Chapter 20
August arrives without ceremony. There are no fireworks or dramatic shifts in the air. Just a date on the calendar that turns over while we’re both pretending not to look directly at it.
Rafe is packing at the mansion. I’m packing for camp even though it’s weeks away, because if I don’t keep moving, my head fills with things I can’t fix.
Two parallel motions that should feel connected and somehow don’t.
I fold practice gear into my duffel with mechanical precision, rolling shirts instead of folding them because it saves space and keeps me busy.
Every so often my phone lights up with a text from him—Did you take the black hoodie?
or I found your charger—mundane logistics standing in for things we’re not saying.
When I get to the mansion, his suitcase is already by the door. It’s a stupid detail, but it hits harder than anything else. The case is scuffed, well-loved, stickers peeled off and replaced over the years as cities blur together. It looks ready. Like it knows what’s coming.
Rafe is standing in the bedroom, folding shirts with more care than usual.
He’s calm in that way that usually means he’s holding something down.
He reaches for his glass that’s never far out of reach without looking and takes a quick swallow—too fast for savoring, too practiced to be a decision.
His curls have long since been chopped—a detail that took my breath away when it happened without him telling me a couple of months ago.
His face is bare, eyes tired but focused.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me.
“Hey.”
We kiss, but it’s careful. Not tentative exactly—just… aware. Like we’re both subconsciously avoiding pressure points. His hands rest on my hips, mine on his shoulders, and neither of us pulls the other closer than necessary.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Good,” I say automatically. Then I add, “Busy.”
He nods. “Same.”
We stand together for a second too long, the space between us humming with everything unresolved. Finally, he exhales and leans his forehead against mine.
“This first month will fly,” he says, voice light, hopeful. “It always does. Then before you know it, the tour will be over, and I’ll be back in LA.”
I want to believe him, but six months on a world tour doesn’t scream that time will fly when I’m the one left behind. I open my mouth to agree, but nothing comes out. Instead, I nod. A small, noncommittal movement that I hope reads as agreement and not what it actually is: fear.
He notices anyway. Rafe always notices. His expression softens. “Hey. We’ll be okay.”
I swallow. “Yeah.” But the word doesn’t feel solid in my mouth.
The goodbye is worse. Not because it’s dramatic, but because it isn’t.
The house is full of noise—footsteps on stairs, someone calling out about passports, the clatter of a zipper being forced closed.
Laughter drifts in from the kitchen, too loud, a little manic.
Someone says, “One for the road,” and there’s the small, familiar clink of glass—tour superstition dressed up as fun.
Miles passes the doorway with Rafe’s guitar case slung over his shoulder, already talking about traffic. Eli’s arguing with Drew about whether the charger made it into the bag. Someone swears. Someone laughs again.
Outside, a car idles in their circular drive. I can hear it through the open front door, engine low and impatient, waiting to swallow him up and spit him out at LAX so he can turn around and board a plane. London. Twelve days until the tour officially starts, but it already feels like it has.
Rafe’s suitcase stands upright by the door, handle extended like it’s reaching for him. We’re standing too close and not close enough at the same time.
There’s no argument. No tearful last stand. Just an awkward pause where neither of us knows who’s supposed to move first. He grips the suitcase handle. I curl my fingers around my keys. Then we both still.
“I’ll call you,” he says. It’s automatic. Muscle memory.
“I know,” I reply.
Behind him, Miles clears his throat pointedly. “We’re on a schedule, man.”
Rafe nods without looking back. “Yeah.”
He hesitates, then leans in and kisses me. It’s brief. Careful. Like we’re afraid of pressing too hard on something already bruised. His hand brushes my wrist, thumb grazing the edge of my pulse, and for half a second, I almost grab him and say wait.
Instead, I step back.
He picks up the suitcase.
The front door swings open wider, sunlight spilling in, the noise rushing back. The car door slams outside. Someone calls his name. The world keeps moving like it’s got somewhere to be.
Rafe gives me one last look—soft, searching—and then he’s gone, swallowed by sound and motion and the promise of everything waiting for him on the other side of the ocean.
The door shuts, and the quiet that follows feels heavier than it should.
The tour starts fast. There’s no gentle easing into it. One minute Rafe is texting me photos of the bus—Miles asleep in a hoodie, Eli making faces at the camera—and the next my phone buzzes with a voice note sent from backstage.
I exit the gym, and as soon as I’m in the empty hallway, I press Play, and put the phone to my ear. There’s noise first. Crowd noise. Shouting. Music bleeding through walls. Rafe’s voice cuts through it, breathless and electric.
“Hey,” he says, words rushing. There’s a clatter first—ice against plastic, someone laughing too close to the mic—then his voice, bright and blown open.
“Just wanted to—fuck, can you hear that?” He laughs, a bright, wild sound that makes my chest ache.
“This is insane. I miss you. I really do. I’ll call after the set, okay? ”
The message ends abruptly, swallowed by sound.
I stare at my phone for a beat longer than necessary before recording my reply.
I lean against the wall and keep my voice steady.
“Hey,” I say. “You sound incredible. I’m proud of you.
Kill it tonight. Call me when you can.” I send it and immediately feel like I’ve failed some invisible test.
That night, I lie in bed with my laptop open, video footage pulled up, volume muted. The room is dark except for the glow of the screen. I turn the brightness down until Rafe is more suggestion than person.
He looks unreal onstage.
Painted-on jeans, sweat-slick skin, eyeliner smudged. The crowd is massive, and they move like a single organism, hands raised, voices lifted.
I watch his mouth form words I know by heart. I watch the way he leans into the mic, the way he owns the space like it belongs to him.
I feel proud, but fuck, do I feel distant.
Two weeks later when Rafe is in Berlin, my phone buzzes. He’s calling. I don’t answer. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.
I’m sitting at a mandatory sponsorship dinner, plate untouched, nodding along to a conversation I’m not hearing. My phone vibrates again against my thigh. I glance down, heart stuttering.
I type quickly under the table.
Me: Sorry. Can’t talk. Tomorrow?
The reply comes almost immediately.
Rafe: Yeah. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow becomes a placeholder. A promise we keep making and breaking without acknowledging it.
Days blur into weeks.
Rafe sends voice notes from buses and planes and green rooms and hotel hallways. I send mine from empty gyms and quiet corridors and rooms that all look the same no matter what city I’m in.
Sometimes we sync up and manage a real conversation. Sometimes one of us falls asleep mid-call. Sometimes we talk about nothing—food, schedules, dumb stories from the road—because it’s easier than circling the thing that still hasn’t healed.
Two months in, and late at night, Rafe starts to say, “We need to talk about—” He stops. There’s a pause long enough for my pulse to spike. “Never mind,” he says lightly. “Not now.”
I exhale an unsteady breath. “Okay,” I say, grateful.
I tell myself it’s mercy. That he’s protecting me. Giving me space.
Later, lying alone in a hotel bed, I wonder if he heard that moment differently. If, to him, it sounded like surrender.
As the weeks go by, the silence grows roots. It slips into the cracks between our conversations, filling space neither of us knows how to clear without causing damage. We start editing ourselves automatically. Choosing safer topics. Shorter calls.
And then something awful happens. He tells me he’s got a crazy couple of days so not to expect to hear from him right away. And the quiet that follows is… a relief.
No waiting for a call that might not come. No bracing myself for a conversation I don’t know how to finish. No fear of saying the wrong thing and making everything worse.
Just quiet.
I sit with that realization on a Tuesday night in late October, alone in my apartment, practice done, body aching in the good way. The city hums outside. My phone is face down on the counter.
The quiet feels manageable, and that makes me feel like the worst husband alive.
I love him. God, I love him. But love isn’t fixing this right now. It’s just coexisting with distance and hoping that time, movement, momentum—something—will do the work neither of us seems able to do ourselves.
When I finally flip my phone over, there’s a missed call from Rafe, time-stamped an hour ago.
I don’t call back. Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow will be better.
Tomorrow always is. Until it isn’t.
By early November, the routine is set.
Not the comforting kind. The kind that hardens around you if you don’t fight it, like calcium. Days built from the same pieces—practice, film, weights, treatment, sleep that barely counts, and then whatever slice of empty time is left at the end when my brain tries to eat me alive.
On the court, I’m doing well. Better than well, some nights.