Chapter 14 RAFE
RAFE
He chose love over himself.
That’s what did it. That’s what broke him—not the drugs, not the league, not the pressure, and not even the fucking tape.
Love.
And not the kind of love that saves you.
Not the kind you bleed for proudly. No. Julian Reaver chose the kind of love that ruins.
That creeps into your chest with soft hands and leaves teeth marks on your soul.
The kind of love that never intended to stay.
That only takes. That hides you behind closed doors while it smiles for the cameras with a wife and two perfect fucking kids.
The kind of love that films you without your knowledge, fucks you with the lights on, and smirks into the camera while you’re breaking open like a prayer.
I know who it is. Of course I fucking do.
Nathan Grant. Captain of the Toronto Royals.
Married. Publicly wholesome. Privately predatory.
I met him once at a gala, years ago. Clean-cut.
Golden smile. That kind of man doesn’t smell like danger—he smells like safety, and that’s what makes him the worst kind.
You don’t see it coming until you’re bleeding out on the locker room floor.
My jaw flexes as the rage settles into something quieter. It’s no longer roaring, no longer hot.
Now it’s cold. Precise.
And it all makes sense now. Every feral choice, every snort, every crash into danger like Julian wants to be punished. Like he’s trying to scrub himself raw from the inside out. Like he’s trying to outrun the part of himself that loved someone who never intended to love him back.
He was a secret.
A disposable one.
He threw the game—his career, his name, his entire fucking life—just to protect the man who fucked him and then handed him a loaded gun with a smile.
And he’s still paying for it. Still spiraling through the wreckage, clinging to whatever’s left like it might save him. Like I might save him.
I look down at him.
Julian is spread out under me, throat working, mouth parted in a quiet moan, tear tracks running down his flushed cheeks.
His eyes are glassy and full of things I want to rip out of him with my bare hands—shame, guilt, longing, need.
His thigh twitches under the blanket, the one I wrapped earlier, the one still bandaged, still healing.
His hips buck into my hand like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Or maybe he does.
Maybe he’s giving me this. All of it.
My fingers tighten, stroke slowly. I want him to feel everything. I want him to burn with it. The way I burn watching him ruin himself. The way I burned seeing that video. The way I’m burning now, knowing that fucking captain took the best of him and left him like this.
“Rafe…” he gasps, voice catching on my name like a plea, like he still doesn’t know if I’m going to kill him or fuck him or both.
I stare down at him. At every fucking inch of him. And I swear—That man is dead.
“Why do you still watch that video?” I ask, my voice rough but quiet, too fucking quiet.
Julian doesn’t answer. His jaw tenses. His lips press into a line, and I see it—the resistance, the shame, the part of him that wants to lie or run or pretend he’s not still bleeding. But I’m done letting him bleed alone. I’m done watching him rot in silence.
So I squeeze harder. His cock twitches in my fist and his breath stutters like he hates that it still feels good. Like he’s punishing himself with the pleasure.
“Why?” I growl again, leaning closer. My teeth grit. “Why do you torture yourself like this?”
He sniffles and shudders, then finally says it. “I… I miss it.”
The quiet little confession cracks something inside me, spoken so softly it’s like he doesn’t even hear himself say it.
And suddenly, I see red.
“Miss it?” My voice isn’t quiet anymore. “Miss what? The lies? The secrecy? The married man who used you like a dirty little secret and smiled while he did it? What the fuck do you miss, Julian?!”
“Being wanted…” he mumbles.
The words come out small and soft, wrecked in a way that makes something inside my chest go still. And I don’t breathe—not for a second.
My hand tightens around him again, not to punish and not even to control, just to hold him there. To anchor him to now, to me, to anything that isn’t the past rotting in his chest.
Because he says it like no one ever wanted him before that. Like no one wants him now.
And that?
That’s the biggest fucking lie of all.
I growl—deep, animal, involuntary—and shove his thighs farther apart.
He gasps, a sharp hiss tearing from his throat when the movement pulls at the injured one, but I don’t let him close them.
I don’t let him hide. I don’t let him disappear back into the shame he keeps drowning himself in.
I fit myself between his legs, caging him in, claiming the space he’s been using to bleed alone.
His breath stutters. Mine burns.
I lean down, slow and heavy, until my mouth is brushing his—wet cheeks, trembling lips, the faint taste of salt and fucking heartbreak. His chest rises fast, desperation and want colliding in his breath, and I swallow it like it belongs to me.
My hand moves lower between his thighs—right where he’s already warm and shaking for me. “Tell me what you miss, Jules…” I murmur against his mouth, voice roughened with fury and something far darker. My lips graze his, barely a breath apart, close enough that when he exhales, I taste it.
My fingers press deeper between his legs, slow, claiming, making him open for me even more. “Tell me,” I growl, jaw flexing as I drag my mouth along the corner of his, breath hot. “Tell me what he made you feel.”
He whimpers and it goes straight down my spine like a knife dipped in gasoline.
I want the truth. I want the rot pulled out of him by force. I want every inch of the past burned to ash so I can fill the spaces myself. So I press harder between his thighs, lips grazing his like a threat, and demand again. “Tell me, Julian.”
Julian shudders beneath me, his entire body wired like it’s trying to run and sink into me all at once. His breath hitches when my fingers move again, slow and deliberate between his legs, pressing into heat that has nothing to do with comfort.
His lashes flutter, and he turns his face toward me, but he still doesn’t look me in the eyes. Coward. Or maybe survivor.
His voice is a whisper. A ghost of something that should’ve never been born. “He made me feel… seen.”
My stomach clenches.
Julian exhales like it hurts to say it out loud. “Like I wasn’t just some flashy rookie with pretty stats and a fake smile. Like I mattered. Like I was… wanted. Needed. Important.”
He still won’t meet my gaze. I press my forehead to his, forcing the air between us to go still, to go honest.
“You are important,” I say, voice low, ragged. “But you never fucking mattered to him, Jules. You were a hole to bury his secrets in.”
“I know,” he whispers, and that’s the worst part. He does know.
I move my hand again, just enough to make him gasp, to make his thighs twitch against the ache, to remind him he’s still here. Still alive. Still mine to fix. To break. To rebuild.
“You don’t get to miss someone who left you like this,” I growl, teeth scraping his jaw. “You don’t get to ache for the man who filmed you and smiled while you drowned.”
“I’m trying…” he whimpers. “I don’t know how.”
And that’s when I finally kiss him again hard and possessive.
I don’t care if his lips bruise, if his mouth splits again.
I need it. Need him—the taste of him, the breath he gives up when I take, the broken moans I force out of his throat until he stops thinking about Nathan fucking Grant and starts thinking only about me.
Only me.
My name.
My hands.
My rules.
When I pull back, he’s panting, pupils blown, mouth red and wet and swollen.
“You want to feel important, Julian?” I growl, voice thick with heat and fury and something that might resemble devotion if it weren’t so savage. “Then you better fucking remember who you belong to now.”
I brace one hand on the mattress beside his head, the metal creaking beneath us, and let the other drift lower—down his belly, over the sharp line of his hip, between his trembling thighs.
He’s already shaking, breath catching high in his chest, eyes half-lidded and wet.
And when I slide my fingers lower, brushing him open with the slow, cruel patience of a man taking apart a lock, Julian makes a sound I’ll be hearing in my fucking skull for years.
I press the tip of my finger against his hole—already clenching for something he’s terrified to want—and I don’t let him look away. I want to see the exact second his past loosens its hold on his throat.
“Rafe…” he breathes, voice thin as glass.
“Shh.” My lips graze the corner of his mouth, the ghost of a kiss he’ll beg for again in a minute. “Open up.”
And he does. Barely. Enough.
I push my finger inside him, slow and deep and unforgiving, and Julian jerks under me—back arching, mouth falling open in a broken gasp.
His hand shoots up to grab my forearm, nails digging in, but I pin him harder to the bed with my weight, make him feel every inch of what I’m giving and every inch of what he didn’t get from the man who lied to him.
His breath is shaking so hard I feel it against my mouth.
“That’s it,” I whisper against his lips, voice low and dark, “feel something real for once.” I curl my finger just slightly—just enough to make his eyebrows pull together, just enough to make his throat work around a whimper.
“Tell me, Jules… did he ever touch you like this? Slow? Deep? Like he wanted to memorize the way you break?”
He shakes his head, cheeks flushed, tears streaking down his face like surrender.
“No?” I breathe, dragging my mouth along his jaw. “Of course he didn’t. Secrets don’t get treated gently. They get used.”
Julian whimpers—soft but sharp, his hips pushing down like he can’t stop himself.
I push my finger deeper and he gasps. Good.