shouldn’t have said that. Anyway,” Dylan continues. “That’s like my mom and my dad’s family. And my dad hates it—he got out, moved here and said ‘fuck the family business,’ yadayadayada, now Y/n and I are here, where was I going with this… oh! Yeah, man. I dunno, it’s just family bullshit. Stresses her out. Stresses us all out.”

“And that’s all it is?”

Dylan waves a hand in dismissal, and Rafe isn’t sure what to make of that, if he’s honest. “You’ll be fine, Rafe. You’re actually the first guy who’s ever even made it up there, has to mean something. Well, I guess, besides… oof.”

That pique’s Rafe’s interest. “What?”

Dylan mumbles something unintelligible, but Rafe is pretty sure he hears ‘sibling code.’

“Dude, what are you saying? You’ve got a flight in the morning—are you gonna be straight for tomorrow?”

“Bloody Mary on the PJ, baby. We’re all gonna need some alcohol to get through this weekend alive, trust me,” Dylan scoffs, throwing his phone on the floor of Rafe’s car when he realizes it’s dead. “Listen, man. Very important question for you—my sister’s honor depends on it.”

“Uh… shoot?”

“What are the odds you hang a left up here and take me to Papi’s?”

Rafe rolls his eyes again, still shifting into the turn lane anyway. “You know, you really take after your sister in all of the worst ways.”

“Uh, excuse you. I’m an athlete, I gotta eat,” Dylan huffs. “And you love my sister, so if I take after her—Rafe, bro. Do you love me?”

“Mm, an athlete who’s getting wasted in his hometown on a weeknight.”

“Fuck off, Cameron,” Dylan says, laughing gleefully. “I’m only here because of your dumbass, and the season’s over anyway.”

“Let me guess,” Rafe says, pulling into the parking lot. “Veggie nachos.”

“Yep. Should be $8.50,” Dylan prompts. Rafe would never let the kid pay for his own food anyway, but decides to mess with him just a little, giving him a blank stare. Dylan’s eyebrows furrow just like yours do, but looking the slightest bit more fierce. “Dude.”

“The worst ways,” Rafe repeats, handing over a crisp twenty. “Make sure you leave a tip.”

“Duh.”

—

Your sanity for this entire weekend hinges solely on the fact that you somehow convinced your mother to let you and Rafe keep your original flight into Boston. The two of you would leave the Outer Banks on Friday as you’d intended, and drive out to meet them at your grandparents’ house while the rest of them took the plane to a smaller, regional airport in the area on Thursday. You and Rafe would stay the night, then be on your way to your AirBnb, an entire blessed hour and fourteen minutes away, by Saturday morning.

As the weekend drew nearer, you just had to keep reminding yourself that this was supposed to be your trip with Rafe. Flying with Rafe, road tripping with Rafe; Rafe, Rafe, Rafe. Which was moot, because then you’d just start to think about Rafe meeting your snooty, old grandfather, Rafe meeting your rude uncles, Rafe meeting the Caldecotts—nonsense, you have to remind yourself.

There’s no way the one weekend you all make the trip up to Massachusetts, your grandfather would invite family friends to come by. Last you heard, Theo was living out in Boston, anyway.

Then again, you stopped keeping up with him senior year of high school, when you couldn’t bear to even come across a stray Instagram post after everything that he’d said to you.

Rafe, Rafe, Rafe. Focus on Rafe—getting him through this weekend, enjoying the rest of your trip alone with him. Rafe.

“Baby?”

“What?”

The boy in question smiles sleepily, his eyes only half-open at the early hour. He nudges your hands away from where you’d been angrily tugging on your suitcase zipper, closing it with ease. “I said, Top just left to come get us.”

“Okay, we’re gonna give him money to buy a coffee on his way home, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you packed that one white button-down, right? That looks good with your hair?”

“Yes. Although—still offended you don’t think I can dress myself for a family dinner.”

“It’s not—Rafe, my mother will literally make you change. I’m not kidding.”

“I packed it, I packed it,” he assures you. “In our garment bag so it won’t get wrinkled. Along with two other options… and your four back-up dresses.”

You don’t even register his dig, plowing ahead. “And did you—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Rafe answers, punctuating each word with a kiss, his hands gripping your cheeks tightly. “We did everything. I love you, and you have to calm down.”

“I’m trying,” you sigh, letting your hands drop from your hips as he rubs your shoulders. “I promise.”

“Try harder for me. It’s, like, sixteen hours with your family. We survived a week in the Bahamas with mine, this is nothing,” Rafe reminds you. “Alright?”

“Alright,” you agree.

Just in time, too, because Topper’s Jeep honks loudly outside of your home at that moment. You finish watering all your plants and leave them in the sink to drain, following Rafe out of the house and into the driveway, bypassing where he’s fitting the luggage into the hatch to sit up front with Topper.

“Hey, Y/n/n,” he says as you slip in, looking a little lively for this time of the morning. Even in your school days, Topper always seemed to be one of those people that lived for mornings, annoying absolutely everyone around him in an endearing way, like an un-trained golden retriever. “You excited?”

“Top,” you groan. “What are the chances I convince you to wreck your car on the way to the ferry right now?”

“Okay, jeez,” Topper laughs. “It can’t be that bad. Wasn’t this the family that used to come down all the time?”

You bite your lip, hoping if you change the subject Topper will stop exploring the memories he has. “Yep. By the way, did you find out if Blythe—”

“Wait,” Topper says, shifting in his seat toward you. “This isn’t that family that tried to set you up with that one guy, right? God—what was that kid’s name…”

“Can you not speak loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear?” you groan, smacking his arm lightly. You glance through the car to where Rafe is still working on configuring the luggage, grateful you’d overpacked as you always do. Topper’s looking at you, waiting for an answer, and you sigh. “Yes. Theo.”

“Theo,” Topper says, nodding in recognition. “Are you gonna see him, too?”

“No,” you say. “No.”

“Wow,” he laughs. “I think I’d actually pay for a front-row seat to Rafe seeing him again for the first time. He’d probably kick his ass.”

You close your eyes, heaving a tortured sigh. “Top, I think I fucked up.”

“Huh?”

“Rafe doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?”

“Anything about that, about Theo. Honestly, I’m surprised you do—ah, Kelce?”

“Guilty,” Topper shrugs. “And what do you mean Rafe doesn’t know? You dated that guy—”

“We didn’t date.”

“Okay, whatever. But it was summer before senior year, right? Trust me—Rafe knew, moped about it all summer.”

“What?”

Topper looks caught out. “Uh… I feel like we’re talking about two different things right now.”

“I barely saw Rafe that summer,” you remind him. “I barely saw any of you—how would he… I begged Kelce not to tell him about this.”

“Okay, slow down,” Topper says. “If you asked Kelce not to, I’m sure he didn’t. I just meant Rafe knew you two were a thing—like, very much knew. But judging by the look on your face—I’m guessing he never got all of the details.”

“I dunno what Kelce told you—but, no. He doesn’t know anything, really,” you admit.

“Why not?”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” you lie through your teeth. “Like, Rafe and Chloe. It was high school, it doesn’t matter.”

Topper looks uneasy, glancing back at his friend at the trunk. “Y/n. That guy was a dick to you, and you were extremely upset, for really a long time. Isn’t that why Kelce started dragging you to Rafe’s games in the first place? I thought—I dunno. That’s when I started to think that you two would go for it.”

The look in Topper’s eyes mirrors one you can recall from that summer, when you ran into him for the first time after Theo left the Outer Banks. Topper had been grocery shopping with his mom while you were with yours, waving awkwardly to you while they dished island gossip. It clicks now that you know he knew what happened with Theo back then—at least the Kelce version.

Things were weird between you two at the time, the same way they were weird between you and most of your friends. You spent the summer essentially isolated from all of them, chasing after a guy who’d never really want a girl like you in the end. Who, at your older age, you now realize you never really wanted in the first place either—not as anything more than a distraction from another. Who broke your heart and then left town like he was always going to—like your friends saw he would from a mile away, after meeting him one time. But you didn’t listen.

“Yeah,” you clear your throat. “Well, I was 17. And I’m 22 now, and really happy with my current boyfriend, so.”

“He deserves to know, Y/n/n,” Topper says. “Especially if that kid ever pops up again.”

“He won’t,” you insist. “We hardly see this half of the family, and it’s not like he stays in my guest house anymore.”

“Y/n/n—”

“Top,” you warn.

“What are you afraid of?”

“You’re afraid of what?” Rafe says, suddenly slipping into the backseat, eyes glancing between the two of you. “Y/n/n?”

You watch Topper shake his head and start his engine, dropping the subject now that Rafe’s back.

“Missing our flight,” you fib, leaning further into the back section of the car.

Rafe smiles and rolls his eyes, leaning forward to kiss you before he puts his seatbelt on. “Stop worrying. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

—

The airport and the flight pass with little fanfare. Rafe, nonchalant as ever, nods off on your shoulder for most of the plane ride. He put up the seat rest in between the two of you so he could crowd into your space, snuffling into your shoulder while you binged shitty coffee from the beverage cart and the in-flight entertainment. You were grateful he slept through most of it, because the way you didn’t shed a tear at the John Hughes movie playing would’ve been a dead giveaway that your emotions were out of whack. You weren’t sure how long you’d be able to hide that from Rafe, but you can’t say it’ll be a while given his track record for reading you.

“Okay,” you sigh, shivering as you wait on the airport curb. “I’m gonna text my dad that they can send the car.”

“They were gonna send us a car?” Rafe says, looking impressed. You quirk an eyebrow as he takes your phone out of your hand and puts it in his pocket. “Jeez, sweetheart. Hands are freezing.”

He cups them between his own, blowing hot air on your frozen fingers.

“Uh. They are going to send us a car. If you’d let me text them.”

“Oh,” Rafe says, smiling, dropping your hands. “No, that won’t be necessary. We’re driving. I didn’t tell you?”

“What?”

Rafe looks around the exterior of the airport, pointing behind his shoulder when he spots the rental car area. “C’mon, this way.”

A million questions pop into your head but you follow him anyway, holding the garment bag in both arms, casting your boyfriend sideways glances. “We’re renting a car?”

“I already rented us a car,” he amends.

“What—why? I told you I’d handle getting us there.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t listen to you,” Rafe shrugs, pushing both of your suitcases along with one hand, still smirking. “Keep up, Y/l/n.”

“Rafe…” you trail off, smiling despite yourself at his chipper mood.

He checks you in at the counter while you just look on at him, trying to figure out what he was playing at. Rafe didn’t know the area at all, and it’d be ten times easier to take the town car your grandpa would send for you. That’s what you usually did the few times you’d fly into this airport as a teenager or a young adult.

“What?” he asks after you’ve been staring for a while.

“What do you mean what? Why did you rent us a car?” you ask, following the agent through the garage.

“Here you are, Mr. Cameron. Should have a full tank. You can call us if you have any questions.”

“Thank you, will do,” Rafe says, accepting the keys and bidding her goodbye. You stay rooted to your spot, blinking slowly at the white Jeep you were standing in front of. “Baby?”

“It’s my Jeep,” you say, your bottom lip jutting out as you survey the car—the exact one you’d sold before you moved back to the Outer Banks. You loved that car, to the extent that you complained to Rafe about missing it every time you saw one around town.

“It’s not your Jeep. But it basically is,” he shrugs. “You like it?”

“Rafe—can I drive it?”

“You up for it?” he wonders, his grin widening. “I can drive, I know you weren’t anticipating a road trip today.”

“No,” you say, holding your hands out for the keys. “I wanna drive, there are places I wanna show you. And it’s my car. You rented my car.”

A small part of you remembers that Rafe drives way faster than you do, and your control of the vehicle will possibly help delay your arrival time even more. You’d tick down the minutes in just about any way you could at this point.

He runs a hand through your hair, letting it settle behind your neck so he can bring you in to kiss your forehead. “I knew you were stressed, just wanted to do something for you. And this way, we have about three extra hours of alone time. On what was supposed to be our weekend trip.”

“You sap,” you accuse, pushing on his chest. “I love you. And I’m really sorry about our trip.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s technically mine,” he reminds you. “So let’s make the most of it, yeah? And I love you, too.”

—

Focusing on the road is a welcome distraction for you, even though it’s a drive you know well by this point. Rafe is your eager passenger as you point things out to him, hyping you up when you’re first driving out of the city—he definitely flipped someone off for you and pretended he didn’t, laughed while he told you to ‘pay attention to the road.’

You smile and roll your eyes when Rafe tells you he needs to make a stop at a florist on the way over, picking out two bouquets for your mother and grandmother, plucking one singular peony out of one of the arrangements and presenting it to you dramatically. It sits on the dash now, the pink hue reflecting in the front windshield and making you a little giddy every time you spot it again. But it doesn’t completely calm the storm inside your head, and you go relatively quiet after the third pit stop, the scenery indicating to you that you were under an hour away.

“Are you alright?” Rafe finally asks.

“Yeah. M’just stressed, Rafe.”

“I know. But are you alright?” he repeats.

“Fine,” you tell him, turning the music up louder.

“Okay. ’Cause this is the second time we’ve looped Transatlanticism, and we’ve stopped at three different coffee shops so far.”

Your face screws up. “Well, I’m sorry you’re having such an awful time.”

“Don’t give me lip, Y/n/n,” Rafe grits out. “Come on. How can you still think I don’t have you figured out? I know something’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong, Rafe. Can you drop it?”

“Are you afraid they won’t like me?” Rafe wonders.

“What? No, stop. I know for a fact they’re gonna love you,” you tell him truthfully.

“Well, you said your grandpa is like my dad, so—”

“Rafe,” you chastise quietly, tearing your eyes away from the fall foliage to spare a glance over at him. “What?”

He grins sheepishly, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry, thought my daddy issues might lighten the mood.”

“Rafe.”

“Y/n. Why are you freaking out right now?” he asks, unrelenting because he knows you’re off.

“It’s just a lot, okay? My dad gets really stressed out, and that stresses my mom out, and Dylan and I just… I don’t know. But I promise I’m excited for you to meet the cousins and everything.”

“You’re sure? ‘Cause you’re making it sound like Succession over there…” Rafe trails off, hanging his head to the side when you don’t respond. “Oh, come on.”

“No, no. you’re right—it isn’t that bad, it’ll be fine,” you tell him and yourself, blowing out a breath of air. Half an hour to go.

Your phone starts ringing, interrupting the song playing on the car’s bluetooth radio. The display reads Dylan.

“Hey, we’re half an hour away,” you say, by way of greeting.

“Yeah, have your location, Y/n/n. Rafe with you?”

“Hi,” Rafe answers.

“No, I left him in the Outer Banks,” you say, rolling your eyes even though Dylan can’t see you. “Of course he’s here.”

“You’re a brave man, Cameron.”

You grimace. “Dylan. Was there a point to this phone call, or can I hang up?”

“Alright,” he says, tone dropping. “Yeah, um… Grandpa just told me that the Caldecotts are coming to dinner tonight. Thought you’d like the heads up.”

The nagging feeling in your stomach suddenly makes sense, like you could almost sense something like this coming. You take notice of the way Rafe’s staring at the side of your face, carefully and slowly blinking in what you hope comes across as indifference. “All of them?”

“All of them,” Dylan confirms quietly.

“Alright, thanks Dyl. See you soon,” you say, ending the call before he can reply.

You wait for Rafe to ask who the Caldecotts are, but it’s quiet save for the music that continued playing when the phone call ended.

“Caldecott…” he trails off, the name on his lips hitting you like a shock to the system. “I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

You should’ve known he’d remember. You’re stuck then—between keeping up the act and finally fessing up. But you have thirty minutes alone with Rafe before you’re both swept up in the awkward dinners and the subtle digs and the fake smiles. And Top’s words had been on repeat in your head all morning: he deserves to know.

“Okay, um. Do you remember the summer before senior year?”

“Best summer ever,” Rafe says, throwing you off until you realize he thought you’d meant the summer before senior year of college. The summer you fell in love with him.

“No,” you say quietly. “Um, not—not that senior year. I mean senior year of high school.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he breathes, and you can practically see the smile slipping off of his face as all of the cheek leaves his tone. “Yeah, I do. Why?”

Now you just have to wait for him to put it together—you know he will soon enough. It’d taken Topper two seconds flat.

“Why?” he repeats when you don’t answer. “I mean… it was kind of weird, wasn’t it? You and Kelce were in that fight, and you didn’t even hang around with any of us, not Margot and Gretchen. Or Topper, or… me—um. Yeah, and you were… oh. That’s why I know that name.”

—

Summer, 5 years ago

“Y/n, you remember our son, Theodore, don’t you?”

You’d known Theodore Caldecott for probably as long as you’d known Rafe. It’s the kind of knowing that has always existed in your mind, with no memory of ever not knowing each other. Coming up as kids together, with no actual first meeting pinpointed in your history.

“Of course,” you said. “Hi, Theo. It’s nice to see you again.”

It’s been a few years since you’d seen him last, maybe when you were both around the age of twelve if your memory serves you. And he’s grown since then—towering over you now, but from your shorter height you can still make out the faintest twinkle in his eyes, the way they scan your face and then the bare skin on your shoulders.

“You too, Y/n,” he says, name falling off of his tongue with that out-of-town accent.

“Since the Caldecotts are joining us for the summer,” your mom interrupts, addressing Theo’s mother, June, “we thought it’d be a nice idea for Y/n to show him around. She can introduce him to some kids their age.”

You pretend not to notice the tone of her voice, or the way your grandmother’s eyes light up from where she’s sat at the dining table on the back patio.

“I’m sure Theodore would love that,” June says, turning to her son. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” Theo says, nodding his head. “Show me around your slice of paradise, Y/n.”

And show him, you did.

Theo and his family—you understood that to some extent they were involved in business with your grandfather, but didn’t care much of how—came down with your grandparents every once in a while over the years, and you’d seen him plenty of times on trips the other way around. So there was that sense of familiarity, but it came along with that awkward re-establishment when you both got a little older. But Theo didn’t let that last long.

You found yourselves on familiar footing—the same age, coming from similar families. Theo always came across a little aloof, maybe pretentious at times, but nothing you didn’t think you could see past once you started to notice he was kind of cute. Not very funny, but interesting enough to keep you company all summer.

He was a breath of fresh air in the humid and suffocating southern heat—he wasn’t your best friend, not even your friend. He was someone new, someone different, someone that didn’t remind you at all of Rafe Cameron.

Where Theo was brash and confident, Rafe had newly mellowed, downplaying that reputation he’d come to hold over the years, unearthing that welcoming side of him you’d always known as his best one. Where Rafe was years of history and feelings, Theo felt like a blank slate. Where Theo was loved by your parents and everyone in your family, for that matter—besides Dylan, for why you could never work out—Rafe had always been the island troublemaker to them, even if your grandfather had always admired Cameron Development from a business standpoint.

Theo liked the music you liked, even put you onto some bands that you still can’t really listen to the same way anymore, but it wasn’t the old crooners or vintage country you’d become used to listening to in a certain silver pick-up truck on occasion. He couldn’t change your tire when he ran over a nail, but he called Triple-A and made out with you in the backseat while you waited for your rescue.

Theo Caldecott played lacrosse, not water polo—and he hated golf, too. He wanted to go to school and be a lawyer, not follow footsteps into a family business. Dark curly hair and even darker brown eyes that you could see right through, not silky, light brown strands offset by baby blues that swam with all kinds of emotions you found yourself delighted to decipher.

Theo wasn’t friends with all of your friends, he hadn’t dated any of your classmates—you didn’t know anything about his friends or who he had dated, for that matter. You only knew him in this bubble the two of you had created away from both of your separate lives.

So you did the Island Club dinners with your families, you gave him the grand tour of Kildare and all it had to offer, and somewhere along the way, started sneaking into his bedroom in the guest house late at night when everyone else had gone to sleep. Theo would never climb the vined lattice to your second-story window or dare to sneak up the main staircase, not after Wilbur barked at him for the third straight time.

Behind closed doors or in secluded areas of whatever Figure 8 backyard, you reciprocated the harmless flirtations and the weighted glances; hidden in back hallways of fancy mainland restaurants, you leaned into the weighted touches. You let Theo drive your car to nowhere with his hand on your thigh, or steer your dad’s boat off the coast while you sat in his lap.

Theo held every door and pulled out every chair, but he’d drop your hand anytime a parent looked your way. The pet names reverted to your full name, he’d sit on the opposite side of the table or at least scoot his chair away when you were sat together. And Theo was a gentleman that way, you supposed—wanted to act proper in front of your dad and grandfather. And before you knew the truth, that just made you admire him more.

It made you think that this could be something—this could be someone new, someone you’d never thought of before. Someone who wasn’t Rafe.

You’d been straight up ignoring your friends for a few weeks before you decided it was time to bring Theo around to something resembling a party. You were gunning for that Midsummers escort coming a few weeks down the line and figured now was as good a time as any to bring him into the mix with your friends if they were going to meet him there. Margot and Gretchen had seen bits and pieces of you two, caught glimpses here and there from coy Snapchats. They had shrugged it off like good best friends do when you promised Theo was coming to brunch then awkwardly stumbled over an excuse when he told you he was sleeping in and you showed up by yourself.

But Rafe, Kelce, and Topper had no idea about Theo. You felt weird hiding it from Kelce, but they came as a package deal, and telling one told all.

Which you didn’t feel inclined to do.

Gretchen’s parents go out of town and it’s the perfect opportunity—Theo takes some coaxing but you get him with a pouted bottom lip. “Fine, show me what possible kind of fun you could get up to on this strip of sand.”

You’re nervous of what he’ll think of the party, of the drinks, of your friends and your life. He seems pretty disinterested by it all, bobbing his head to the music and nudging you out of the way when you ask what he wants to drink.

“As I live and breathe,” Topper says at your arrival, causing you to duck your head and cringe slightly as the two of you approach your group of friends. You wait for Theo to drop your hand and so you squeeze it tighter. And he does but it’s to throw that arm around your shoulders instead, bringing you closer to him while he sips his drink, looking around the house in appraisal. “Look who finally decided to show up.”

“Ha, ha,” you say sarcastically, but Topper’s words sting a little when they’re combined with Margot and Gretchen’s uneasy smiles, not to mention the blank stares from Rafe and Kelce. “Guys, um. This is Theo. He’s the one staying in my guest house this summer.”

Theo unwinds from around you but only to go down the line and shake hands as you rattle off everyone’s names for him. “That’s Gretchen and Margot, and this is Topper, Kelce, and Rafe.”

Theo unexpectedly chuckles before settling back into your side, throwing the rest of his drink back. “Those are definitely… names.”

“What was that?” Kelce says immediately, eyebrows furrowed.

Theo raises his hands in surrender before looking down at you. “Nothing. Gonna go get another drink, d’you need one, love?”

“Um, yeah,” you agree, accepting the kiss dropped to your cheek before you send him off, almost wishing you could follow him.

“Some guy you got there, Y/n/n,” Kelce says bitterly, barely waiting for Theo to be out of earshot.

The timid smile that was already a struggle to maintain completely slips off of your face. “What do you mean?”

Kelce scoffs. “He’s a total douche—”

“Cut it out, Kelce,” Margot says. “He’s really cute, Y/n/n.”

“Oh, well, thank god for that.” Kelce says, looking at you significantly. Kelce can read you better than anyone, and you feel transparent under his gaze. And the way you’ve avoided addressing Rafe at all besides when introducing him to Theo is a dead giveaway to your best friend. “You’ve been ghosting us all summer for that dude? Fuckin’ Young Republicans club president? Nice one.”

“Hey. Back off of her, man,” Rafe says sternly, speaking for the first time. You finally look at him then, realizing this might be the first time you’ve properly seen him in a month now. He hadn’t changed a bit, and you still yearned to understand what he meant with those eyes.

“Whatever,” Kelce says.

“You know what, Kelce? Fuck you,” you say, as surprised by it as your entire friend group is. Your anger is misdirected, and probably confusing to everyone else, but you know Kelce is on your wavelength. “I’m sorry that you both just went through breakups and suddenly remember I exist, but—”

“Oh, bullshit, Y/n/n,” Kelce says. “We’ve been inviting you to hang out for weeks now. Radio silence.”

“Yeah,” you agree, not backing down. “After months of ‘sorry, it’s a couples thing’ or whatever—which is fine, I don’t care. But that’s how it works when you date people—”

“Don’t tell me you’re dating that dickhead,” Kelce spits.

“Kelce,” Gretchen warns.

“I think this was a mistake,” you decide, biting your lip and nodding your head as you make yourself believe it. “We’re gonna head home. Gretch, thanks for the invite.”

“Y/n/n, wait,” you hear Rafe say as you turn your back on him. He must turn back to your friends because you can just make out his hurt confession: “I was literally just sitting here doing nothing.”

“That’s all you ever fucking do, Rafe. Nothing.” Margot’s words are the last you hear of that interaction before you spot Theo in the kitchen, pouring a drink way heavier than you’d normally make for yourself.

A suggestion to head home leaves your lips and Theo practically lights up, kisses you in response, goading you to chug your drink before the two of you exit this ‘lame-ass party.’ You make eye contact with Rafe across the living room one more time as Theo tugs you outside with a hand in yours, and you ignore his text asking if you were alright later that night.

The summer passed in much the same way, shirking the texts from your friends while you focused on all things Theo. You got the Midsummers date you wanted, even though he didn’t want to match his pocket square to your dress when you offered to help him pick one out on the mainland, and even though he spent the entire night whispering snide comments into your ear about the decorations and the drinks and the people you’d known all your life. You ignored the curious looks cast toward you from your friends when Theo twirled you around the dance floor for exactly one song he deemed worthy, especially the disapproving one from Kelce.

And then August comes and Theo’s leaving with the heat of the summer. You sit on his guest bed and twirl a strand of hair as he packs his things, wondering why the pit in your stomach is heavier than you’d thought it'd be as you watch him squeeze the rest of his clothing into his suitcase. He hadn’t let you keep the Cape Cod sweatshirt you’d stolen for most of the summer.

You’re smarter now, but at the time you thought you loved him, or at least could love him one day. What wasn’t to love? He ticked every box you’d ever had.

“M’gonna miss you, y’know?” you tell him, kicking his shin softly.

Theo hums noncommittally, turning his back to rifle through the drawer in the bedside table. “Yeah, we had a fun run this summer, didn’t we?”

Your heart sank immediately, your mouth drying before you cleared your throat. “I was thinking, like… I go up to see my grandparents enough. And you could always come down here for a weekend or something. And then if we end up at school together next year, y’know… wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Oh,” Theo starts, standing up straight. He smiles sadly, an air of condescension permeating his tone as he stalks toward you, a hand falling under your chin. “Y/n, you know that we’re not… I live in Massachusetts. You live here.”

“I know, Theo. But like I just said—”

“I heard you,” he interrupts. “But, love. We’re not really… this wasn’t anything serious for us, right? At least not for me.”

You think back to all the times he distanced himself from you the second you were in front of his parents, everything clicking in your mind. But you were young and naive, and you’d never been able to wear your heart anywhere but on your sleeve—the initial reason you’d ran from your friend and into the arms of this guy who was about to break your heart, a guy who never should’ve had it in the first place. “But, Theo…”

“I really thought we were on the same page about this, Y/n,” he starts. “We don’t… we’re not meant to be together-together, you know?”

“Why not?”

“Because, I’m gonna be at university next year,” he says. “You maybe are, too. But, it’s different y’know? You’re gonna be president of some SEC sorority, some running back is gonna ring you by spring. And then you’ll be back here, raising a ton of kids and going to those country club meetings with your mom. But I need—I’ll be with someone more my pace, you know?”

You feel dizzy with every comment he’s just thrown at you, your cheeks burning like you’d been slapped. “Y-your pace?”

“Someone serious,” he clarifies, his hand still cupping your chin. You realize then that you’ve started crying, because his calloused thumb swipes along your cheek. You shove his touch away. “I really am sorry, love. Thought that was obvious.”

“Then why did you… why did we—” you cut yourself off. “This whole summer Theo, I thought—”

“What, that we’d make it out of here?” he says, eyes glimmering slightly as he shakes his head. “Y/n, come on. You’re sweet as hell, but you’re not dumb.”

“I feel like it right now,” you announce standing up. “I feel like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

“Are you sure? Because I think that’s what you basically just said,” you accuse.

“I should’ve known you’d be like this,” he admits. “It’s those eyes, Y/n. You couldn’t hide anything with those, love.”

“Don’t call me that,” you cry, letting him pull you into his arms in a moment of weakness. He kisses your forehead and it feels wrong and you feel worse.

“You can text me whenever you’re in Massachusetts, alright? I loved this summer thing we had going, but… time to get back to real life.”

He sends you on your way and you hide in your room as the Caldecotts and your grandparents make their grand exit, begging your little brother to cover for you. Dylan does, looking not the least bit surprised at your red-rimmed eyes after he watched you head out to the guest house that evening. Your hands shake as you delete Theo’s number immediately, scrolling to another one that you hadn’t called in a while on pure instinct. It only rings twice.

Kelce’s tone is slightly hesitant, like he knows you’re calling for a reason and it’s not a good one. “Y/n? Are you okay?”

“C-Can I come over?”

—

Rafe’s thoughts are going a mile a minute at the sound of a name he hadn’t heard in years. One that meant virtually nothing to him now, but for one summer was literally all he could wonder about. About the guy that had pulled you away from all of them and from him, who drove a wedge between you and Kelce like he’d never seen before and never thought he would, the two of you thick as thieves for as long as Rafe could remember. Who seemed like your perfect match in every possible way, who Rafe couldn’t help but compare himself to even though he told himself he shouldn’t care.

Rafe looks over when you speak again, turning the music down so he can hear you properly.

“How much do you remember from that summer?”

—

Fall, 5 years ago

Rafe formally met Theo when you brought him along to Gretchen’s party. But that wasn’t the first time he’d seen the two of you together.

He’d tuned out any murmurs about some guy you were hanging around with about as soon as they started, like there was some part of his brain that he just decided to shut down. He was fresh off of a break-up with Chloe, and he didn’t realize why it wasn’t getting to him like he thought it might. Rafe suddenly had way more time to hang out with his friends that he didn’t before, he didn’t have to wonder about if he was a bad boyfriend or if he was more into it than she was or if he wasn’t doing anything right or if it was supposed to feel like that—he felt like he could breathe again for a second, that first time he saw you at the Island Club after the break-up. And then things went to shit with Kelce and Sidney, and then suddenly… you weren’t around anymore. Ever.

He worried about you enough to drive by your house exactly twice, never stopping to knock on your door like he planned. Rafe never fully worked himself up to it, would always convince himself he was just overreacting. It wasn’t like you were dead. You just hadn’t answered his last few texts, or Kelce’s. It was strange, and then it all made sense when he heard about the touron from New England that was staying in the guest house. You’d told him about Theo the day he arrived—of course that’s what it was, how could he forget so easily?

But everything really made sense the time he saw you at the Kildare co-op, alone at first. His feet were already in a path toward where you stood checking every container of strawberries for freshness as he contemplated how much longer your hair had grown in the last month—and you weren’t alone. A guy Rafe had never seen before was appearing at your side with a jar of Nutella. You smiled up at him when you saw it in his hands, finally settling on the container of strawberries you were holding.

Rafe left the grocery store before he could see the guy kiss you, peeling out of the parking lot after leaving every item he was holding on a random shelf.

Of course you’re ignoring Rafe—all of them—but him especially. Hadn’t that been what he’d done for the last six months, while he was taken? Hadn’t the realization that Rafe had missed you, really missed you all those months practically smacked him across the face the first time he saw you after his break-up?

Rafe doesn’t ask anyone what they know—he doesn’t want to know. He cares, but he doesn’t want to know if Theo almost kissing you by the strawberries means he’s your boyfriend when just last week he contemplated inviting you to a round of golf for over an hour before finally doing it, only for you to read it three hours later and never respond.

Rafe spends the summer working part-time for his dad, fucking around at SAT prep with Kelce and Topper, and conveniently exiting any conversation that devolved to you as the main subject. He keeps his head down, works on his golf game, takes the long way around Figure 8 so he doesn’t have to drive by your house anymore. He goes to twice as many water polo summer workouts as he’d originally planned to when school let out, leaves Midsummers early after a record low, forty-five-minute stint at the Island Club that involved seeing you and what’s-his-face and your family and his family all smiling and laughing.

He plans to get wasted at the Boneyard every weekend but his heart is just never fully in it; Rafe gets super invested in some baking show with Wheez one day when we just can’t push his own thoughts away while he’s alone in his room. He scolds Sarah the first time she almost gets herself caught drunkenly stumbling into the house in the middle of the night, then feels bad when he almost makes her cry. And Rafe thinks about what you would’ve done in that situation, what you would’ve told him to do, and fixes it immediately and makes sure Sarah knows she should always call him, always.

He narrows down his list of colleges while wondering where you’ll end up; he starts drafting his application essays but he can’t not hear what you’d be telling him to take out or re-work and then that’s no longer a viable distraction, either.

And he decidedly does not give himself time to think about what any of that means.

If Top and Kelce notice they don’t say anything—Kelce too preoccupied with his own residual heartbreak and some weird tiff he has with you for ignoring all of them, and Top probably because he’s Top.

So the summer you asked Rafe about—that passed by in a blur for him. What Rafe does remember, when he formed some of the core memories of his adolescence, what to this day can be brought back to him in an instant the first time he sees a leaf turn orange or feels that long-awaited autumn chill on the first real cloudy day that isn’t just a summer day in disguise hidden under a storm—is that fall.

Summer was slipping away but Rafe didn’t find himself caring as much this particular August. He was ready to get back into his routine, get his senior season started, not have any time to work for his dad. And he knew for sure he’d finally be seeing more of you.

But he threw his end-of-the-summer party like he had been doing for the last few years anyway, making the trip out to the liquor store on the Cut that didn’t card with Topper and Kelce on the day of.

While they’re picking up, Rafe briefly wonders how much alcohol he should consume in order to forget that you had viewed the invite and never responded. He doesn’t know why it surprises him anymore or why it can still bring him down but at this point it just does.

“Do you think Y/n/n is coming?” he finally asks Kelce, about three drinks deep and beginning to grow annoyed by the number of people in his house.

“Fucking doubt it,” Kelce deadpans, a water bottle crinkling in his hand. “I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”

“Me either,” Rafe agrees. He knows you’re closer to Kelce than you are to him, and it gives him the smallest sense of solace that it’s all of them you’re giving the cold shoulder. “Should we be worried?”

“You aren’t?”

Rafe sips more of his beer, contemplating admitting that. “I mean, yeah. A little. Just figured she needed space or something after Gretchen’s party.”

“Space,” Kelce laughs. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You’re kinda harsh on her, man,” Rafe says instinctively, leaping to your defense when you’ve ignored him for an entire summer for some Ivy League shoo-in staying in your guest house. When Kelce is absolutely the last guy he’d ever need to protect you from.

His friend must agree, leveling him with a look before rolling his eyes. “I just hate it when my friends are being idiots.”

“Don’t fucking call her that, Kelce—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean just her.”

“What does that mean?”

Kelce opens his mouth to speak again but his phone starts ringing, drawing his attention to the screen. “Look at that. It’s Y/n/n.”

Rafe swallows down a desperate ‘answer it’ because of course Kelce already is; Rafe sensed the worry in his tone when he saw it was you finally calling after all this time. His face fully transforms from confusion to concern, and he’s slipping off of the counter in Rafe’s kitchen. “I’m at Tanneyhill, do you wanna come here?”

Rafe perks up immediately, looking around and wondering how quickly he could clear out a very intoxicated, large portion of Kildare Academy’s incoming senior class currently occupying his downstairs.

“Yeah, no. Yeah—you’re probably not good to drive. I can be there in five.”

Rafe follows Kelce to his front door, begging with his eyes for any hints as to what’s going on—if you’re hurt or if anything happened or if he can help. But Kelce is on a mission, and Rafe can merely listen in on the rest of Kelce’s half of the conversation. “What do you have to be sorry for?” Kelce asks.

And then before he shuts the front door to Tanneyhill for good, car keys in hand, Rafe hears the kicker. “I’ll kill him.”

And that was that on Theo. Rafe never heard about him again, nobody ever brought him up or asked what happened, and you never offered anything. Rafe wondered for a while but he’d never go seeking information from you, and eventually, it was in the past.

School started then, and you were back but for a while, you weren’t you. Rafe had to nudge you every time you fell asleep in AP Calc before your teacher saw, sending you pictures of his notes or homework whenever you needed. You seemed off in every way and you seemed tired all the time. You spoke softer than you already did and hardly at all unless spoken to. But you started coming to Rafe’s games—started coming to his games in his shirt.

He pressed Kelce, who said you were just stressed and drowning in your college applications, still unsure of where you even wanted to go.

Rafe didn’t get that part, he knew you’d literally end up wherever you could dream of.

One November day, as soon as Rafe sees you crossing the Island Club parking lot, he thanks the past version of himself profusely for deciding to shower at the gym instead of waiting until he got home. He doesn’t know when he became so conscious of how he appeared when you were around, but he can’t help but check his hair in his car window before he calls out to you.

“Y/n? What’s up?” he says, smiling and waving when you actually see him. But even when you wave and start making your way toward him, your features don’t indicate at all that you’re happy to see him.

“Hey, Rafe. Kelce is inside, right?” you ask, pointing back to the club.

“Oh, shit, Y/n/n. He just left, something with his mom,” Rafe tells you.

“Oh,” you say, wrapping your arms around your midsection and exhaling a shaky breath. “Okay. Uh, thanks. I should—”

“Y/n/n,” he begins nervously, taking in your wrinkled sweatshirt and messy hair. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I’m not,” you breathe, shaking your head. “Can I—sorry, I’m gonna go.”

“No, hey, hey, hey,” Rafe says, bending at the knees slightly so he can look directly in your eyes, his stomach twisting when he can see they’re completely bloodshot and punctuated by the bags beneath them—covered in a light sheen of tears that look like they’re ready to fall at any second. “Talk to me, Y/l/n.”

“Rafe, no,” you sigh, blinking rapidly with your head tipped up at the sky. “It’s so stupid.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” he says, stepping forward hesitantly, retracting his hand when it reaches out of its own accord. “Do you—uh. Do you need a hug?”

You look a little taken aback at first, and Rafe almost regrets whatever stupid instinct in his body compelled him to say something like that—what he’d say to Wheezie or Sarah, but you? Why the fuck would he—but a second later you’re stepping forward, right into his arms that circle around you on autopilot.

“Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll work it out,” he says quietly, his hand rubbing between your shoulder blades. He’s worried to all hell about you like he has been since June, but for the life of him, he can’t stop thinking about how your head fits right in his chest, tucked under his chin. Feels his cheeks flush red when you squeeze him around his waist.

“These college apps are just ruining my life, Rafe,” you say, finally pulling back, hand wiping under your eyes furiously. “I’m so ready for them to be over.”

“That’s what you’re crying about?” Rafe asks incredulously.

You rear back slightly. “Um… yeah?”

“Y/n—you know you’re gonna get into whatever school you want, don’t you? You’re the smartest person I know,” he says, feeling his cheeks heat up as soon as the words leave his mouth. “Um, I mean—no. Yeah. You’re gonna be fine, seriously.”

“Rafe,” you sigh. “Stop.”

“I’m serious!” he laughs. “And you’re also the only reason any of the rest of us are going to get into any good schools.”

Your lips quirk up a little at that. “Rafe, your personal statement was amazing. I read it like five times before I even took out a pen.”

“Yeah?” Rafe says, voice pitched high, blush coming roaring back. “I didn’t think it was anything special. And you marked it up enough.”

“No, don’t. It was great,” you say, smiling softly before he recognizes that familiar glint in your eye. “You’re just bad at sentence structure. If you tell Kelce or Top this I’ll deny it, but it was the best one I’ve read.”

“Oh, I’m telling them,” Rafe scoffs. He goes to pull out his phone, trying to downplay the butterflies he feels at your praise. “Actually, let me text them right now—”

“God, never mind,” you groan. “It was awful. Worst thing I’ve read. And you still owe me a coffee for that one, Cameron.”

Rafe nudges your shoulder with his knuckles. “I told you I’d bring it to school, any day you asked.”

“Tomorrow, please. I’m gonna need it,” you sigh, leaning up against his truck, finally looking relaxed. “These deadlines are kicking my ass.”

“Where are you applying to that’s taking applications so early?” he wonders.

“My top choices are all out west,” you say. “I think I give myself the best chance if I apply early action.”

Rafe furrows his eyebrows. “Out west? Like…”

“California, mostly,” you say quietly. “A few in Washington, too. One in Oregon.”

“Oh.” That’s far. Very far, Rafe realizes. Far from home, far from wherever he’ll end up. Far from him.

“Yeah.”

“I thought… you don’t wanna apply anywhere closer? Or what about your dad’s alma mater—what was it?”

Your features downturn immediately, and you shake your head definitively. “No. Doesn’t really seem like my scene anymore.”

“I’m sure your parents loved that one,” Rafe jokes off-handedly, mind racing thinking about just how many times a year he’ll even be able to see you anymore when you’re that far away.

“Thought we were creating a safe space here, Cameron,” you tell him, smiling where you’re leaned up against his truck. The sun had just started setting behind you, and Rafe would call this moment his safe space.

—

Rafe fumbles momentarily as he gets caught up in the past, clearing his throat before speaking again. “Um… well you dated him, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” you mumble. “I know he wouldn’t.”

“Okay,” Rafe says, nodding his head. “Okay. But, I mean. Y/n/n, I saw you guys—you definitely had a thing.”

“Yeah, Rafe. A thing. Like, a stupid summer fling over five years ago,” you say. “I’ve seen him maybe three times since then.”

“Babe, I wasn’t—”

“I know, fuck, I’m sorry.”

The harsh exhale puts Rafe on high alert, and he’s searching for that pulse. “Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. I’m just—I wanna figure out why you’re…”

Your eyebrows pinch together. “Why I’m what?”

Rafe clucks his tongue, suddenly sitting up and surveying the area. “Nothing. Hey, do you think there’s another coffee shop we can stop at before we get there?”

“Yeah,” you nod, looking confused. “There’s one in town right before we go up the hill. Why?”

“Really gotta use the restroom,” Rafe lies, and you nod silently, not putting up a fight.

The drive is quiet from then on, and Rafe focuses on what he’s going to say next. But you’re nervous and he’s nervous but more than that he’s worried about you, and he can’t stop thinking about what you said to him last week. About there being boys before, boys who he knew hurt you and made you doubt your worth but not how or to what extent or even when—and you pull into a parking spot in the very back of some tiny, little parking lot in front of an unassuming coffee shop and Rafe makes no move to go inside. He waits for you to kill the engine and then gently takes the keys out of the ignition, dropping them in his lap.

“Rafe, what are you—”

“Theo was one of them, wasn’t he?”

I’ll kill him. That’s what Kelce had said that night.

“One of—what do you mean?” But you’re shrinking into your seat, angling your body away from Rafe’s accusation.

“When you said you’d dated those kinds of guys.”

The words hang awkwardly in the air between you. It was a topic neither of you had approached since the fight, Rafe waiting for you to bring it up of your own volition and you never doing so. He was always hesitant to push you on anything that made you this upset, but a lot of things were clicking like they hadn’t been before and now he just really needed to know.

“Am I wrong? You were talking about this guy we’re about to see at dinner tonight, weren’t you?”

One of your nails picks at the seem of the steering wheel, your hand shaking slightly. “Rafe, I really didn’t think he’d be here.”

“That’s not—I’m not upset about that, sweetheart. I’m not—I’m worried. About you,” he says, his voice falling into a hush. He licks his lips, gathering his thoughts while things start to slide into place for him. Theo was like a missing puzzle piece that had been right in front of him all along. Rafe had been there. “I’ve been trying to figure out all week why you’ve been so upset about this trip. And I thought it was me, but then you said it was all about your family, but you still… this was actually why though, wasn’t it?”

You suck your teeth at that, your head turning away slightly. “Okay. Maybe I thought there was a slight possibility we’d have to see him.”

Rafe nods, his ears ringing. You’ve been in shambles for an entire week because of an ex-boyfriend. “Okay. And… what?”

“What?”

Rafe tries not to let his frustration seep through, because he’s confident in himself and he’s confident in you, but as much as he knows this is putting your deepest insecurities out into the open, it’s putting a megawatt spotlight on his, the fact that he was hours away from meeting an ex-boyfriend that was apparently still well-enough into the fold to be invited to family dinners—by family Rafe had never even met—and Rafe knew literally nothing about him.

And on top of that, Theo had hurt you, and Rafe was there when it was happening, and not only was he too stupid at that age to tell you how he was feeling but you were hardly even friends at the time—Rafe couldn’t have protected you from it if he wanted to, because he had no idea what was even going on. And he still doesn’t. Because you never told him. “You didn’t tell me about him, because…”

“Because it’s so stupid, Rafe. It was so long ago and it shouldn’t even matter anymore,” you say, finally casting a sideways glance at him.

“But it does matter, clearly,” he urges, his hand reaching over to grip your elbow lightly. “And if it matters to you, then it matters to me.”

“Rafe… I really don’t wanna—”

“You gotta let me in, Y/n/n. I’m right here,” he says, the backs of his fingers dragging over your upper arm, a chunk of your knit sweater caught between his two middle finger knuckles. “I’m right here, baby.”

Your arm shies away from his touch and Rafe drops his hand, falling back into his seat in dejection while he listens. “We were kids. I liked him, and he liked me but not in the same way and we weren’t on the same page. And he went back to Massachusetts at the end of the summer and that was it. End of story.”

Rafe fingers the rental car keys where they sit in his lap, reminding you that he has the power to leave. “I could’ve deduced that version on my own, Y/n/n.”

“Okay, well, fucking deduce it then, Rafe,” you snap. “I don’t care.”

“I care.”

“Why? It was five years ago!” you say, holding your hands out for the keys.

He holds strong. “Then just tell me about him.”

Your hand falls back into your lap and you let out a frustrated groan. “Y’know what? Fine. I spent the entire summer following him around like a puppy and then he broke up with me—but according to him we weren’t ever really dating. And we never would be, because he needed someone serious who wasn’t destined to be some dumb southern belle housewife like me.”

“Y/n/n—what?”

“It was stupid, I thought we might’ve… I dunno. But he just didn’t see it like that at all and I don’t know why I even—that doesn’t matter. I should’ve seen it coming, it’s the same shit just coming from different people my entire life. The guys I dated before you were all the same, they had the same assumptions about me. The only difference was Theo didn’t want that version of me. It wasn’t good enough for him.”

Rafe feels like his brain just exploded—all of his nerves are on fire and his hands are clammy but on top of everything he’s just angry. He’s confused and he’s worried and he’s upset with himself for pushing you because your hands are shaking and the last half of your spiel was interspersed with stray tears, but above all else, he’s just fucking mad.

You let out a watery laugh and shake your head at his silence. “Not what you wanted to hear?”

You throw open the car door and slam it just as forcefully, and Rafe’s body follows yours before his mind can even tell it too. He grabs his jacket out of the backseat on his way because he saw you forget yours, and wraps it around your shoulders as they tremor.

There’s nobody around and even if there was he knows he wouldn’t care about how crazy the two of you must look, his arms locked around you and pressing you back against the car while you shake like a leaf against him, your hands grasping at his t-shirt.

“So, I guess that’s why Kelce wanted to kill this kid.”

He gets you to laugh a little, the feeling of the vibration against his chest warming him down to his toes even as he wears a t-shirt in the December chill. “M’honestly surprised he never told you any of this. I told him not to, but he knows everything.”

“I think Kelce is a better friend than either of us ever give him credit for,” Rafe admits. “I mean, I knew something went down with the two of you. But what a fucking tool.”

“Rafe.”

“No, I gotta get it out now. I probably can’t beat him up in front of your grandfather, can I?” Rafe sighs.

“Uh, absolutely not.”

“Okay,” he nods. “Piece of shit, numbskull fucking douchebag—”

“Rafe,” you warn again, laughing this time.

“Alright, alright. More coming later. I’ll think about them during dinner.”

“Y’know, Top said you’d wanna fight him.”

Rafe clears his throat, looking down at you, ignoring the goosebumps raised on his arms where they encase your shoulders. “Topper knew?”

“Might wanna rethink that comment about Kelce. I think we give him the exact amount of credit he deserves,” you say. Your elbows dig into his stomach as you wipe under your eyes, seeming to have cried yourself out for now.

Rafe would probably keep his comment about Kelce on the record. There are treasure troves of information his friend kept from you over the years. Shit that would embarrass Rafe to his once sixteen-year-old core.

“Is that why…” Rafe trails off, feeling his jaw clench. “Is Theo why you were having a rough time senior year?”

“Ugh,” you groan, your head falling into his chest. “This is so embarrassing. I knew you’d remember what a mess I was then.”

“Y/n/n.”

“Kind of,” you admit. “I don’t think it was him—just what he said. I was already unsure about what I wanted to do and the fact that he had my life planned out in his head just really threw me for a loop.”

“Do I even want to know the verbatim?”

“No,” you sigh. “Maybe once he’s no longer within hand-throwing distance.”

“Alright,” Rafe concedes.

“This is pathetic,” you murmur. “S’why I didn’t wanna tell you.”

“Hey,” he warns. “Who are you talking about? Him?”

“No. Me,” you correct. “I let it affect me so much, through some really big decisions, and he… Theo probably doesn’t even remember it the same way. I’m pretty sure he’s engaged.”

“You’re not pathetic,” Rafe says. He holds steady even when you roll your eyes at him. “I’m serious. If this guy was a dick to you, you’re allowed to be upset about it. Doesn’t matter when it happened or what you did after.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No, Y/n/n. No,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how you got there—you ended up exactly where you were supposed to anyway.”

With me. You ended up with me, he thinks.

“I did?”

“Of course. And you’re killing it, baby,” he says.

Your bottom lip pouts slightly, and Rafe has to lean down and kiss it. “I am?”

“You are.”

“Okay,” you nod, still not looking like you fully agree.

“Hey. Look at me for a second, and then we have to get back in the car before we freeze to death,” he says, holding your chin in between his thumb and forefinger. Your still slightly teary eyes blink up at him, and he can’t believe he has to sit through an entire dinner with the guy who did this to you without strangling him. “I know I don’t need to tell you that he was wrong. Because I know it, and you know it. That guy will know it one day, too. But you’re my best friend, you’re still the smartest person I know, and I don’t think I could do half the things I’m able to do without you. I’m never gonna stop protecting you, but when I can’t, I need to know that you know all of those things. And that I love you, and that you’re one thousand percent way too good for me. Too good for any of the fucking idiots that had you before me—but I’m not letting you go.”

Your eyes are wide, and you nod slowly. “I know.”

“I love you,” he repeats, pressing his lips into your hairline. “And I know it took a lot to tell me this, so thank you.”

“Y-you’re welcome?” you wonder, eyebrows furrowed. “Rafe I-I, I feel so bad. I should’ve told you earlier…”

Rafe shrugs, his shoulders twitching into a shiver. “You told me now. It’s alright.”

“You’re too good for me,” you counter, turning Rafe’s words on him.

“None of that,” he decides. “Now get back in the car. You look cute in my jacket, but I am not built for this weather.”

—

After an odyssey of coffees and tears and confessions and Death Cab for Cutie albums, you and Rafe finally pull into your grandparents’ driveway, the crunch of the gravel under your tires a familiar and almost foreboding sound.

“I didn’t know he was coming,” Rafe says. You can practically hear the smile in your boyfriend’s voice and it eases a little tension out of your body, and you’re able to give him a matching grin as you shrug.

“Might’ve slipped my mind to tell you,” you say coyly, pulling the car to a stop.

Dylan stands on the sprawling porch with Wilbur at his side, waving you over when the two of you get out of the car. “Ah, there’s the love birds. Finally.”

“Wilbur!” your boyfriend calls, kneeling when your dog trots up to him. You roll your eyes fondly at the display, turning back to the prying eyes of your little brother.

“How’d it go?”

You tilt your head in confusion, joining him on the porch, surveying the property. It’d been a while, but everything about your grandparents’ front yard looked exactly the same. “How’d what go?”

“Uh, the Theo bomb,” he says. You hit him in his stomach.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You called to tell me when you knew Rafe would ask about it,” you accuse.

“Of course I did,” he shrugs, rubbing at his stomach and wincing. “What? You weren’t gonna tell him. And Rafe’s my guy.”

“Oh, is he?” you laugh.

“He loves me. Ask him.”

“Well, thanks for the nudge, I guess,” you say, bumping your shoulder into his.

“How’d it go?” he asks, sipping out of his tumbler and looking at you over the rim, sunglasses pushed down his nose. You loved when he pretended he didn’t care about you.

“As expected,” you say, willingly skipping over your roadside breakdown in Rafe’s arms. “I’m not convinced he’ll keep his promise to not throw punches in the dining room.”

“I’ll hold him down,” Dylan says.

“Rafe?”

“No, Theo.”

“Dyl,” you scold, pushing his arm. “Stay out of trouble this weekend, will you?”

“I will be on my absolute worst behavior,” he says. “You know this. You’ve always known this.”

“Please, I’m already gonna be wrangling Rafe—”

“Okay, mom, chill the fuck out, will you?” he sighs. “Dad’s already at defcon one.”

“Oh no, really?”

“Really. But hey,” his voice drops in volume. “Theo’s engagement? Toast. I guess he didn’t get into law school and then he got a DUI or something, too. She called it off. I was told to tell you that we’re not supposed to bring it up in front of him or June and Jerry. But, I want you to know I’m absolutely going to. At least twice. I think three is overdoing it, no?”

You almost feel indifferent to Theo’s life update, you realize, looking at where Rafe is still playing with your dog by the car, the trunk now open but still not unloaded. You didn’t tell Rafe he was coming as a little surprise because you figured he’d be nervous to meet your family—you should’ve known he’d be calm and collected when you needed to lean on him. You’d be stupid to care about any past fling’s love life when this is what you have in your present. “Dylan, seriously. Reel it in for everyone’s sake tonight.”

“No promises.”

“Should we go inside?” Rafe says, out of breath and holding all of your luggage, your golden retriever circling him in excitement.

“You think you’re ready for that, Cameron?” Dylan teases. Rafe shoves the garment bag into his chest forcefully, causing him to scowl before leading the two of you inside. “Alright, you asked for it.”

“Is everyone else already here?” you inquire.

“Yeah, dinner’s in two hours,” he reminds you. “Greenhouse, don’t forget.”

You just laugh lightly and roll your eyes, which causes Rafe to look at you in confusion, his fingers encircling your wrist. “What happens at the greenhouse?”

Dylan laughs too, pushing the front door open. “You have so much to learn, my friend.”

“Dylan, leave him alone.”

—

Rafe is absolutely, positively shitting it.

One second, the two of you are upstairs freshening up for dinner together. The next, you’re nowhere in sight—although, it’s a big house and there’s probably at least ten more rooms he could’ve checked. And then he’s intercepted by your dad who has a look in his eye that Rafe has never seen (not even the first time he saw him after the break-up), who’s introducing him to your cousin EJ (who you like) and your uncles Zach and Charles (who you… don’t, Rafe thinks) and he maybe feels a little weird that he already knows all of their names, and knows that the baby strapped to EJ’s chest is called Kendra but everyone calls her Kenny and she has recently picked up a strawberry allergy.

“My daughter is in the kitchen with the rest of the ladies,” your dad says, catching Rafe looking around. “Come sit with us.”

“Oh, I should—”

“Wasn’t asking, son,” your dad whispers. “My father wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, cool,” Rafe says. “Cool.”

“You’re fine, kid.”

“Rafe,” Ellis says, looking at him appraisingly from across the table in his study. Rafe takes a seat immediately. “Is that short for something?”

“Uh, no, sir,” Rafe says. “It’s just Rafe.”

“And what did you say your last name was?”

“Cameron.”

“Ah, Cameron,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Yes. That’s right, I remember your father from years and years ago. Ward? Good man.”

“Uh… yeah,” Rafe says, nodding slowly. That was definitely a new one. “Yeah, uh, thank you. That’s my dad.”

“Development, right? Is that good money?” Ellis asks. Dylan laughs into his whiskey glass, your cousin EJ just shakes his head, reaching down and giving Kenny a finger to grab onto. Rafe looks to your dad for help, who just stares straight ahead at his own glass, circling the rim with a pointer finger.

“We do fine,” Rafe finally says, hoping that will suffice. Ellis looks at him in determination.

“Now, don’t be modest, Rafe,” he demands. “It’s just a question. Simple, but important.”

“Alright, grandpa. Give it a rest,” EJ says, eyes cutting over to Rafe. Rafe nods in his general direction, not taking his eyes off of Ellis, who doesn’t seem to be done.

“If you intend to marry my granddaughter—”

“Dad.”

“It’s a serious question, William. I’m sure you haven’t even bothered to ask this of him yet—when they’ve been running around together for what, two years now?”

“Uh, well—year and a half,” Rafe mutters. “But, Y/n—she’s. We’ve talked about this and everything, but she’s doing great all on her own, with the foundation and—she doesn’t need—”

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” a voice says from the entry to your grandfather’s study, Rafe’s words dying on his lips as he turns to see who it belongs to.

“Oh, thank god. This was starting to bore me,” Dylan murmurs, tossing the rest of his glass back. He leans over into Rafe’s side. “Money’s on you, dude.”

“Theodore, my boy,” Ellis says. The hair on the back of Rafe’s neck stands up as he watches Theodore Caldecott swagger into the sitting room, bypassing everyone to exchange greetings with Ellis first. My boy. “So nice to have you out here again.”

“Not every day the whole family is back in town anymore, is it?” Theo says brushing his hands down the front of his sweater vest. “My mother insisted I come up from the city when she heard.”

Rafe’s jaw clenches as Dylan snorts, the sound catching your grandfather’s attention. “You remember my grandson Dylan, don’t you?”

“Of course, it’s nice to see you, buddy,” Theo says, leaning over the table to shake his hand. Dylan rejects him with a fist bump.

“‘Sup. Sorry about the engagement.”

“Mr. Y/l/n,” Theo continues to your father, undeterred. His eyes flicker to Rafe briefly, but he doesn’t say anything and neither does Rafe. “It’s nice to see you again as well. I was actually wondering if your daughter was around? I heard she’d be here today, but I have yet to run into her.”

Rafe sits up straighter in his seat, now demanding Theo’s attention at the mere mention of you. “She’s off with her cousins.”

Theo looks slightly taken aback at being addressed by him, his hands slipping into the pockets of his khakis as he leans back on the heels of his gaudy loafers. “I see. And you are…?”

Rafe stands to shake his hand also, holding back a smile when he realizes he still has a few inches—at least three—on this guy. He remembered that much from the first time they met in Kildare, clocking the guy's height when he wasn’t inspecting every part where the two of you were touching or worrying about how much you’d had to drink.

“Nice to meet you man,” he lies. “I’m Rafe. Y/n’s boyfriend.”

Rafe can see the moment his statement throws the other boy completely off guard. He gives him a tight-lipped smile and a firm handshake, noticing Theo’s grip is limp in his hand. “Oh, I didn’t know Y/n had a boyfriend.”

“You know it’s funny, Rafe,” Ellis speaks from the head of the table again. “For a while there, we thought Theo and Y/n might make a go of it.”

They did. Or she did. And he broke her heart over it, Rafe wants to say.

“Really?” he muses, raising his eyebrows. “Well. Sorry, man.”

Rafe isn’t sorry, not at all. He knows that, and he knows Theo knows that from the way that he said it, but the kid just smiles with a glint in his eye that Rafe decides he despises.

“No apologies are in order,” Theo says, laughing haughtily. “Ancient history, Y/n and I are. But hey—better keep an eye on her.”

If Rafe was sixteen years old again and not currently in front of half of your family, including a baby, he might’ve lunged over the table and laid Theo out right then and there. He knows he could—one sweep of Theo’s physique tells him that it’d be no problem for him, not then and not now. But instead, he sits back down and sips on a little more of his whiskey, hardening his stare at the other guy. “I always do.”

Your uncles continue bickering with your dad over the business after that, Dylan’s messing around on his phone, and EJ’s preoccupied with his baby, leaving Rafe to do nothing but stare across the table at how Ellis and Theo are getting along. Rafe knows you don’t hold your father’s side of the family very high in your head but it bothers him on a physical level, the way that Theo is laughing along with whatever your grandfather is saying, getting shoulder pats when all Rafe got was a firm handshake and a gruff ‘pleased to meet you’ before his questioning started.

“Hey.” EJ’s looking at Rafe from beside him, tilting his head toward the door. “Wanna help me feed Kendra?”

Babies terrify Rafe but he thinks he probably would’ve taken an offer from a grizzly bear if it meant escaping these four walls and his own thoughts, so he nods and follows behind EJ without a second thought. He might’ve thought it through just a millisecond longer, he realizes, once your cousin unclips the baby from the wrap on his chest and makes to hand her over to Rafe.

“Wait—I, I don’t think I’ve ever held an actual baby before,” Rafe admits. The closest was Beckham, who was four by the time Rafe first met him. “Y/n and I had strawberries for breakfast and we washed our hands a billion times—I just don’t wanna hurt her.”

“You won’t hurt her, and I’ll be right here to kick your ass if you do,” EJ says. “Just support her head. She’s not very fussy right now, you’ll be fine.”

“U—uh, yeah. Okay,” Rafe nods, accepting Kenny willingly when she’s carefully laid into his arms. She wriggles slightly, making Rafe panic for a second, before she settles into his arms and promptly falls back asleep. Rafe stares at her for a second, her chubby cheeks and her long lashes. “She’s… she’s so cute.”

“Isn’t she?” EJ says proudly, reaching over and adjusting the cap on her head. “You’re a natural, Rafe. She’s snoozin’, probably won’t wake up for an hour if you sit still.”

Rafe looks at the small bundle of warmth in his arms, notices the way she lets out a small coo and wriggles again, and thinks he could probably do that if asked. “Don’t we have to wake her up, though? Y’know, so she can eat?”

“Oh, she’s not hungry,” EJ says. “She won’t need to eat again for another two hours.”

Rafe looks up at him in confusion, his grip tightening on Kendra when he’s not looking at her, just in case. “But you said…”

“I lied. Welcome to the family,” your cousin laughs, sinking back into the couch. The fire crackles in front of them in the sitting room EJ had chosen. “Figured you could use an out.”

Rafe clears his throat and looks back down at Kendra, remembering how you said EJ was your favorite cousin. “That obvious, huh?”

“Nah, you’re fine,” EJ says. “I just know how my grandfather can be. And I’m biased, but I think my baby makes way better company.”

“I’d have to agree,” Rafe says softly, still looking at her, completely transfixed by this point.

There’s a soft patter of feet in the distance coming from the direction of the kitchen, followed by quick footsteps and a flash of hair the same color as EJ’s. “Daddy!”

“Oof,” EJ suddenly grunts, pulling the little boy that had just mowed into his shins into his lap. “Noah, can you say ‘hi’ to your Uncle Rafe?”

“Hi, Uncle Rafe,” Noah says. “I’m Noah.”

“Uncle?” you murmur quietly, coming and settling into Rafe’s side on the couch. From where you followed Noah into the room behind them, you must not have seen Rafe’s precious cargo, because you gasp quietly when you do see Kendra in his lap, your hand falling to a light touch on her head. “Well, hi there, Kenny.”

Rafe readjusts his hold on the baby again before tearing his eyes away from her to look at you, his cheeks going hot as he watches you coo quietly, your arms pressed together as you lean over him. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“Hey,” you say softly, pressing your lips into his for only a moment, the two of you very aware that your cousin and nephew are only a foot away. Your eyes flicker down Rafe’s entire body, the way he’s sitting completely still, hunched over Kendra with steady arms encircling her. “Look at you.”

“Look at me.”

“Ellis Jr., I can’t believe you got him to hold her,” you marvel, looking at your cousin.

“Didn’t give him much of a choice, but he’s doing fine, right?” EJ says, smiling at the trio. “You guys look great.”

You duck your head into Rafe’s neck at the insinuation, and Rafe’s right there with you with a fluttery feeling in his stomach. He presses a kiss into your hair. “I can’t see us, but I know we do, too.”

“Don’t give me any ideas, I swear, Cameron,” you murmur.

“Rafe did great in there,” EJ says, nodding back to your grandfather’s study. “Should’ve seen him.”

“I’m sure he did,” you say quietly, still leaned into Rafe’s space as you fawn over the baby in his lap. Rafe would bottle this feeling if he could.

“Caldecott kid was looking for you,” EJ mentions off-handedly, straightening out Noah’s shirt collar.

Rafe feels your body lock up where you’re still pressed into him. “Me? Wait, is he here already?”

“He’s here,” Rafe mentions quietly, the bottle-worthy feeling now a memory.

—

You and Rafe trail the rest of your older cousins in the tall grass as you all make your way out to the greenhouse, a pre-family dinner tradition for every cousin ever since they hit the age you’d deemed worthy to be included, seventeen. Rafe still doesn’t understand why you’re all out here but you keep your lips sealed on the subject, far too preoccupied with the fact that he saw Theo than anything else.

“Proud of you,” you joke, your fingers roaming over all of his knuckles as if to look for evidence.

“Very funny,” Rafe muses, tucking you under his arm. “You make me sound like an attack dog.”

“No,” you say. “I’m just kidding, Rafe.”

“It bothers me that he was looking for you,” Rafe admits. You pull him to a stop and he sighs, one hand digging into his pockets and the other scratching the back of his neck. “It bothers me a lot. I thought you guys weren’t on good terms.”

“We’re not,” you say. “We’re not on any terms, Rafe. I haven’t spoken to Theo in years.”

“I know that. But I don’t think he does, Y/n/n, he was—”

“Rafe.”

“I just need to know what you want from me here, Y/n,” Rafe says in a rush. “You know I wouldn’t even let him come near you if that’s what you wanted. And that’s what I want, but…”

Your lips quirk up a little bit. “You’re not jealous, Rafe Cameron. Are you?”

He doesn’t rise to the bait, and your heart sinks as he sighs in frustration, stepping closer to him and tugging on his hand. “I’m not jealous. I just hate that guy and I’m really worried about you, but I’m always gonna follow your lead.”

“You didn’t have any reason to hate him before a few hours ago.”

Rafe furrows his eyebrows. “I did, actually. But I just hate him more now.”

You nod in realization that all those years ago, even though you didn’t feel like Rafe was in your life, he was right there on the periphery. And he’d had that same protective streak ever since you’d known him; your heart could hardly handle the way he worried about his sisters, or any of your friends, let alone when you were the focus of that trait of his. But this weekend was bigger than the two of you and your three-month-long fling with Theodore Caldecott. “Rafe.”

“What?”

“My parents are already stressed, I know Dylan’s gonna be on one, and I just don’t think it’d help if you—”

“Got it,” Rafe sighs. “Best behavior.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he promises. “I solemnly swear I will not kick Sweater Vest’s ass in front of your Grandma DeeDee tonight.”

You giggle, leaning up to lock your arms around his shoulders and kiss him. “My hero.”

“Cut that out.”

“You were quite the topic in the kitchen, you know. Grandma and Aunt Mel said you were very handsome, and EJ’s wife said they didn’t make them like you when she was my age.”

“Please don’t tell EJ that. I like him. And his baby,” Rafe admits. “Can we finally find out what this greenhouse is about?”

Rafe goes to open the door but you stop him with a hand to his chest. “There’s a way to do this.”

You ignore his quirked eyebrow to knock on the door in the correct pattern. The door immediately cracks open and Dylan’s head pops out. “Password?”

“Dylan, come on.”

“Password,” he insists. “We’re keeping shit tight this year, Dale already tried to sneak in.”

You roll your eyes. “Grapefruit.”

“You may enter,” Dylan decides, opening the door wide enough for the two of you to step through.

Grandma DeeDee’s greenhouse was by far your favorite place on the entire property, ever since you were a child. You, EJ, and his sister Tiffany used to follow behind her like lost puppies, helping her tend to all of her plants. EJ eventually got pulled out of the rotation, your grandfather telling him it was time he started shadowing him instead, or playing a sport, or just something that wasn’t so… feminine. So it was just you, Tiffany, and your grandmother after that, and it was where your love for taking care of plants even came from in the first place. It was the one thing you missed the most about coming up here.

But part of why you missed it—you had to admit—was the pre-dinner tradition started by EJ and Tiffany, the two eldest cousins, years and years ago. It was the only place they could think of to sneak booze at family gatherings before being of age, slowly folding in the younger cousins as they grew up.

As of now, it was you Rafe, EJ, Tiffany, who brought her girlfriend, Penny, this time around, Dylan, and your Uncle Zach’s son, Michael. Dale and Ingrid were still too young.

You’d been slightly worried Theo might wander his way out here, like he had a few times before. You distinctly remember the year you were so excited to finally go to the greenhouse. Theo joined the festivities before Thanksgiving dinner your senior year of high school and he brought his new girlfriend. You took three shots in a row.

EJ took one look at you and told Tiffany to help you get upstairs undetected, not wanting to send you to dinner like that. He told everyone you weren’t feeling well before coming upstairs to find Tiffany holding you in her arms while you cried.

“Rafe, give me a boost,” you direct, shaking the memory from your head. “I think there should be something stowed at the back of the top shelf.”

“Uh, yeah,” Rafe says, hurrying to bend at the knee, hands outstretched for you. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Get up, kid,” EJ laughs. “I figured it was time we upgraded from the bottle of gold-flecked vodka we’ve been sipping off of for years.”

He brandishes a new bottle of 1942 from under his coat, Dylan whooping and Tiffany humming in approval.

“Blegh,” Michael says.

“Shut up, Mike,” Dylan says. “You turned seventeen last week, you honestly shouldn’t even be—”

“And we have reason to celebrate tonight,” EJ continues, ignoring both of them. “Because Y/n and Dylan finally made it back and we have two new souls brave enough to face Grandpa Ellis and all of his charms. Rafe and Penny, good fucking luck.”

You and Tiffany both boo EJ for scaring your respective partners (even though he, as the sole married cousin, has the most expertise) but Rafe and Penny just take it all in stride, looping their arms before taking their tequila shots. You stand beside Tiffany, sharing in a feeling of fondness as you watch the two of them settle into the hectic dynamic. A full round is poured and passed around; Rafe cackles at your face as you down your shot, but he has your water bottle ready for you to get the taste out of your mouth as it pinches in disgust.

“Fuckin’ hate tequila,” you whine.

“I know, baby,” Rafe laughs.

“Grow up,” Dylan jeers, already pouring a second round.

Rafe cut himself off after his inaugural shot, but you take one more and are feeling a little buzz as you show him around the greenhouse, pointing at your favorite plants. Rafe nods along eagerly the entire time, a hand on your waist to steady you on the slippery floors. “It’s so humid at home, we should really look into getting some ferns or something.”

“Mm,” Rafe hums, fingers trailing over the plant in question, his touch gentle. “Don’t you think we have enough plants?”

“Absolutely no such thing, RC,” you say.

“Okay, you are cut off at dinner tonight,” Rafe laughs, yanking you right into his chest. “Haven’t even sat down to eat and you’re already calling me RC.”

“Boring,” you tease, struggling in his grip. His fingers dig into your waist, and you remain rooted to your spot. “If you’re gonna make me sober up, I have to tell you something before I lose my confidence.”

“Jesus Christ, what are we, sixteen? You had two shots,” Rafe teases, arms locked around your waist. “Out with it, lightweight. Are you gonna confess your undying love?”

“Haven’t I done that already?”

“Still like hearing it,” he shrugs.

“Alright. I’m in love with you,” you say, watching Rafe’s eyes glaze over in that way that they tend to do sometimes, when you can tell he’s all loved-up. It’s easy for you to tell because you’re usually right there with him. “You’re incredibly easy.”

“Only for you.”

“I really liked seeing you with Kendra,” you blurt. Rafe’s huge grin falls slightly, settling into something softer—a little embarrassed, the tips of his ears turning red and matching the blush blooming on his cheeks. “That’s all.”

“I liked—I liked being with you, and Kendra. A baby,” he admits softly. “So…”

“So.”

“Good. Same page,” Rafe nods. “C’mere. Let me mack on you before I have to sit at a table with your entire family like we didn’t just talk about babies.”

—

Rafe knew the bubble had to burst eventually—knew as much as he wanted to that the two of you couldn’t stay out in the greenhouse forever, soaking up the company of the family you did like. Knew that the two of you had to face the music eventually, knew that he couldn’t just wrap you up in his arms and take you upstairs and listen to more stories about your childhood spent here or tell you how many kids he wanted while he pets your hair and kisses your face and protects you from everything he possibly can.

And he knew Theodore Caldecott was the worst of the worst because anybody who can hurt you like he did has to be. But the absolute gall he possessed had come as a bit of a shock.

“Y/n, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Theo says. Rafe watches his eyes inspect your entire body like he isn’t standing right next to you, clutching your hand—like this isn’t a family affair. “You look… wow. It’s been a while.”

“It has,” you agree quickly. “You’ve met my boyfriend, Rafe, haven’t you?”

Rafe gives him a nod and Theo doesn’t return it, barely taking his eyes off of you for a second. “I have. Been looking all over for you tonight—I’m just dying to catch up.”

“Oh,” you say, your hand twitching in Rafe’s grasp. “Um…”

“We can all catch up at dinner,” Rafe says. His hand slips to the small of your back, nudging you toward the dining room and out of Theo’s line of sight.

But as fate would have it, Rafe takes the seat beside you just as Theo practically slithers into the one across from the two of you. Rafe sees to it that the end of the table with all of the real adults is fully occupied in whatever chatter before his hand grips the bottom of your chair, tugging you as close as possible before his lips drop to your ear. “We agree that the sweater vest is horrible, right?”

“Rafe, stop,” you admonish, still giggling despite yourself while pushing him away by his chest.

“What was that?” Theo asks, leaning over the table.

“Nothing,” Rafe says, scooting your chair a respectable distance away again, keeping his hand locked firmly on your knee, fingers nudged under the napkin covering your lap.

“Y/n,” the woman seated beside Theo says. Her eyes sweep to Rafe, the look in her eyes reminding Rafe a little too much of one he’d get from his father. “Who's this you have with you?”

Your fork clatters to your plate, your free hand slipping to Rafe’s shoulder. “Oh, June. I’m so sorry, this is—”

“That’s her friend, Rafe, mom,” Theo interrupts.

“Boyfriend,” Rafe corrects, narrowing his eyes slightly. Your hand tenses on his shoulder and he clears his throat. “It’s nice to meet you.”

June’s eyebrows raise, her confused stare matching the man’s next to her, who Rafe deduces must be Theo’s father. “Boyfriend? Y/n, your grandfather never mentioned that you were seeing someone.”

“Yes, um,” you start. “We’ve been together for a while now.”

“Hm. How did you two meet? Surely your mother set the two of you up,” she laughs lightly. Rafe looks down at you, his eyes searching.

“D’you wanna tell it?”

You nod, smiling small, just for him. “Yeah. So, we—”

“Must’ve met at school, right?” Theo asks. If he interrupts you one more time, Rafe might not be able to control any kicks under the table.

“No,” you continue, looking back to Rafe. “It’s funny, actually. We’ve been friends since we were kids, but we didn’t actually get together until last summer.”

“You’re from the Outer Banks?” June accuses.

“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Rafe answers. “Born and raised, just like Y/n/n.”

“Huh,” she nods. “Interesting. And what exactly is it that you do?”

Rafe covers a scoff with a sip of wine, looking to you for guidance. Theo and his mother continue to watch the pair of you like hawks, and you just shrug, as if to tell him go ahead. “My father has a real estate development company. I’m helping run finances.”

“Oh. Money guy,” June says, waving a perfectly manicured hand around, looking at you now. “Now I get it.”

“I’m sorry?” Rafe says in confusion. You don’t meet June’s gaze, staring at the table cloth instead. Your hand slips from Rafe’s shoulder and he watches you fiddle with your flatware set, half of your food uneaten.

“Well, it’s just—you know. Last I heard, Y/n was still babysitting for a living,” she chuckles, gesturing toward Rafe again. “So, I mean. Development, finance, it’s lucrative. That makes sense to me, for someone of her caliber.”

Rafe pauses mid-chew, nearly dropping his fork to his plate loud enough to interrupt the entire room. You’ve gone completely quiet beside him, the only point of contact he has with you his touch on your knee where it shakes under the table. Rafe looks to see if anyone around him heard how this woman, this woman he doesn’t even know, just spoke to you—to see if anyone will come to your defense. Everyone seems to be preoccupied but the two of you and the Caldecotts. “I—I don’t know what you mean…”

“What a charming southern gentleman you are, Rafe,” the woman smiles, her tone dripping in condescension. “It’s alright, I’m sure it’s nothing Y/n hasn’t heard before. We can dare to be realistic here.”

It’s not, Rafe thinks. It’s not alright and it’s not nothing you haven’t heard before. It’s something you’ve heard from everyone around you, for nearly your entire life. It’s the same sentiment planted in your head by your parents when you were a girl, tended to over time by guys like Theo and your other ex, Frederick, and apparently their horrible parents, too.

A soft nudge to his shin from under the table interrupts that line of thought, however, Dylan glaring at Rafe from across the table. He raises his eyebrows in expectation.

“Actually,” Rafe says a little loudly, his fork falling from his hand. He’s like a rope about to snap and he figures Dylan’s permission is all he needs at this moment. He drapes an arm over the back of your chair and you look at him in panic, shaking your head. Rafe will apologize to you later if he has to, but he can’t sit here and mind his Ps and Qs anymore. “Y/n’s kicking ass right now. She’s working in publishing and editorial, so she could go wherever she wants from here. Her boss said an acquisition editor at her publishing house is actually retiring soon, and the spot is practically Y/n’s as soon as she wants it.”

Rafe had been looking at you the entire time he was speaking, but he turns to look at Theo and his mother momentarily, feeling a small sense of satisfaction—alright, maybe not that small—at the dumbstruck look on both of their faces.

“Y/n works extremely hard. She’d be fine on her own, completely fine,” Rafe emphasizes, looking back down at you. He wants you to hear these words just as much as he wants them to, probably more. “But somehow, I got lucky enough to convince her I’m worth the time of day.”

Theo and his mother are silent after that but Rafe hardly cares, isn’t paying attention to anyone but you. The way your mouth gapes as you gaze up at him.

“Publishing?” Theo finally says. “That’s great, Y/n. You never… you never told me anything about that.”

“Very promising,” June agrees, visibly sizing you up with a gleam in her eye. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah,” you shrug. “I like it a lot, so.”

“Y/n/n,” EJ interrupts from the other end of the table, wiping Rafe’s encouragement for you to stop being so humble right off of his lips. He’d tell you later; he’ll never grow tired of praising you alone or in front of an audience. “You’re up. It’s your turn to go get more wine.”

“I can go,” Rafe immediately offers, but your cousin shuts him down.

“Rafe’s a guest. Y/n, go,” he says.

You sigh but nod, standing from the table. You start to make your way out of the room but stop mid-step, leaning over the back of Rafe’s chair, your hands on his shoulders and your lips pressed to his cheek in a quick peck. Your lips move to his ear and Rafe feels goosebumps bloom all the way down his arms, his shirt collar suddenly feeling unbearably tight. “My hero.”

Rafe’s sure nobody could hear it besides him but Dylan still gags at the display, and Rafe catches a Theo eye roll before craning his neck to watch you leave the room with a smile, shaking his head and hiding a grin as his chin tucks to his chest. The victorious feeling quickly leaves his body as June continues watching him curiously.

“Theodore,” she speaks, a smile spreading on her face. “We’re hardly guests here. Why don’t you go see if Y/n needs help in the wine cellar?”

—

Normally, you hate the walk down to the wine cellar in your grandparents’ house. The corridors are long, it’s usually pretty chilly down there—more often than not you forced Dylan to go in your place. He never brought back the right wine and it usually caused a headache but you didn’t mind, as long as you didn’t have to go yourself.

This time, however, you don’t particularly mind the trip. That dining room was beginning to suffocate you, and you might’ve jumped Rafe’s bones if you were in his vicinity any longer after that display. Thinking back to Rafe defending you to June brings an embarrassing heat to your cheeks, your hand covering your smile even though nobody is around to tease you for it. If you could tear your eyes away from your lover for even a second, you would’ve killed to see the look on Theo’s mom’s face.

Footsteps echo in the doorway of the cobblestone cellar, and your smile grows as you realize Rafe had followed you down.

“Was wondering if you’d find a way to sneak down here anyway,” you say, not turning around as you continue to survey your grandfather’s extensive collection.

“Not sure what the little boyfriend would think of that insinuation, Y/n.”

You turn around so fast you nearly make your neck ache, your eyes landing on Theo, not your boyfriend.

It’s strange—the few times you’d seen Theo since that summer had at their worst brought you to tears and at their best still stirred up a deep-rooted anxiety. But this time you felt next to nothing but a little annoyance. Theo was being Theo, but you weren’t bothered by it because your boyfriend was slotting in perfectly with your cousins, he was holding your niece with hands more careful than you’d ever seen, he was roughhousing with your brother and kneeling in the gravel to play with your dog. Rafe stood tall against the Caldecotts’ jabs toward him and even taller against the ones toward you.

A summer fling that broke your seventeen-year-old heart was nothing more than a slight irritation—a mosquito buzzing around you, Rafe readily batting it away.

“Theo, I’m sorry. Thought you were Rafe for a second. My mistake,” you apologize.

“Figured,” Theo smiles, that big toothy grin. “Could you use some help?”

“It’s just a bottle. I’m fine,” you tell him, returning to the rows of wine.

“Ah, come on, Y/n/n.” You flinch at the nickname only your loved ones call you—it feels wrong falling off of his lips. “You know this crew could put a vineyard out of business.”

“You’re free to grab one, too,” you compromise. “I’m gonna grab a white if you wanna pick out a red.”

“You were crazy for chardonnay back in the day, weren’t you?” Theo asks, sidling up to you. He’s a little close for comfort and you lean out of his space, pretending to look at a different row of wines.

“Chard’s too dry. S’fine, but not my favorite,” you conclude. “More into rieslings, always have been.”

“Ah, of course. A sweet wine for a sweet girl,” Theo says fondly. You remain silent at his compliment but that only emboldens him. “You know, I dropped everything in the city and drove right over when I heard you were coming up this weekend.”

Your hand falters where it was feeling over a label, and you turn to look at him slowly. He’s leaned up against a pillar with his arms crossed over his chest, and you realize he’s blocking your path to the doorway. “Why would you do that?”

“Don’t seem so surprised,” he laughs. "You don’t think I came all the way out here just to see Grandpa Ellis, did you?”

“No, it’s just… well. We haven’t spoken in, god—two, three years?” your mind races, trying to remember. Trying to piece together what your ex-boyfriend-who-never-called-himself-your-boyfriend is even getting at.

“Has it been that long?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed. He shakes his head after a second. “Well, nevertheless. I dunno, guess I missed you.”

“Well—hey, um. I heard about your engagement, Theo,” you say, going for a subject change and blurting the first thing that came to mind. He recoils visibly, gnawing on his bottom lip and raising his eyebrows at a spot on the floor. “I really am sorry. I’m sure that can’t be easy.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Theo says, his stare heavy when he returns his gaze to you. You almost feel bad for him; a part of you might always care for the boy you used to be friends with before he turned into the teenager that broke your heart and the man he is now. “Was for the best in the end, I think.”

You don’t like the way Theo’s looking at you, or the way his tone echos how he used to speak to you once so you turn back to the task at hand, settling on a random bottle. “I think this one’s fine. If you wanna pick a bottle we can head back up to dinner.”

“They won’t miss us,” Theo says, pushing off the pillar and walking to the side of the cellar lined with pinot noirs and cabernets. “So, didn’t think nouveau-riche was really your type, Y/n.”

“What?” you ask, your mouth going dry.

“Development, seriously? He’s practically blue-collar,” Theo muses, chuckling to himself even though nothing he just said was funny.

“Are you—do you mean Rafe?”

“Yes, I mean Rafe,” he parrots, saying his name like it tastes like acid in his mouth. “Sure your parents love this little rebellion streak you’ve got going. When do you think you’ll settle down with someone serious?”

“Respectfully, Theo, don’t talk about my boyfriend like that,” you bite out, gripping your selected bottle tightly and making a break for the door. “I’ll see you back up there.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he rushes, blocking your path again. “I didn’t—fuck, Y/n. I’ve never known how to talk when it comes to you.”

“What exactly is there to talk about?”

Theo lets out a laugh, hands shoved into his pockets. “After all this time, you still make me nervous.”

“Theo,” you speak slowly, confusion settling in for good. “What are you—”

“You know, I hated the way we left things all of those years ago,” Theo admits, stealing the air from your lungs as he actually goes there. Not once since that summer had he even acknowledged that the two of you were anything romantic, not in front of anyone else and not when you were alone. And here he was, five years and a failed engagement later. “I was a stupid kid, Y/n.”

You wince in realization. “You’re not serious, Theo… you mean when we—”

“When we were in love,” Theo interrupts, stepping slightly closer. “God. Saying it like it’s past tense makes it seem so sad, doesn’t it?”

“Theo, that’s… still past tense for me. I haven’t even—we were kids, like you just said,” you say.

“But I never apologized to you for that, Y/n,” he speaks softly. “You know, I can still picture that day I left the Outer Banks. You were wearing that pink sweater.”

You weren’t wearing a pink sweater. You weren’t wearing a sweater at all—it was summer in North Carolina, your daily uniform was a sundress or cut-off shorts. The dress you wore that night wasn’t pink either. It was white. You spent thirty minutes picking out what you thought would be the dress you wore when Theo asked you to make it official.

“Ancient history, Theo,” you say, voice wavering slightly against your will with the weight of the recalled memory.

“Is it, though? Don’t tell me that you’ve never thought about trying things again, now that we’re older,” Theo probes.

You nearly gawk at him, wondering if he hit his head on the way down the stairs. “No, considering my boyfriend is literally sitting down the hall right now. And we’re only here because we were taking a weekend trip together. From which, we’ll go home to our house, that we live in together.”

Theo laughs again, but it’s not friendly. He’s laughing at you. Five-year-old memories slowly unearth themselves in your mind, the way he’s talking down to you feeling uncomfortably familiar. Except for this time, he’s telling you the complete opposite of what he did then. And it’s still not what you want to hear. “You know you’re only wasting your time playing house with a guy like that. Now that I think about it, I remember seeing that kid around, always hanging with those two other idiots. God, what even were their names—”

“Those idiots are my friends,” you warn.

Theo raises his hands in surrender, still smiling fondly like he knows a secret you don’t.

“You’ve changed a lot since we were kids, Y/n,” he says.

“And you’re still an asshole,” you spit. “Who do you think you are, Theo? You walked out on us, not me.”

“I was a stupid kid, Y/n. Please,” he rolls his eyes.

“I was a kid, too, Theo. And you still ripped my heart out because you thought I wasn’t… good enough for you? You had this whole picture of me—”

“Was I wrong?” he gestures wildly. “Aren’t you right back in your hometown, with that arm candy you have sitting out there? Surprised he hasn’t tried to knock you up yet, and I don’t see a ring on that finger.”

“Stop fucking interrupting me. And stop talking about Rafe,” you warn, the hand not holding the wine bottle now poking a finger into his chest. He tries to grab your hand and you yank it away.

“You know you don’t have to settle for that guy, Y/n,” Theo says, almost sounding like he’s begging at this point. “We, on the other hand, would be great together.”

“This isn’t happening,” you say, hand clutching your forehead like you have to be crazy. “You’re not actually saying this to me right now.”

“You can’t honestly believe that your little high school sweetheart can give you everything you expect,” Theo says in exasperation. “This should be easy Y/n, I mean. He’s got you trapped in that podunk lagoon—where are the opportunities for you? I have so many connections I could—”

Everything slowly starts to slide into place and the end of his sentence tapers off in your ears. “Is that—so that’s what this is? I went and made something of myself, and after all this time I’m finally worthy of you? Literally fuck you, Theo.”

“You wound me, love,” Theo says. His cocky smile slips into one that’s a bit softer, but you can still see right through his brown eyes, even after all of these years. “You’re feistier now, what happened to my sweet girl?”

“You broke my heart,” you whisper. “You broke my heart, and then I grew up.”

“Y/n, don’t you see?” he whispers back, stepping closer to you. His hand reaches toward your face and you take a huge step back, your back bumping into the cold wall of the back of the wine cellar, holding the bottle in between the two of you like a barrier. “It’s always been you, love.”

“This is all I wanted to hear from you five years ago in that guest house, you know that?” you whisper, searching his face for any sign of sincerity. He could fool you back then but he can’t fool you now. You let Rafe into your heart a summer ago and you’d only known true love since then. It was deeper and it was more real than anything you ever thought Theo had made you feel. “But I’m glad I didn’t. Because giving you a chance would’ve been the worst mistake of my life. I’d be miserable, for one. And I wouldn’t have Rafe.”

“Dammit, Y/n,” he swears. “Your grandfather loves me, Y/n. He’d love us together.”

Theo’s not smart enough to get into law school but he shouldn’t be stupid enough to think your grandfather would love anything about you being a career woman any more than your mother would—some status symbol Theo and his family seemed to desperately cling too. Some mold that he and June thought you could finally fit into, seeing something in you tonight that they hadn’t before. Your dad had passed on the family business and Grandpa Ellis skipped right over Aunt Mel, letting Uncle Zach and Charles duke it out.

“Theo, I loved us together. Five years ago, and then you—you know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Get out of my way.”

You push Theo out of your way and he stumbles backward immediately, clearing your path to the doorway and causing you to sigh in relief. You’re almost home free but something inside you causes you to turn around, for that teenage girl inside you that would’ve died to hear these words years ago—who didn’t realize she had everything she could’ve wanted right in front of her already and was throwing her heart around to anything that would catch it so she didn’t have to face the truth. “And for the record, I’m not settling for Rafe. Rafe has always been it for me, Theo.”

“Don’t be dumb, Y/n—”

“Thought I wasn’t dumb. Remember?” you say coldly, throwing his words back at him. But of course nothing you say even registers; you were nothing but a blip on his radar and he was once a villain in your life story.

“What are you even talking about, Y/n?”

“I tried to play this nicely with you, I really did,” you say shakily, feeling the anger turning into hot tears behind your eyes because how dare he. How dare he act like he’s been harboring this grand love from you when he had a girlfriend three months after he let you go, while you spent months crying on Kelce and Margot and trying to work through what he put you through. When he was off getting engaged while you were fighting with Rafe because of feelings Theo was the first one to ever make you feel. When he was standing here lying to your face about how much you meant to him, that desperate to cling to something that would make him look good because he couldn’t do that for himself. “But you’re fucking pathetic. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

You turn to leave again but not even a second later an iron grip encircles your wrist and you’re pulled harshly back into the room. “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you, Y/n. I just wanna—”

The tears break your waterline at the feeling, and they blur your vision where you look up at him, not recognizing the boy before you at all anymore as your arm struggles against his grip. He’s desperate, grasping at this past relationship that never really existed in the same way in his mind. But he knows how it existed in yours, and his life didn’t turn out how he thought it would and now he’s taking advantage of your heart then and trying to take advantage of your heart now. “Theo, get off, y-you’re hurting me.”

You think you begin to see some semblance of remorse flicker in his eyes, his grip loosening slightly, but it’s all a blur because another body is ripping his touch from your completely, a tall figure pushing Theo back and away from you until he’s not even breathing the same air, his back pressed into the wall like yours had been only minutes ago.

“I swear to god, I ever see you put your fucking hands on her again—”

“Oh, you’ll what, tough guy?”

Rafe practically growls, the arm he has shoved across Theo’s collarbones pressing in harder. “I will kick your ass back to the fucking city.”

“Aw, not in front of dear Grandma DeeDee, Rafe,” Theo taunts, right back to his usual snide self.

“I don’t care who’s around, you prick,” your boyfriend mutters. “You don’t. Fucking. Touch her.”

You realize then you need to spring into action before this escalates any further, testosterone absolutely raging in this room. Your feet move you forward and you grab onto Rafe’s shirt sleeve, tugging on his free hand. “Rafe, don’t—”

Theo shifts his focus back to you, smirking again, that lost and vulnerable boy completely gone. “Let the men talk, sweet—”

“No. You don’t talk to her like that, you don’t talk to her ever,” Rafe protests, leaving no room for disagreement with the way he has Theo pinned. “Don’t call her anything. Don’t even look at her. I mean it, you fucking rat. You even breathe in her direction and I will make you so fucking sorry you ever stepped foot on my island in the first place, got it?”

Theo feigns amusement but you see the way he actively struggles against Rafe’s arm, your boyfriend’s tricep flexing where he’d rolled up the sleeve of the nice white shirt you’d picked for him tonight. “Oh, come on—”

“Got it?” Rafe repeats, leaning into him further. “Good.”

“You’re messing with years of history here, Rafe,” Theo goads. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I do, actually,” Rafe says.

“Well then I’m sure Y/n here gave you the dramatic version of whatever happened between us,” he says, looking over at you once again. Rafe follows his eyes and steps to the side, blocking you from his line of sight. “I remember your neighborhood having an affinity for gossip.”

“My girlfriend doesn’t really tend to lie. Or speak badly of people who don’t deserve it, so,” Rafe says definitively.

“Right, my mistake.”

Your boyfriend scoffs in his face, laughing like he doesn’t even deserve the time of day. And he doesn’t—which reminds you that you should probably be trying to tug Rafe away, but you’re frozen to the spot watching the exchange, still clutching your bottle of wine. “You’re—yeah. You’re right, your mistake. Your mistake ever treating her like that, or ever letting her go.”

“Well that worked out for you, though, didn’t it?”

“This isn’t about me,” Rafe growls, pushing into him again. “I know I don’t deserve her, but it’s not because I think I’m better than her. It’s actually the opposite, and I’ll be damned if I ever pull something as stupid as you did because I’m too much of a fucking idiot to realize how lucky I am. She makes me better. And she would’ve made you better too. But you don’t get to try again just because she proved you wrong.”

Theo has the wherewithal to appear sheepish at that, and you turn away as their voices quiet. “Guess I was wrong about her, huh?”

“Dead wrong,” Rafe agrees. “Dead fucking wrong. If you somehow don’t end up alone for the rest of your sorry life, I’m seriously praying for whoever has to put up with you. But it won’t be my girlfriend.”

Theo’s last wise-crack is lost on you because suddenly Rafe is letting him off the wall and then he’s all-encompassing, arms around you guiding and pulling you out of the room, whisking you away with a soft but firm touch that your body still welcomes even in its state of shock after everything that just occurred. “Rafe, I—he—you—”

“I know, baby, hold on,” he says, leading you further and further away until he’s pushing open a side door and leading you outside. His tone had gone completely soft again.

“But, wait. The dinner, Rafe—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Rafe,” you say, the panic returning to your body, picturing your parents awkwardly explaining where the three of you have gone, fielding accusations from Grandpa Ellis who will only turn it into some thing about how misbehaved your dad’s kids are. “We can’t just leave.”

“Everyone moved on to dessert in the parlor, Y/n,” he explains, finally facing you in the glow of a crackling outdoor fire pit on one of the side patios. “Nobody’s gonna notice we’re even gone, alright? You’re fine, sweetheart. I promise. Now, will you let me look at you?”

Rafe doesn’t await confirmation as he cups your face in his hands, turning you to-and-fro, eyes appraising. His hands fall to your shoulders, brushing along your neck and then sliding down your arms, where he goes for your right arm, gently holding your wrist. You realize a beat late that he’s checking you for injuries. “Rafe, he didn’t—he was just holding my arm.”

“God fucking dammit,” Rafe bites out, scrubbing a hand over his face, fingers carding through his hair and mussing up his once-gelled strands. “I knew I should’ve followed him down there. If I ever see that kid again, I swear to god I—”

You’ve nearly tuned out Rafe’s irateness, studying the wine bottle you’re somehow still holding in your hand instead. When you went to get it, you were so happy and now you were a mess, mind racing with thoughts you thought you’d quieted over the years. You fail to notice Rafe had cut his rant short, going quiet as he simply watched you. He slowly tugs the bottle out of your hand, resting it on the outdoor settee in front of the fire.

“Are you okay?”

You furrow your eyebrows, which forces more tears out of your eyes—you hadn’t stopped crying. “What? I just told you… I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me.”

“No,” he shakes his head. His thumb wipes away some tears but it’s useless because they’re practically relentless at this point, flowing rapidly of their own will. “I don’t mean just that, Y/n/n. You’re crying—you were down there for so long… what did he say to you, sweet girl?”

It’s the nickname that causes the first sob to break in your chest, hearing it right after Theo had asked where his sweet girl had gone. You weren’t his anymore, and you hardly even were to begin with, but somehow you still let him get to you after all of these years.

“Rafe, i-it, I—”

Rafe slowly pulls you into his chest as you go temporarily speechless with your cries, pressing his lips to your hair for a long moment. “Tell me everything.”

—

In front of the fire and wrapped up in his arms, Rafe finally coaxes the entire Theo story out of you. Start to finish, summer to fall. It’s long-winded because he has to drag admissions out of you and simply wait you out when things get hard, but Rafe’s grateful because if he has even a millisecond to let his mind wander, he’d find himself busy scouring the entire property for the boy that thinks he gets to throw your heart away and then go looking for it again. Thinks he can put his hands on you, on any girl, when he thinks nobody is around to see. Like Rafe hadn’t been anxiously and impatiently waiting at the table until EJ finally caught on and then threw him a bone, announcing to the table he’d send Rafe to check on you so he wasn’t causing any eyebrows to raise at his untimely exit. The scene he saw in the wine cellar haunts him even though he swears he blacked out as soon as he heard ‘you’re hurting me’ from just down the hall. Rafe could kill him.

“I could kill him.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” you say, and Rafe loves that after everything he got a smile out of you without even trying. You could smile if you thought it was a joke but Rafe meant every word. “Your island, huh?”

Rafe blushes at words hurled in the heat of the moment. “As long as you’re on it.”

“Hey, thank—”

“Y/n Y/m/n,” he interrupts. “I know you’re not about to thank me for that.”

You purse your lips and shrug, Rafe admiring the now dry skin on your cheeks where they glow in the fire. “Whatever.”

“Whatever,” he mocks. “But I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

“It was fine, honestly,” you say. “You don’t scare me, you know?”

“I used to though, didn’t I?” he asks quietly.

You tilt your head in confusion. “What—when you used to get in those little fights in high school?”

Rafe winces, nodding nonetheless. “Yeah. Thought you didn’t like that.”

“I didn’t. I was scared you’d get hurt or something. But you’ve never scared me, ever,” you emphasize. “Not like that anyway.”

“Like what then?” he presses.

“Rafe,” you groan. “We’ve been heart-to-hearting all day, give me a break. I beg.”

“Humor me. I deserve a reward for not punching that guy.”

“You know what I’m talking about,” you accuse, tucking your face into his shirt. “I don’t think I would’ve let a guy like Theo have a hold on me like that if I didn’t see him as a one-way ticket out of my feelings for you.”

Regret overwhelms Rafe, even though he knows in his bones he was never ready to love you back then. He doubts himself from time to time these days, but he knows he’s come a long way from the stupid seventeen-year-old kid who was still kind of a jerk, who had absolutely no business handling a heart like yours.

“Should’ve just told you I liked you when I knew,” he confesses anyway. “Maybe I could’ve saved you from all this bullshit.”

“When did you know?” you wonder softly, your eyes searching in a way that makes Rafe feel like you’re inspecting his soul.

“Uh…” he trails off. “Well, I really missed you that summer, Y/n/n. A lot, and I don’t think I knew it then but it wasn’t just like, a friend thing. But then you weren’t you anymore, at least for a bit.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “I get it. I don’t think I would’ve liked me either back then.”

“No,” Rafe blurts, because you’re misunderstanding him completely. “No, I mean. I missed you still. Because you were back but you weren’t. And then the shirt thing happened and I was just a complete fucking goner. Knew I loved you at prom, though.”

“Shirt thing?”

“You wore my shirt to my state game, and you had my number painted on your cheek,” Rafe recalls, his forefinger brushing over where the blue and white paint had been five years ago. “And then I thought, ‘well. maybe…’ But you were still sad and I felt weird just because you were you, and then you told me you got into school in California, and… well. Yeah.”

Your silent but your eyes dance with mirth and Rafe recoils, sitting up a little straighter.

“What?”

“Then I beat you,” you tease.

“What do you mean you beat me?”

“I’ve liked you since you started dating Chloe. I win,” you declare.

“Now hold on. No, I—no, that doesn’t—do you not remember Midsummers sophomore year? Or the frog in eighth grade? Or fuck, Y/n/n, when I let you borrow my entire Harry Potter collection in fourth grade? You know I didn’t even own them yet, I’ve told you this, haven’t I? You asked Topper for his and he said no so I begged my dad to buy me them as an early birthday gift and I binged them in a week just so we could talk—you’re the fucking worst, you know that?”

You erupt into full-on laughter after stifling giggles for his entire speech, tumbling forward into his chest. “Oh my god, y-you—you’re so fucking cute.”

“Fuck you, Y/l/n. Seriously,” Rafe grumbles, his fingers digging into your ribs. “I was first.”

“So competitive,” you laugh. “And yet you still couldn’t even give me a hint that you liked me first.”

“I thought I was pretty obvious,” Rafe protests. “Not my fault you were so oblivious—we could’ve been dating for half a decade by this point.”

You settle down back into his chest, hands intertwining with his where it rests around your shoulders. You tug his rings off and start slipping them onto your own fingers, making Rafe’s heart skip a beat when you slip the one he’d inherited from his late grandfather onto your ring finger. “I don’t know if I was ready for you in high school, Rafe. I still had so much to learn—clearly, because I still thought you just wanted to hook up with me when you asked me out.”

“Stroked your ego a bit though, didn’t it?” Rafe says, his hand closing over yours so you can’t take the ring off yet. You turn and look back up at him, beaming.

“Maybe a little.”

“I don’t know how we would’ve done four entire years long distance,” Rafe says. “A year nearly killed me.”

“You visited like every other weekend. And we went home all the time.”

“Nearly killed me,” he repeats.

“Y’know—I hate it when you say you don’t deserve me or that you’re not good enough for me.”

Rafe’s smile falls slowly, the rush of your flirtations evaporating. “What?”

“In front of me or in front of anyone else. Hate it,” you whisper, burrowing further into his chest.

“I’m sorry, but I mean…”

“You’re about to do it again,” you chide, raising your eyebrows. Rafe doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything, leaning into your touch when you run a hand through his hair. “You rented my car, and you brought my grandmother her favorite flowers. You tore me open when I was acting cagey ‘cause you knew I needed the push, and then you just listened to me. You let me cry about some stupid guy who I hardly even think about anymore, and you protected me but you didn’t cause a scene because I asked you not to.”

Rafe still doesn’t think he’ll ever see himself through your eyes, but this is one of those moments where he’s really trying. It’s hard for him because he can’t imagine ever not doing those things for you because they’re not easy things but they’re easy for him because he loves you. But there’s this work involved, and he knows you work to love him but that’s different because Rafe knows he’s harder to love. And you shouldn’t ever feel like anyone is good enough for you but he’s realizing it isn’t that simple, and it’s neither of your faults but that’s just how it is.

You put it simply, anyway. “You’re my guy, Rafe. I choose you. Always.”

“How have the two of you not frozen to death yet?”

Rafe turns his head to see the cousins bundled up and heading your way, Tiffany holding a blanket that she drapes over the two of you before she settles with Penny on one of the couches across from you two. You immediately tuck your left hand under the blanket and out of sight, but you don’t remove Rafe’s ring.

“You guys missed dessert,” EJ announces, his wife Beth under his arm. “But someone brought you some anyway, right bud?”

“Here you go,” Noah says, placing a brownie directly in Rafe’s lap, the napkin he lays on top mostly likely meant to go under. You giggle into his chest and Rafe can’t help but smile.

“Thanks, Noah,” he says, sending Noah to sit in his dad’s lap next to Penny. Dylan eventually joins the party too, bringing Wilbur in tow, who prances right up to Rafe and immediately begs for crumbs. “Is Kendra asleep?”

“Yeah,” Beth sighs. “Ingrid’s watching her.”

“Caldecotts just left,” Dylan says softly, only loud enough for you and Rafe to hear over the crackle of the fire. “I watched them go.”

“Thanks, Dyl,” you say quietly, and your brother rolls his eyes. Rafe can see right through the feigned arrogance of a nineteen-year-old boy who still pretended he didn’t outwardly love his older sister. But his eyes flicker to Rafe then and he just nods in recognition before sitting on your other side, and Rafe will let him get away with it.

Because you’re finally, completely relaxed against him now, surrounded by your family and their loved ones while Theo is long gone, your hands still intertwined underneath the blanket Tiffany brought you two.

And neither of you can stop fiddling with the ring on your left hand.

—

Rafe triple checks that you’re soundly sleeping before leaving the guest room you’d been given for the night, tip-toeing down the stairs and to the kitchen, far enough away from where everyone’s asleep as not to disturb anyone.

He’d taken you up to bed after catching your third stifled yawn, and you’d been practically boneless by the time Rafe had finished brushing his teeth and came to join you under the covers. “You know it’s not him right? I don’t love him, and I don’t even like him.”

“I know.”

“It’s just hard being back here, being around all of this,” you clarified, your eyes drooping heavily. “But it’s easier with you here, I think.”

And then you’d rolled over and gone to sleep. He’d laid with you for probably fifteen minutes just doing the thing he does when you can sleep and he can’t yet—holding you and trying not to spend too much time just thinking about how lucky he is—before he finally extricated himself and made the trek downstairs that he’d been dreading all day.

The phone rings three times before his dad picks up, muttering a gruff greeting. “Rafe, it’s late.”

“I know, dad,” he cringes, reading the time on the oven’s clock display. “I’m sorry for getting back to you so late—it’s just been busy over here.”

They discuss the business-related things that Ward had been emailing him about all day, which really were things that could’ve gone through Rafe’s other boss or literally anyone else in his department, but such is Rafe’s life.

“I need that Monday, Rafe.”

Rafe lets out a sigh, already picturing you pouting when he was to log some hours on the last day of your trip. But he saw you slip your own work computer into your carry-on when you thought he wasn’t looking, so it looks like neither of you could fully make good on your promise to unplug this weekend. After everything that happened today though, Rafe craves the normalcy, the sheer mundanity of the two of you across a table from each other tapping away at your respective keyboards. Refilled cups of coffee and kicks in his shins when you get bored—it sounds like a dream. “Yeah, you got it.”

“Good,” Ward says. “You said you’re busy up there?”

“Uh, yeah,” Rafe says. “Just meeting the family and all that.”

“How’d it go?” his father asks, taking Rafe completely by surprise.

“It was hard,” Rafe admits, taking himself even more by surprise. “It’s a lot, dad. They’re… yeah. It’s intense up here, but I think I did alright.”

You’d told him that he did. You told him he was your guy. And that you choose him. Always.

“Well, bud,” Ward says, heaving his own sigh. “Can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, I told you it’d be this way with her, didn’t I?”

How silly of Rafe to even dare get to a vulnerable place with his dad, like he’d comfort him or something. “Yeah. You did.”

“Hm,” Ward hums. “Well, see you when you get back. And don’t forget to get that in Monday, alright?”

“Yeah, dad,” Rafe whispers. “Bye.”

The line clicks and Rafe stays leaned up against the kitchen counter for a second, honestly just feeling sorry for himself. Not even kicking himself for being stupid, but letting himself feel sad that this is how things were for him, because you’d always told him that it was okay if he did that.

Not even a hang in there or a cheer up, bud. Just a goodbye and one last reminder about work.

“Everything alright in here, son?”

He stands up straight again when your father enters the kitchen in his pajamas, heading straight for the fridge. “Um, yeah. I was just—”

“Do you want a sandwich, Rafe? I saw you skip out on dinner early tonight,” William says, already pulling ingredients out.

“You don’t have to—sure,” Rafe decides, dare his rumbling stomach give him away.

“PB&J?”

“Perfect.”

Your dad makes small talk while he makes two sandwiches, sliding the first one over to Rafe on a paper towel. “I’d tell you to bring one up to Y/n, but I’m willing to bet she’s asleep if she let you out of her sight.”

Rafe blushes as he polishes off his first half, nodding guiltily. “Yeah, she’s down for the count. Had to come make a phone call.”

“Everything alright?” William asks, setting both knives in the sink before taking a seat across from Rafe at the kitchen island.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Just work stuff,” Rafe explains, not putting much thought into it.

“How are things with the old man?”

“Fine,” Rafe says immediately. “Yeah. Fine. Same old.”

“So not fine?”

“Mr. Y/l/n, look. You don’t—”

“Rafe, I think after today there should be no doubt in your mind that I’m familiar with what you go through,” William points out, looking up from his own PB&J. “Very familiar. It’s okay.”

Rafe’s cheek falls into his fist where his arm props him up against the counter, and he’s really starting to feel the travel day wearing on him, now that he thinks about it. “Right. I’m sorry again for bringing this on. I didn’t know Y/n’s mom would go to all this trouble when I mentioned it.”

William rolls his eyes much the same way you do when Rafe finds himself unable to stop apologizing, waving the hand holding his sandwich in dismissal. “It’s fine. Gotta do it every now and then. Come suffer through a visit with the family, and then go back to your perfect little life. And Kendra’s about cute as hell, isn’t she?”

“She is,” Rafe agrees, feeling himself smile. “Can I ask you something, though?”

“Rafe,” your dad warns. “My daughter is only twenty-two. I know you’re not letting my dad get in your head about marriage this early.”

“No, god—no. I—Mr. Y/l/n, it’s not that.” Not yet.

“Then I’m all ears,” William says, seemingly giddy at Rafe’s panic. God, you were so much like him. That familiarity is what finally pushes Rafe’s thoughts out of his head and into the air between them.

“How’d you do it?”

William narrows his eyes. “What?”

Rafe clears his throat, setting the second half of his sandwich back down on the paper towel. His fingers tap on the marble for a second before he gestures to the kitchen around him, and the house in general. “How’d you get out of all of this? The business, your family—you got away from it all, didn’t you?”

Your dad hums in recognition, shrugging his shoulders.

“Huh. Well, easy one,” he says, dropping his uneaten crust to his own paper towel, brushing his hands together so any residual crumbs fall onto the paper towel. “I fell in love.”

“Wait, what?”

“Not what you expected to hear from your girlfriend’s mean old dad, huh?” William quips.

“Honestly? No,” Rafe admits. “And you’re not mean, by the way.”

“The Y/l/ns have been vacationing in the OBX for years, Rafe. It’s how I met Shan in the first place. Back when I was a lowly touron,” William says. A fond grin graces his features, and Rafe realizes that he really isn’t kidding.

“And…?”

“And that was her home, it’s where she wanted to be,” your dad explains. “I loved her and I wanted her home to be mine, too. The business part was easy—I never liked it. And Shannon was the perfect reason to just say fuck everything else, excuse my language.”

“Wow,” Rafe breathes. “Wow—no, yeah. Excused.”

“And I did all of that,” William continues. “And it wasn’t easy and things are still hard sometimes, but now you get to date my daughter because of it. ‘Cause I chose my wife.”

“Wasn’t there a fallout? Y’know, with your folks and everything?” Rafe asks.

“Oh yeah. Nuclear.”

“Shit—sorry, fuck. Sorry,” Rafe repeats, mouth gaping at his own actions.

“But we moved on,” your dad continues, paying Rafe’s outburst no mind. “I know you’ve seen a different side of me this weekend, Rafe. But I love my life. I love my wife and my kids are awesome—I don’t regret the choice I made one bit and I never will. Because as much as it was for them, it was for me, too.”

Rafe nods in stunned silence, picking up his sandwich to eat again. “Thanks for telling me that.”

“Anytime,” William says, patting Rafe’s shoulder on the way to the fridge for a bottle of water. “How is my daughter, by the way?”

“She’s good,” Rafe says, and he feels like he isn’t lying, not at all. Because he knows you’re good, because he made you good.

Your father turns on his way out of the kitchen to address Rafe one last time. “Alright. And you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You, Rafe. How are you?”

“I’m good, too.”

—

You just about keel over in adoration watching Rafe bid your entire family goodbye the next morning, from the way he flinches at your grandpa’s shoulder pat, to the blush that consumes his entire neck when your grandma kisses his cheek and makes him promise to give her the name of the florist he used for her arrangement. Noah’s in the running with Wilbur for who seems most upset to see him go, although you can’t say you feel the least bit guilty when you finally get him back to yourself in the car.

He’d offered to drive this time around, rolling down his window and waving goodbye one last time, committing to EJ that he won’t be a stranger anymore and shooting Penny a thumbs-up in solidarity. What had really caught your eye was the way your dad had hugged him, giving him a look you’d only ever seen for Dylan. This entire weekend was a lot, but Rafe was perfect—of course they all loved him.

“Ah,” you sigh as soon as Rafe drives off of the property. “We did it. Nobody died.”

“Drama,” Rafe sings, smacking your thigh lightly.

“Oh, the family meeting expert has returned, has he?” you jest, thinking back to Rafe’s cockiness the first time he met your parents and could tell they were head over heels for him.

“Never left,” Rafe says, still adjusting his seat and mirrors from your much shorter view as a driver. “But yeah, we did do it. You did it.”

“And now we have forty-three hours left of our first ever weekend away together,” you say, trying not to sound defeated. “Yay.”

“Oh no, this one doesn’t count either,” Rafe laughs. “We’re getting a do-over ASAP.”

“Are we?”

“I was thinking like, Wyoming. Unless there’s some oil heir out there I don’t know about that can’t seem to get over you.”

“No, he’s in Montana. We’re good,” you joke, leaning over the center console to kiss your boyfriend’s cheek. You slink down into your seat as he pulls onto the highway and sets the cruise control, his hand slipping to your knee when he can steady the wheel. You grab his hand, thumb stroking over his knuckles, wearing all of their proper rings once again. “I know it was a little much, and we had to deal with Theo, but. Thank you for coming with me, seriously. We can plan that do-over when we get back, yeah?”

“I’d go anywhere with you.”

“Well, I’d hope so. Seeing as it’s supposed to be a weekend away together,” you muse, flicking through your Spotify library for an upbeat album this time around.

“No, listen to me, though,” Rafe says. “I mean anywhere. I’d follow you wherever.”

You turn to look at him, a little confused at his tone of voice. “Rafe, we can pick the place together—it’s not a big deal.”

“Do you think it’s time to start talking about California?”

“Um,” you wrack your brain for your last visit with Delilah and Wren. It’d only been two months ago. “Well, sure. We could go in March, maybe? I’ll talk to them, we can probably stay for another week. But I thought you wanted to go somewhere new?”

“Y/n/n, I… I was thinking something a little more permanent, if you’re ready for that.”

You put your phone in the center console, no longer worried about if the music is matching the vibe of the still-rising sun or the beating in your heart. “You mean for my job?”

“For your career,” he corrects. “I know Agnes isn’t back until the summer, but it’s never too early to look, right? Just to see what we think?”

“But Rafe, what… would you still be able to work for your dad?” you question immediately, because it’s the first and biggest thought currently on your mind.

“Oh,” Rafe says, like it’s an afterthought. “Unlikely. But I wasn’t really counting on that.”

The wheels in your mind are slow but at least they’re turning now, picking up on what exactly he’s offering. “So, you—Rafe, you wanna quit?”

“Take a break,” he amends, shrugging one shoulder so the wheel keeps the car steady. “Like we talked about when we moved in together, remember? We’ll be back one day if it’s where we’re meant to be.”

“But… Ward’s not gonna like that, is he?”

“Doesn’t matter what my dad likes, Y/n,” Rafe reminds you, looking completely resolved. “What matters is you.”

“Rafe,” you say dumbly, all the other thoughts stolen from your brain as you just watch your boyfriend drive you through your grandparents’ town with ease, acting like he isn’t offering you the world. “Why are you saying this right now?”

He turns to look at you for as long as he can before his eyes have to go back to the road, bringing the hand intertwined on your leg to his lips, pressing a soft kiss right on your ring finger.

“Because you’re my girl and I love you, Y/n/n. And I’ll always choose you, too.”

#fic recs #forever and ever #obx

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