𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝟏

EPILOGUE ONE the moment he knew

❊ ❊ ❊

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.

Maybe his unexplainable desire for the girl was rooted in his childhood-rooted desire for love, or maybe he sensed her mirroring wants and weaponised that to his advantage.

Contrary to his girlfriend's beliefs, Rafe knew about her dad's overdose all along. He'd seen his name in the news one night and thought nothing of it, yet connected the dots once his daughter was recruited to work at a nearby restaurant. That night she entered his life, he stayed up for a never ending sum of sleepless hours simply searching for any answer the internet could grant him with. Had he finally found someone on this island who could understand the struggle of reputations and absent parents?

That was another factor that roped Rafe in deeper about Camille's life: the reputable hold she had on guys. Rumours about her sex life spread like wildfire after that fatal July night, and he was quick to find himself pouring gasoline ahead of their path despite not fully understanding his own reasoning. She hadn't done anything to him nor with him, but he felt entitled to control every aspect of her life in order to bring her in his direction.

Thereby, when the slightest glimpse of a chance at steering her path presented itself, he took it without hesitation. He could recite the events of July 12th like it was yesterday; he got himself high enough to muster up the courage to speak to her, gave her the task of delivering drinks to his party solely as an excuse to see her again, and then dreamt about her for the days to follow.

By the most relentless twist of fate, tonight happened to be August 12th, meaning a month had passed since Rafe and Camille started their irreversible affair.

And, now that he was stuck with no insight as to what was going on with her, he found himself dreading the idea that today could also be the end.

He had no choice but to leave her, regardless of how heartless it made him sound. Internally, he held out hope that he'd run back to her before sunrise, buying him enough time to spend another night with her under him. It wasn't possible for him to fall asleep without his face buried in the crook of her neck, taking in the rose scent of her drugstore body spray. He couldn't smile without his lips previously being blessed by the taste of hers, the remnants of peach growing to become another addiction of his.

Rafe couldn't dare to think of existing without Camille.

So, he chose not to think of that horror, as simply as it sounded. Instead, he kept his phone gripped in his palm, waiting and waiting until it buzzed with her call. Her voice would grace his ears like the very first time, and he'd be able to breathe knowing that she was okay- and that her words were a lie.

She could keep living like this, because his escape allowed her too.

Surely it did.

❊ ❊ ❊

"Rafe, we're here." Shoupe said from the driver's seat, his voice snapping the boy out of his daze of staring at the phone screen, "We have to take you in for a brief questioning, but your dad's already here, so it's really not gonna be anything too stressful."

"What? Why's my dad here?" he stammered, "I'm not a child, I don't need him holding my hand through this."

"Ward's been extremely helpful with the case. He's spent most of today with us, and he just so happens to be here now. It's really nothing to worry about, you're not under arrest." the man trailed on.

Rafe slammed the car door behind him, in no rush to seek shelter despite the rain that soaked him head to toe. Aware of all the lies he'd spewed, Ward was the last person he wanted to see. He wasn't sure how long he'd be able to keep up his act until it crushed under him, revealing the truth that he was the murderer and not Camille.

If his saviour complex had any hint of a moral compass, he would've revealed himself the second the shot fired. If he wanted to save Cami like he said he did, he wouldn't have left her. But, then again, they'd both be found. There was nothing he could do, and his irrational hope at reversing today's events could only be fulfilled if he hadn't killed Peterkin in the first place.

There was so much he could've done differently, that the thought itself would drive him insane.

It was best for him to focus on waiting for her call.

"Rafe," Ward sighed with false relief, "sit down. We need to talk."

"About what?" Rafe asked in return.

"Don't act dumb. I know you were lying to me."

He slumped down into the chair beside his father, "I wasn't lying. I wasn't with her."

"So, from what we understand, you were driving home when you saw Camille run into her house. Are we right in saying that?" a male SBI agent approached the pair before their discussion became heated, taking partial tension off the boy's back.

"Uh, yeah." he confirmed.

"What were you doing on that side of the island?" the man began his inquiries.

"I was... driving home." Rafe hesitated, "You know that already."

"Are you sure you're telling us the truth?"

"Where is this going?" his voice strained at the increase in volume, his irradical anger getting the best of him, "I don't have any reason to lie right now!"

"Rafe, your father has told us that you were engaged in some form of a relationship with Camille. With her personality disorder in mind, we need to make sure she isn't influencing you in any way." the agent's words were foreign, Rafe's mind not wrapping around his claims.

"What personality disorder? She— she isn't crazy." he turned to face his father with cinched eyebrows.

"She must've not told him. Son, she had HPD. I hired her to work for me as a benefit of doubt, but she started seeking attention from him. She's... dangerous, and whatever you two have going on isn't healthy." Ward speaking made Rafe feel insane, lost in the blur between truth and lies in what he said.

"You're making her out to be some psycho. What the fuck is this?" he raised from his seat, kicking the plastic chair in a fit of fury.

Anything that found itself in Rafe's course was instantly trashed, his hands taking hold of whatever was in his way and throwing it towards the ground. Arguably, he should've been used to his father's cunningness, but having that applied against his girlfriend felt like a new level of betrayal. All he ever seemed from Camille was happiness, and couldn't even retrieve that since Ward stood as an obstruction- as always.

In Ward's eyes, Rafe was guilty of two crimes. The obvious first was the literal law infringement Camille was now charged for, an action rooted simply out of the desire and obligation he felt to protect his family. He was hesitant to admit it aloud, but he just wanted his dad to appreciate him like a person and not a son. He wanted love that wasn't rooted from blood relations, rather from admiration for who he truly was.

And, hence how far fetched that idea was for Ward to fulfill, he found it in her.

That was his second crime: believing that he was deserving of his Juliet.

He didn't deserve to have someone devoted to him like Cami was to him. After all, he went into the relationship with his own benefit in mind, careless on countless occasions as to how she was treated by him.

She was his at the end of the day- to have, to hold, and to hurt. He hurt her more than he was open to say, but that still kept her by him.

He just hoped this wasn't the time he wound up hurting her for good.

"Rafe." one of the officers took hold of his wrists as the agent from before faced him directly, "Rafe, I'm gonna have to ask you to calm down before we're left with no choice but to restrain you."

"No! No one's fucking telling me what's going on. We didn't do anything, okay? Stop treating us like we're guilty." his spiralling behaviour was far from coming to an end.

"Listen, we have a validated statement from several eyewitnesses that she shot the sheriff—"

"No, she didn't! Who told you that, huh? Was it my dad?" he interrupted with amplified violence.

"Bratcher!" an agent from the other side of the tent shouted.

"I'm busy." he responded, "Rafe, we need your full cooperation—"

The voice sounded again, "Bratcher, you're gonna want to see this. She's been found."

The 3 closing words of that officer's statement made Rafe's blood run cold. Agent Bratcher- as he was now identified to be- snapped his focus away from the agitated boy in front of him, racing back to the crowd of officers that had gathered itself. His sole aim of keeping the cops diverted from Camille was utterly useless, straightaway confirming the fact that there was a slimmer chance of him seeing her if she wasn't stuck behind bars. The image of her covered with blue and red lights suffocated his mind, wondering if she still looked as pretty as she always did in blue at a time like this.

Even if he had to kill to do so, he was determined to see her one last time.

"Where is she?" Rafe yelled, attempting to break himself free of the officer's continuous restraint. "Is she okay? Someone fucking answer me!"

"Are we sure it's her?" he heard the agent ask, met in response with concerningly solemn nods.

"Rafe, we're going home." Ward diverted himself from the swarm of people, "Stop causing a scene, you're embarrassing me."

"I'm not leaving until they tell me what's going on!" his feet were stuck to the ground, refusing to budge as attempts were made to drag him from the tent.

"Grow up, we're leaving whether you like it or not." the man remains stern in his commands, digging his hand into Rafe's forearm with such venomous force that the touch would've blistered the skin if possible.

"Ward, wait." Bratcher caught onto his actions, "He deserves to see this before it gets released to the public."

Ward scoffed, "I really don't think that's good for him right now."

Finally gathering the strength to pull himself away from the restricting grasp on his arm, Rafe pushed past the vast cluster of bodies around the tent, scrambling to gain understanding on how she'd been found. His chest ached as if to warn him of what was to come, the rage he expressed earlier being replaced by a sense of emptiness.

He blankly stared at the look on the SBI agent's face, hinting towards there being truth to his internal doubts. Each moment wasted to wordless interaction was beginning to eat him alive with worry, hoping for the next wave of bad news to be remotely merciful and to not consume him entirely.

"Can you please just get it over with?" he breathed out, a growing pain in the centre of his torso.

"Okay. We had eyes on Camille for the past hour or so. One of our officers saw her leaving a convenience store, and we've been trailing her since then." he paused to sigh, "She tried to drive away in the middle of a tropical storm. We're unsure of what exactly happened, but she crashed right before us."

Rafe felt his breathing grow shallower as he saw the man's face drop, catching onto the bizarre hints of remorse in his speech.

"Rafe, Camille passed away upon impact."

And, just like that, Rafe's world stopped spinning completely.

He stopped breathing, stopped blinking, and stopped standing. His legs gave out under him, dropping him down to his knees in utter disbelief. The sight of his surroundings merged to black, only thinking of and obsessively repeating that phrase in his mind. Nothing made sense at that moment; how was she gone just like that?

How could he have been so fucking dumb to leave her alone, even after she explicitly told him that she didn't want to keep living?

Maybe this was what he deserved. Instead of being granted his wish of loving her forever, he had to deal with the blood on his hands first. What first started off as bloodshed for the reason of love turned into a consequence of the very same cause. He was stained with the crimson guilt of loving her too hard, to the point where he struggled to think straight when it came to keeping her safe- and ultimately alive.

In some way, Rafe killed Camille.

Not directly, of course. He was well aware that she was battered and bruised long before they started their affair; it was partially the cause of his interest in her. She had her collection of life-induced scars, and so did he. It was foolish of him to try to salvage his lack of attention with another person, specifically with a girl who infamously struggled with tolerating herself. Both of them loved the other more than they loved themselves, and clearly Camille couldn't use that to justify the hatred she had for her life.

Moreso, she must've hated her life to newer levels once Rafe tainted her.

He failed to do one thing good for her, and wouldn't get the chance to since she died.

Rafe regained consciousness of his environment once he had been lifted into a chair, officers attending to him as if he was some sort of fragile child. He blinked away the stars that haunted his eyesight, staring ahead until he managed to form a physical projection of her.

He pictured Camille to be sitting on a nearby table, swinging her legs as her fingers toyed with the rolled hem of the cardigan he'd last seen her in. A cigarette was perched between her rose tinted lips, smiling as her lifeless eyes seemed to glance back at him. She looked more alive than how she did when he last saw her, the frown on her tear-stained face as she watched him leave replaced with the grin he grew to adore. The real voices that drilled into his ears turned silent, only focusing on the words the mirage of her appeared to say.

"Why so glum, Romeo?" she laughed, reminding him of the angelic sound he'd now have to live without. "Isn't this what you wanted all along?"

He rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms, knowing that it was best for him to erase whatever torture his mind was forcing him to endure.

"Oh, come on. You don't wanna get rid of me." she taunted.

By some cruel form of self-projection, her false presence was right. He kept imagining her in hope that she wasn't really gone, and would happily continue doing so despite it making him inevitably lose his mind. This was the closest thing he had to closure, so he didn't want her to leave.

"Right, now you're pissing me off." Camille rolled her eyes jokingly, "I'm not evil, I wouldn't leave without saying anything. Do you really think that low of me, Rafe? Ask them to take you to the scene, hopefully the books survived in the glove compartment. Talk to me once you read the last few pages, maybe then you'll get everything."

Rafe couldn't really understand exactly what he was saying, or what he was doing following the instructions of someone that wasn't even there, but he persisted on being taken to the scene of the crash. By benefit of his obvious need for comfort, the officers were oddly compliant in fulfilling his demand, taking him away in a cop car with Ward in the backseat beside him. He was less focused on reality- partially because of how detached he now was from it- but instead paid sole focus to finding those books.

He snapped back to awareness once they arrived, his eyes immediately meeting the nightmare that unfolded on the side of the road. Amidst the ever-pouring shower of rain around them, he could make out the sight of various cop cars staked out to block the forthcoming traffic. Stopping the airflow to his lungs in an instant, he stared inwards at the white toppled-over vehicle he believed Camille to have driven.

She couldn't drive, what the hell was she doing in a car?

Better yet, how did she get that car?

So many questions were left unanswered, the only explanation that could be provided being the one she guided him to seek. In a ghostly, out-of-body manner, he strolled over to an officer who'd been at the scene, startling her with his silent approach.

"Sorry, can I help?" she asked.

"Um, I'm the victim's boyfriend." he mumbled, unaware of the phrasing he needed to use in conversation since he'd lost all sense of reality.

"Oh, I'm really sorry for your loss. I know it must've been hard to deal with what she did and now—"

"I'm not here about that." he shook his head, stopping the cop from proceeding with reference to Cami's accusation, "I just need to know if she left anything behind in the car."

Another officer made his way over to the pair, clearly overhearing the discussion and bringing exactly what Rafe hoped for- the same two journals he'd last seen Camille clutching. He realised that she may have been plotting her demise even before Rafe left her, and he instantly wondered if there were any signs he missed that could've signalled for him to stop her.

"He's looking for these, isn't he?" the older man questioned, passing the books to him under the protection of an umbrella, preventing water damage to her final words on top of all the less physical damage Rafe had faced in the past 24 hours.

In his hands, he now held all of Cami's unsaid words. Everything she didn't dare to say was written in ink and paper, fear hanging over him as he aimed to guess the details of what she had left behind for him to discover.

One of the uncounted things he loved about his Cami was her mystery. She always kept people guessing through her indirect choices of speech or her hidden mannerisms, though no one ever understood her enough to decipher her clues. He hated himself for not being that person who pieced her clues together before it was far too late, but at least he had the chance to accept her life for what it was.

All he had to do was read, and then he could possibly understand the beautiful mess that is Camille Fox.

Or rather the mess that was.