This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

thirty

CHAPTER THIRTY
[30]
song: cry by cigarettes after sex

The sun had set completely by the time Cassie pulled the Jeep into her driveway. She'd helped Rafe out of the passenger seat, as he held an old sweat-towel he'd found in his glovebox to his bleeding head.

The house was completely dark, and there were no flickering lights left on the living room TV. She could hear her grandma's CPAP machine from her bedroom. She didn't have to say anything, it was a given that they needed to be quiet when Cassie slowly closed the creaking door shut.

She'd sat him down in the upstairs bathroom, on the edge of the tub. Below the sink in a wire basket were leftover supplies from Cassie's arm. She didn't realize how soon she'd have to get them back out.

She held them on her lap, sat on the toilet seat with her shoes propped up against the edge of the bath. "I don't like that this is becoming a reoccurring thing." She spoke, and while she said it as a joke, it came off more depressing than intended.

Rafe watched her as she got out the rubbing alcohol, and poured it over a small pink towel. Like instinct, she started to bring it up to the wound on his head, then stopped.

She looked at him. All of the adrenaline and chaos of the prior moments hadn't given her the chance to realize how intimate this was.

And he seemed slightly taken aback by it too, by how she stopped herself. He kept his eyes on her, steady and focused, as she handed the towel to him instead.

After a moment of hesitation, he took it from her, and pressed it against his head.

"Shit." He squeezed his eyes shut, and let his head fall down in front of him.

And again, instinct took over as Cassie, wincing at the sight, found herself gently grabbing his wrists to try and relieve the amount of pressure he was putting on it. "Careful." She said quietly, inhaling sharply through her teeth as she gently lifted the towel back off to examine it.

In that moment, Rafe couldn't feel it at all. His mind was fully consumed by her. Watching how gently she approached him though he knew he was undeserving. How easily she dropped her cold front when he was hurt. To help him, to care for him. Because that's just how Cassie was. Kind, and gentle.

And she looked so odd now. With a cut lip, and a bruise already beginning to yellow on her cheek. If he weren't right there next to her as it happened, he would never believe how someone like her could get involved in a situation so bad, that she'd end up like this.

And somehow, despite it all, she was still pretty. Sweet, pretty Cassie.

"I don't know—" Cassie's focus had returned to the basket in her lap as she sorted through it. She looks back up at the wound for the moment, then back to the basket. "It actually doesn't look that bad, which is good." Shuffling through it, she hands him back the towel and tells him to keep pressure on it.

"You're a good doctor." He joked, keeping his voice low as her grandma slept down the hall.

Cassie cracked a smile. "A good doctor would probably give you stitches. Or, painkillers, but—" she looked up at him, and gave him a look that said 'but we both know how that goes.'