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EPILOGUE ONE the moment he knew
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THE STORM HAD taken the island hostage long before Rafe arrived at the SBI tent. Rain showered down the windows of the cop car, fogging up the glass and his cheek leaving a print of where it'd been pressed against. When his eyesight wasn't glued to his phone- staring at the picture of Camille on his lockscreen and awaiting some form of call on her part- he'd lose himself in his surroundings.
Drops of water cascaded along the exterior of the car, magnifying the outside scenery within their little spherical shapes. The path they followed on the surface reminded him of how he left his girlfriend crying, each raindrop now posing as torture for him causing her tears. At immediate glance, he couldn't tell if the current tropical depression was in fact just a storm, or if it'd progress further to something on a larger scale.
Similarly, he didn't know that the drizzle that the pair of them started off as would turn into a hurricane, wrecking everything around them until they were worn away themselves.
Rafe's brain couldn't help but play a supercut of their relationship on repeat. The image of Cami fawning over him as he would read to her was particularly the memory that chose to stick around the most. He wasn't dumb; he knew exactly how pathetic fallacy worked on paper, but he'd never expect to reach the day where it played out in his life.
Truthfully, Rafe Cameron hadn't ever felt the need to feel. He was perfectly content with plugging his nostrils with toxic white powder, as the only thing he really desired was the godly feeling of a drug-induced high. That omnipotent power cocaine provided him with was sparked by his 'Kook King' reputation, obligated to keep up a powerful front in hopes that no one had eyes on the inside of Tannyhill. What went on in those 4 walls was anything but accurate to the way people perceived him, and no one could possibly gain insight on that.
Hell had a higher chance of freezing over before the hoax of the Cameron family unveiled itself.
Looking at it from a 3rd person perspective, he knew it would've been better if Camille had just stayed a waitress. The unfathomable events of this summer could've been easily avoided if he was able to shut his thoughts off, specifically the ones that started caring for her.
He wasn't in any justifiable place to want to be her saviour, and he was reminded of that nearly every night that she was curled up in his arms. Beyond the blank stares and rather frequent eye roll she'd project in his direction back at The Wreck, Rafe found himself in a boyish state of mind, wooed by the effortless beauty of Camille Fox.
During his upbringing, he was no stranger to expressing his liking for others through opposite actions; it was what he was taught to believe from observing his father. For the first decade of his life, he watched and observed as Ward's eyes faded to dark, the lack of love behind them being something the young boy aspired to wield. Everyone he'd start loving had the tendency of leaving him behind: first his mom, and consecutively his dad.
