Chapter 27
Callum
Rafe steals the air from my lungs as he stands on the top of the stairs.
His hair has grown past his shoulders, and half is pulled back away from his face.
His beard is trimmed to a short scruff, and I can’t help but admire the maturity etched in his face.
I’ll be the first to begrudgingly admit that he’s aged well over the last five years, and his surprise appearance almost makes me forget my anger that developed more recently towards him.
I had spent most of our years separated in grief, mourning the loss of our love and our friendship.
It was a period of self-doubt and confusion.
Maybe Rafe didn’t love me as much as I loved him.
Maybe he never felt anything towards me at all.
Maybe his leaving was my punishment for liking other men.
But maybe, and this was the one that haunted me at night, maybe I never deserved him in the end.
It was only until Elia came into my life where I started seeing his exit as a betrayal of sorts.
He promised he would return. He told me he loved me.
But yet he walked away without saying anything.
Not even so much as a letter to me. Even in the possibility that Rafe didn’t love me, I thought at least our friendship would have been enough for him to at least write me something. Anything.
But he didn’t. And that might have been worse than him leaving in the first place.
“What are you doing here?” Rafe directs his question to me but my tongue is tied, and I can’t speak. His tone is clipped, and irritation radiates from him. No happy reunion for us.
Thankfully, Ginna comes to my rescue, taking strides up the steps to the landing where Rafe is standing to avoid the fight that is starting to break out in the tavern behind us.
Elia is the one to pull me up the steps, out of the chaos, and I find myself leaning on her for support.
“It was his loss, remember?” She whispers in my ear, grounding me back to reality.
I stand up straighter and join Ginna, hand clasping Elia’s tightly.
“We need your help, Rafe.” Ginna appears unfazed by Rafe’s startling presence again. Her one-track mind is focused solely on finding the lucky ring, unperturbed by her ex-best friend in front of her.
Rafe scoffs at her words, but his gaze is still directed my way, one I’m actively trying to avoid. My thumb rubs frantic circles on the back of Elia’s hand.
“I figured this wasn’t a social call.”
“Is there somewhere we can talk more privately?” My voice comes out stronger than I expected.
Rafe throws me one last hard stare before gesturing to follow him. “I have a room back here.”
The three of us follow Rafe into a cramped bedroom. A bed is pushed to one side of the room, opposite a small writing desk and chair. A stained rug covers the floor not occupied by the furniture.
Elia and Ginna take a seat on the side of the bed together, as if they know they’re going to be spectators in all of this.
Neither Rafe nor I take the chair at the desk, choosing instead to stand across from each other, arms crossed, on opposite sides of the fireplace, measuring each other up as if before a duel.
I notice Rafe’s sketchbook open on the desk, and I strain to catch a glimpse of his drawings.
Rafe notices and quickly slams the book shut and throws it in his bag. We remain in a stalemate.
Leave it to Elia to break the silent tension first.
“Okay.” She claps hands. “If we’re done with the pissing contest, let’s move on to business.”
“Sure,” Rafe starts. “Let’s start with the easiest part. Who the fuck are you?”
“She’s my girlfriend,” I interject before Elia can respond. “And don’t take that tone with her.”
This isn’t the same Rafe I once knew. The Rafe that gingerly bandaged all my injuries. The Rafe that would wink and blow me a kiss from across the throne room when no one was watching.
This Rafe reminded me of myself.
Rafe’s eyebrows raise. “A girlfriend? What an…interesting development. I would have thought you liked taking cock too much for that. Or was it just mine you liked?”
“That’s enough, both of you.” It’s Ginna this time to cut in. “We need your ring, Rafe.”
“What ring?” Rafe asks. His arms are still crossed so I can’t see if he’s wearing it.
I doubt it. He probably tossed it over the side of the ship on his way out of Ashven. I wish there was a way to subtly remove the one he gave me on my pinky without him noticing; I don’t want him to know that I hadn’t taken it off in all the years apart.
“You know what ring. The one I gave you.” The one that meant something. At least to me.
Rafe tears his eyes away from me, turning towards the fire, bracing one hand on the mantle. There’s no ring visible on that hand.
“Why do you need it?”
I open my mouth to answer, barely uttering a sound, when Rafe cuts me off. “I’m asking Ginna, not you.” The rejection stings.
“That ring is a relic,” Ginna starts.
Rafe swings around towards Ginna as she continues. “One that provides the wearer with an unbelievable amount of luck. We need it to help us find something for the King. A relic we’ve been searching for years to find.”
“No one told me the ring was a relic.” He ignores me, still directing his words only to Ginna. There’s no ring visible on his other hand, either.
“I didn’t know it was a relic, either. Elia was the one who told us about it,” I chime in.
“And how do you know it actually is?” He towers over Elia who’s sitting unbothered by his aggression.
“I can read relics.” Rafe’s face doesn’t show any reaction to her statement and she hurries on.
“When I hold an object, I can tell whether or not it’s a relic, and if it is a relic, I can read what power it has.
I found that ring when I lived in one of the labor camps in the desert. I wore it, and it’s luck saved me.”
“We tested her with other known relics, and it’s true,” I add.
Rafe takes the seat by the desk, bracing his elbows on his knees. He still doesn’t say anything, continuing to stare at Elia.
“We’re not sure why she has that ability, but she does, and that’s besides the point anyways,” Ginna insists. “Do you have the ring?”
I’m growing frustrated by this whole situation. “He clearly doesn’t,” I growl, gesturing to his bare hands. I shake my head. “We never should have come. This was a mistake.”
I turn to leave but Elia’s voice stops me dead in my tracks. “Rafe has the ring. Don’t you, Rafe?”
Rafe stays hunched over in his chair. “Can you sense it now?” He asks.
Elia shakes her head. “No, I need to be holding the objects, like I said.”
“Then how do you know he has the ring?” Ginna asks.
“Because,” she sighs, as if there is an obvious tell. “Rafe loved Callum, too. Maybe not now anymore, but he did once. And that ring meant something to him. He wouldn’t have discarded it.”
“You don’t know me,” Rafe scoffs gruffly.
“No, but I know Callum, and I know his heart. I know the love he had for you. And that wasn’t one-sided.”
I want to pick Elia up, swing her around, and kiss her. In one sentence she eliminated the fears I’ve always had lingering at the back of my mind.
The relationship Rafe and I shared wasn’t in my head. I wasn’t delusional in believing that Rafe loved me, that there was a strong connection pulling us together. He did love me.
But then that brings up the other questions I’ve always wondered - why didn’t Rafe come back to me? Why didn’t he write?
Rafe leans back in his chair, exhaling deeply. He studies Elia for a few minutes before begrudgingly meeting my gaze.
“She’s right. It was never one-sided."
A shiver courses through my body. His brown eyes drill into me, and I quickly avert my eyes, not wanting him to read any emotion in my face.
He’d always been able to read me, no matter how cold and stonefaced I tried to be.
“So you do have the ring?” I ask quietly. For a second it’s as if we are the only two people in the room.
“Bound by Fate,” he whispers the ring’s inscription, so low I barely hear him. “And so we are bound yet again, apparently.”
“Can we have it?” Rafe clenches his jaw, and before he turns me down I add, “Please, Rafe.”
The flash of emotion when I vocalized his name for the first time today might have been a figment of my imagination. Or it might have been a part of the old Rafe I knew and loved coming to the surface.
At last, Rafe answers me. “You can have the ring.”
I loosen the breath I was holding.
“But I don’t have it with me. It’s back at my place.”
Anxiety eases its way back through my body.
“This isn’t your place?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Do you think I’d live in a room above a bawdy drunkhouse?”
I shrug. “I don’t know you either, it would seem.”
“How far away is your place?” Ginna asks Rafe.
“Only a couple days by horseback.”
Ginna looks at me, silent conversation flowing between us. With one stare she’s asking me two things: 1) if I’m okay with spending a couple days more with Rafe and 2) if a couple days will work for our timeline.
I send her my approval with a small nod.
“When can we leave?” Elia asks, giving me a reassuring smile, one that I desperately needed.
Rafe extends his hands above him in a lazy stretch, and in doing so, I catch a glimpse of the thin strip of bronze skin between his vest and pants. It’s hard for my eyes not to linger there, remembering all the kisses I placed there. “Does now work? I’ll need time, though, to pack up here.”
“We’ll need an hour or so, too. I’ll have to grab some of our things from back at the ship. Find some horses,” Ginna adds.
“Did you take Midas?”
Ginna laughs. “Of course. There’s no ship better. It was your loss for leaving her behind.” She stands to leave. “I’ll be back with our things.”
“Let me walk you out,” Rafe suggests. “I need to close out a tab downstairs anyways.”
Ginna and Rafe step into the hallway, closing the door behind them, but failing to notice it doesn’t shut all the way.
I take a few cautious steps against the wall to the door, listening for their voices.
“It is good to see you again, Ginna. How’s Hanson doing?” Rafe asks.
“You’re really something, you know that?” Ginna hisses in a whisper.
My ear is pressed to the doorframe, but the sound carries into the room regardless.
“I wrote you a letter.”
“To me, Rafe. And that was the problem. Callum deserved answers. Hell, he still does!”
“I owe him nothing,” Rafe spits back. “He deserves nothing.”
I decide I’ve heard enough of the conversation, shutting the door with a sound loud enough that I’m sure Rafe and Ginna knew I was listening.
I turn around towards Elia, and, being the wonderful person that she is, has her arms out stretched, inviting me into her embrace. When Elia wraps her arms around me, it’s only then I realize that I’m crying.