For Your Love // Rafe Cameron X Reader

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍

Rafe's palm was warm and comforting as it lightly cradled your own, hesitant in capturing your fingers as though he was concerned you would stop at any moment. He's right, of course, since you remember as you're leaving the house through the back door of the kitchen that you're mad at him.

So caught up in the motions of being caught out sneaking a melody on his family's piano, you'd lost all sense and fallen into his whims as a  buffer, but as soon as the swampy, humid air hits your face, you're reminded of what happened at the party.

Still, you attempt to brush it off by acting like it's an accident in order to avoid confrontation, slipping your hand from his to tuck a few stray wisps of hair behind your ear before letting it fall at your side. His eyes dart down to it and his shoulders drop a little but he doesn't speak. Simply keeps walking expectantly of your unquestioning obedience in following him. Maybe you should have at least tried to refuse, but sadly, you weren't in the right mind.

It was important to you to get your shit together. To not be vulnerable.

The mask you so expertly crafted to stifle your telling emotions had been created from a young age where prying adults would smother you until you explained why you were upset, or angry, or frustrated. So many questions all the time. Questions that stopped when you seemed simply content or relaxed - so you perfected the art of schooling your features to match that emotion wherever possible.

Of course, that had all gone to shit from the moment you came back to this fucking place and laid eyes upon adult Rafe Cameron. He'd managed to dip into your soul and wreak havoc upon all of your carefully practiced reservations with the outside world.

More and more you found yourself expressing your true feelings wantonly, not even thinking about hiding it. It was disconcerting to say the least, and you didn't want to think too hard on the small shred of a voice in your mind that secretly enjoyed the freedom of it. 

Growing up alone would do that to you.

Rafe doesn't try to talk to you again as you walk, satisfied enough that you'd agreed to come with him without argument. He lifts a hand to help you step over a fallen and rotted piece of tree as you enter the swampy forest at the back of his house but you once again ignore it, frowning. Far be it for you to make anything easy for Rafe Cameron. 

This felt like some attempt to win you back onto his side, the feeling enhanced by his so enticing claim on you at the party. You thought about that moment a lot since it happened, thanks to your traitor of a brain. The warm arm snapped tight around your abdomen, the hand splayed out and pressing into soft flesh. The rasp to his voice as he called you his.

It was enough to make knees weak if you let it.

You're so lost in your own head that it doesn't click where he's taking you until you're already there. Night has fallen, the moon beginning to crest further up the inky black of the sky which was dotted with a stunning display of glistening starlight. 

It's made more prominent and beautiful by the soft glow of the dozens of fireflies that open up into the clearing in front of you.

Stopping in your tracks, your lips drop open beyond your control, eyes rounding as a memory washes over your mind. The night you promised Rafe you weren't going to leave him.

You know you should speak. Your lips are already open, the ghosts of the words forming on an unwilling tongue, disallowing anything to slip past beyond stuttered breaths and heavy inhales and exhales. 

It was just as stunning as you remember, the little bugs hovering and fluttering by like little beacons in the evening air. Rafe steps into view, careful not to be too noisy as to disturb the creatures. His feet carry him in front of you and he turns to face you, his gaze settling on your expression for as long as it takes you to cast your own up to meet it.