Ambivalently Yours

The Aftermath

Rafe is awake well into the night. After his tumultuous night at the hands of Ward Cameron, he just couldn't sleep.

In the back of his mind, he knew, at some point, he would have to bring up his past. Whether it was because you happened to see him taking his anxiety meds, you happened to come over during his weekly Zoom therapy session, or you ended up at a party where people were doing coke and he recoiled in horror, it would've come up eventually, and he would've had to spill everything. That fact that his father had put him in a position where he had to divulge all that information so early (and before he was ready) absolutely infuriated him.

Things had been going really well with you. Damn near perfect. He'd never dated someone he bickered with so much, but he honestly loved it compared to the boring, predictable relationships he'd been in in the past. It was your quick wit and smart comebacks that had got him interested in the first place, after all.

He had been angry and scared when he realized what Ward had done, and his heart nearly cracked in half as he watched you try not to cry for him as he explained everything that bastard had unveiled to you. He was terrified that you learning the truth would make you leave him, and even though it had only been a few weeks, the thought of you potentially ending things because of all the emotional baggage he carried had him literally shaking.

But you had listened without judgement, and instead of shrinking away at the idea that he was mentally fragile, you'd embraced his flaws. You had promised to help him, even though you hadn't a clue what that entailed. At your core, despite your argumentative personality, you had a pure heart, and the way you held him silently and pretended not to notice when a few tears slipped out said more to him than your words ever could.

He watches your sleeping form, your hand held loosely in his as you slept. He has to resist the urge to brush a few stray strands of hair off your face in favor of letting you rest peacefully. He didn't dare disturb your slumber, even if it meant that the repeated reassurance that you'd be there for him went unspoken.

He had accepted long ago that some parts of him just couldn't be shared, and when you barged your way into his life, he thought it would be an easy task to manage. He had played his guarded heart card, but Ward apparently had other plans. Throwing in the wild card of his past threw a wrench in everything he'd established for himself as a college student in another town, where he thought he could just be the cocky, rich asshole that had fun and coasted through his degree requirements until he came back to Hell Island to spend the rest of his days. And yet, there you laid beside him, knowing everything he'd fought so hard to hide.

Before you, his natural instinct would've been to flee, to cut them off, to ghost them, to completely disappear off the face of the earth to never be heard from again in favor of starting over with a new person who knew nothing and needed to know nothing. His original plan was to bounce from girl to girl, breaking it off before it ever got serious (if he even had a relationship at all) just to keep it simple. He didn't think he had the emotional capacity to keep up with an actual girlfriend and make her happy.

Insult after insult, petty argument after petty argument, snide remark after snide remark you remained, though, as constant as the sun rose each day. You got under his skin, annoyed him, vexed him, even, and he wanted nothing more than for that to continue. It was the strangest thing, and he couldn't understand it, but he knew you were meant to be in his life as more than just a friend. The internal fight he'd had with himself about his feelings for you was something he didn't ever think he would experience, yet the more time he spent with you, the more he craved your presence.

He knew in his heart he was falling hard and fast. This wasn't some fling he would look back on and laugh with Kelce about in a month or two. It scared him how strong his feelings were for you in such a short amount of time, although, to be honest, he knew those feelings had been brewing for much longer than the couple of weeks you'd been together. You'd had a chokehold on him in one way or another since that day in McCuskey's class when you debated about golf. He figured if he'd been the type to easily confront his thoughts and feelings about things, he would've recognized it sooner.