𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟑𝟐

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO back to reality

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"ARE YOU GONNA get me one of those?" I gestured to Rafe's head, seeing I was standing without a helmet.

"Nope." he said, rather too casually for my liking.

"The fuck do you mean 'no'?" I asked in retaliation, my nervousness being quick to blur with anger.

"I mean I only have one helmet. Wouldn't want your driver to be without one, would you?"

I stood silently, biting down on my tongue as more smug words spilled out of his mouth. Having never ridden a normal bike before, let alone the back of Rafe Cameron's notorious motorcycle, I had every right in the book to be nervous. Especially now that he was willing to let me on without a helmet, which was the furthest from ideal that this situation could get.

"Just 'cause I let you off last night doesn't mean I'm letting you off this time." I shook my head. "Can't we just take your car?"

"Rose's got the car today. C'mon." he gestured to the seat.

"Fine," I began, seeing Rafe start to believe I had eased into his demands, "I'll walk."

Walking, although the safer option, was definitely the last thing I wanted to spend my time doing. The only downside was the fear I faced when looking at the bike, the emotion being one that I wasn't particularly fond of showing. I reminded myself of the guard I had to keep up, and not showing fear was a step in the right direction.

Pity for Rafe that I chose to mask my fear with being angry.

"You're not walking." he chuckled under his breath, still loud enough for his words to be heard by me.

"Watch me." I started in the direction of Tannyhill's gates, not knowing what direction I'd have to lead in beyond the driveway.

"S'just a helmet, stop being boring."

I laughed shortly, more out of annoyance than out of humour for his comment. If anything was bound to offend me any further, it was the fact that he had the nerve to call me boring. Everything that'd happened to me over the past month was far from boring, and I knew he wasn't fit to survive a single day of what I'd been through.

"If I'm boring then I do wonder how much our dear Amelia's personality precedes her exterior." I spoke upon impulse, knowing exactly what route to take in order to grind his gears.

"Right, bring her up again, 'cause that's gonna fucking fix everything." his voice raised, clarifying that my spiteful attempts had worked.

Although I knew her name was a sensitive subject in whatever Rafe and I had going on, I couldn't help but speak the 3 syllables that made each of us equally mad when brought up. Ever since the dinner with Noah, I had been left completely in the dark over what the fuck had happened between them. Frankly, I was free to talk about her as much as I wanted to.

For all I cared, her name could leave my lips as many times as I wished as long as Rafe spent another day in secrecy about her.

"Does she ride around with you without a helmet? Thought she cared about preserving that pretty face of hers." I turned to face him, seeing he had stepped off the vehicle.

"Camille, shut up." he sighed, reaching his hands up to either side of his head.

"Right," I mocked, "she's too busy riding your dick, isn't she?"

"My fucking God, you're insufferable." a short clang followed his complaint, snapping my attention back to his now-exposed face.

He had a frustrated yet proud smirk painted across his lips, making me feel a strange sense of familiarity as I stared back at him. Any anger I had buried itself in me again, realising that the person in front of me was nothing but a mural of all the worst qualities I possessed.

Rafe and I were far too identical for my liking. We were both addicts sewn from the same cloth, with equally fiery personalities that only took a matter of words to spark up. I was an idiot for thinking an argument with him was ever one I'd come close to winning. All he had to do was land his opal eyes on mine, and I'd find myself falling from any wall I'd attempted to build around myself.

I was constantly falling for him, and it was only a matter of seconds before I was due to crash.

"Now neither of us have a helmet," he took my face into his palms, pressing his lips against mine as if to add on to every word I'd said against him, "happy?"

"I hate you, d'you know that?"

"There's more than enough time for that later." he lifted me off the ground for a split moment, turning me back in the direction of the motorcycle. "At this rate, we'll be lucky if it's still light out by the time we get into town."

I couldn't help but smile at the feeling of Rafe's arms tucked under mine. There was something about how we fit together that made me all the more addicted to him, seeming to forget any part of me that could've hated his guts. That was the very problem; I couldn't bring myself to hate him half as much as I once did, which would only mean things were bound to be that much more complex.

His lips pressed softly against the curve of my jaw, letting go once the defeated grin appeared on my face. Following his previous orders, I positioned my legs on either side of the warmed leather seat, fixing my arms around his body shortly after.

Just like he had kissed my skin nothing but a few moments ago, I attached myself to any exposed part of his shoulders I could find. The connection between us helped erase any unease I felt about the circumstance we were in, the severity of how safe he made me feel only becoming clear once I noticed that we were already driving out of Tannyhill.

The salt air blew through my previously damp hair, the humidity of the island being a feeling I was all too familiar with. Despite living on the East Coast, I always found myself to be more of a winter person. There was something about the cold brought by the winter months that I didn't think could be matched, happiness being found in forms of hot chocolate and Christmas decorations.

Instead, I was now holding onto the coldest person I knew, and finding pathetic comfort in the warmth of his body.

It felt like nothing but a matter of seconds until Rafe and I reached the pharmacy. The town centre was always closer to Figure 8 territory than it was to The Cut, which was primarily why I expected the journey to take longer than it did. Any worry I had about the motorcycle seemed to just be fabricated in my mind, unfortunately proving me wrong in whatever argument we had previously.

I was proved wrong every time my eyes fell on his, and I realised the effect his glance alone had on me.

"You okay?" he asked as if it was clockwork, always being quick to notice when I had drifted into thoughts of him.

"Mhm." I hummed, taking my legs from around the bike.

"Cami." he said softly.

"What?" the volume of my voice contrasted his, "I'm great, fucking said that already."

"Camille, stop shouting at me."

"I'm not— I'm not shouting." I swallowed. "Can we not do this again, please? Just wanna get the pill and go home."

"Don't particularly want to be here either, y'know."

I stood still on the broken cobblestone pavement, angling my face away from Rafe's in an attempt to gather composure. It would be false for me to say that I wanted to act like this, but knowing the situation we were in, I simply had no other choice. If there was anything I wanted less than to continue being the same bitter bitch I had trained myself to be all these years, it was to let my guard down and only end up being hurt.

I couldn't let myself get hurt, so maybe hurting him was the better of the two options.

We silently moved into the pharmacy, the smell of the aged building mixing with that of harsh chemicals. Considering the late-afternoon hour that it was, everyone seemed to either be at home or out on the marsh.

The point was, there was no one but me, Rafe, and an unwelcomingly familiar voice in the store.

"My God, mom, can we just get the painkillers and go?" the nasally voice sounded from across the aisle, similar to that of nails scratching on a chalkboard.

"Amelia, love, have some patience. I didn't raise you to be getting into fights any more than I raised you to be impatient."

Rafe's hand was quick to fix around my wrist once realisation struck him, pulling us both into a separate aisle filled identically with countless pill boxes. My back pressed against the metal rack, any impending complaint suppressed by the boy's free hand being now glued over my mouth.

He released the grip he had on my arm, pressing his index finger against his lip as a sign for both of us to keep quiet. The conversation continued in the aisle behind us, the ear-piercing combination of two equally annoying voices increasing the worry shared between me and Rafe.

"We can't be seen together." he mouthed, the words not even needing to leave his mouth before my chest sank.

I stared back at the boy with an empty expression, fighting back any sign of emotion that tried to resurface in my face. For something that started out lighthearted and easy-going, me and Rafe hiding in the aisle together quickly shifted to something I wanted to get over and done with as fast as I could.

He managed to make me smile in nothing but a few seconds, and quickly wrecked that happiness just as he had built it up.

A singular 50$ bill was pulled from his back pocket, placing it firmly in my hand. I bit onto the inside of my cheek as I watched for any sign of sympathy on his face, my sunken eyes clarifying my hurt more than I wished they would.

"I'm sorry. I'll go distract them, you just go to the counter, okay?" he reached out for my hand again, only for me to pull away from any touch between us.

In just a few muttered words, it was proven exactly why I needed to keep that very guard up, and why Rafe just wasn't a person I could be with. No matter if I wanted to admit it or not, we couldn't be seen together.

And, for some reason, the fact those words had left his mouth hurt so much more than the idea alone.