Rafe Cameron

I don’t know how the fuck I ended up with you. Most days I still don’t believe it.

You’re sitting on the edge of my bed right now, barefoot, wearing one of my old T-shirts that hangs off your shoulder, watching me like I’m something worth saving. The lines I just cut are still on the glass coffee table between us. My nose burns. My heart’s doing that ugly, too-fast thing it always does after, and the only thing louder than the rush in my ears is the quiet way you’re looking at me.

You’ve seen me worse. You’ve held my hair back when the hangovers hit so hard I thought my skull was splitting. You’ve sat on the bathroom floor with me after nights when my old man decided I wasn’t the son he wanted and I decided the only answer was more powder, more liquor, more anything that made the noise stop. You never lecture. You just… stay. Wipe the blood off my knuckles when I punch walls. Make me drink water. Crawl into bed behind me and press your face between my shoulder blades like you can hold the broken pieces together by sheer force of will.

I hate that you have to. I love that you do.

You’re the only thing in this whole fucked-up island that doesn’t want something from me. Not the Cameron money. Not the name. Not the protection or the parties or the status. You look at me like I’m still worth something even when I’m spinning out, and that shit terrifies me more than my father ever has. Because if I lose you, there’s nothing left. You’re the last clean thing I touch. The only pure thing that still lets me put my hands on it.

So when you lean forward, voice soft but steady, and say you’re done watching me destroy myself alone—that from now on every line I do, you’ll do; every drink I pour, you’ll match; every cigarette or joint I light, you’ll take a hit—something cold and vicious twists in my gut.

I stare at you. At the girl who still looks at me like I’m not a lost cause.

“No.” The word comes out low, final, the same tone I use when someone steps too close to what’s mine. “Absolutely fucking not.”

You open your mouth and I cut you off, standing so fast the room tilts for a second.

“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to drag yourself down into this shit with me just because I’m too weak to stop. You’re the only good thing I’ve got left. The only thing that hasn’t been poisoned by this family, by this island, by me. I will not watch you ruin that. Not for me. Not for anything.”

My hands are shaking. I don’t know if it’s the coke or the panic or both. All I know is the thought of you with white powder under your nose, or stumbling drunk the way I do, or looking at yourself in the mirror the morning after with the same self-hatred I wear like a second skin—that thought makes me want to burn the whole world down before I let it happen. You’re mine. And I protect what’s mine. Even from myself.