Chapter 21 #2
My heart swells. My fingers go warm around the steering wheel as I dictate a response.
Me: You okay?
Rafe: I’m fine. I’m tired. I miss you.
The words hit hard enough that for a second, I can’t breathe properly. I stare at the screen until the light changes and the car behind me honks.
I drive the rest of the way on autopilot, heart too loud, mind racing ahead to the moment he walks through my door.
I try to picture his face. His eyes. The way he’ll look in this unfamiliar space.
Whether he’ll seem distant. Whether he’ll seem angry.
Whether he’ll seem like he’s already decided something I don’t know how to fix.
Because the truth is, the tear never really stitched itself back together after the trade. Fuck, after I let him down so dramatically on our second wedding anniversary.
We talked. We tried. We did the thing where we pretend we’re okay because the alternative is admitting we might not be.
We sent messages, voice notes, updates. We said I love you in small ways and then avoided saying the bigger things, the dangerous things.
The resentment didn’t explode. It just settled. Quietly. Like dust.
And then he left on tour, and I told myself the distance was temporary. Then the trade made distance permanent. On top of that, we went six months without seeing each other.
Now he’s coming, and part of me is so relieved I could cry, and part of me is terrified because relief doesn’t fix anything. It just makes you aware of what you’ve been missing.
I pull into my driveway and sit here for a moment with the engine running, staring at my front door. Snow is piled along the steps. The porch light is on, throwing a soft glow across the walkway. I’m struck, randomly, by how quiet it all is.
In LA, there was always noise. Always something. Here, it’s like the world holds its breath.
I pull into the garage and turn the car off. My hands shake slightly as I gather my bag.
Inside, the house is warm. Too warm, compared to the outside. It smells faintly like the candle I lit last night—vanilla and something like cedar. The air is still, undisturbed. My place looks exactly the way it did when I left this morning—neat, functional, lonely.
I drop my keys into a bowl by the door and pause, bag hanging from my shoulder, boots damp against the mat.
My chest hums again, louder now. I check my phone, but there’s no new text.
I walk farther into the house and set my bag down by the couch. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I don’t know what to do with my body. I’m suddenly too aware of everything—the ache in my muscles, the tightness in my jaw, the bruise that still lives under my skin from old fights and old fear.
I try to breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth. Slow.
Rafe deserves me to step up. He deserves more than the version of me that flinches from every hard conversation, that waits until the world forces my hand, that hides love behind the word friend because it’s easier than risk.
He deserves me to be brave. The thought sits heavy in my chest as I hear it: a car outside.
Tires crunching over snow. The sound is muffled, but it’s unmistakable.
My entire body goes electric.
I don’t move at first. I can’t. I’m suddenly aware that the next few seconds are going to matter in a way I can’t control. That I’m about to see him after half a year, and I don’t know what version of us is walking toward my door.
The doorbell rings. Once. Sharp in the quiet.
I exhale, long and shaky, and force my feet to move. As I cross the entryway, my heartbeat is so loud I can almost hear it over the buzz in my ears. I reach for the handle, fingers trembling, and pull the door open.
Cold air rushes in, and there he is.
He’s standing on my porch like he belongs there—like he’s been here a hundred times already and I’m the one who’s late.
Hoodie. Jacket. Hands shoved into his pockets like he’s trying to keep himself contained.
His curls have grown back out, flattened from a beanie and springing in stubborn waves anyway.
His face is tired in a way I recognize too well, the kind of tired you earn on planes and in strange beds and under too many expectations.
But his eyes are alive.
They lock on mine like they’ve been looking for me for months and finally found something solid.
The eyebrow piercing catches the porch light when he shifts, a small flash of silver that punches straight through my chest because it’s so him.
A detail I used to see up close, every day.
A detail I only see now through screens and blurry photos and the occasional clip where he turns his head too fast and you catch it for half a second before the camera cuts away.
For a beat, I can’t move.
My body forgets how to do anything except exist in the moment where he’s here and I’m here and six months stretches between us like a broken bridge.
His lips part slightly, like he’s going to say something—like maybe he already has, and I missed it because the blood is roaring in my ears.
My knees almost give out. The reaction is physical. Immediate. Like my body has been holding its breath this whole time and only now remembered how to inhale.
Rafe’s gaze flicks over my face, and I see it—the quick flash of concern, the instinctive scan. He takes in the exhausted edges of me, the too-tight set of my jaw, the tension I don’t manage to hide. He takes in whatever new version of my life is written all over my skin.
And still, he’s here.
Still.
I fail him in a hundred different ways, and he shows up anyway. The realization hits so hard it nearly makes me dizzy.
I don’t let it. I move. I close the gap in two strides and tug him into me like I’m afraid someone’s going to snatch him away if I don’t get my hands on him fast enough.
I wrap both arms around him, full-bodied, no restraint, no carefulness left for later.
My chest presses to his. His jacket is cold from outside, but his body underneath is warm and real and mine in the only way that matters.
Rafe makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh and isn’t quite a breath, then sags into me like relief is something with weight. His arms slide around my waist and tighten. He clings.
God. He’s shaking. Not visibly, not in a way anyone else would clock, but I feel it—fine tremors running through his shoulders, through his hands where they grip me. Like he’s been holding himself together with string and stubbornness, and I’ve finally given him somewhere safe to let go.
I inhale, slow and deep, and it wrecks me.
He smells like soap and travel and him—something clean layered over road air and recycled plane cabin. There’s a faint hint of cologne I recognize, the one he started wearing when he could first afford to buy an expensive scent.
I bury my face in his neck without thinking, breathing him in like oxygen.
Rafe’s mouth brushes my ear. “Hi,” he murmurs.
“Hi,” I manage, voice rough and too thick.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, and the way his expression breaks open—tender, exhausted, almost disbelieving—makes something in my chest ache so badly I nearly fold. “God,” he says softly, “I missed you.”
The words are simple. My eyes sting before I can stop it. I shake my head like that’ll fix me. Like I can shake off six months of absence and fear and regret.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because it’s the first thing in me. The oldest thing. The thing I keep carrying.
Rafe’s gaze holds mine, steady.
I swallow hard. “I love you.” It’s not brave. It’s not enough. But it’s true.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t joke. Doesn’t brush it off. He just leans in again, presses his face into my neck, and says it like a vow: “I love you too.”
The sound of it goes straight under my ribs, and I squeeze him tighter.
For a second, we just stand together in the open doorway, cold curling around us, the whole street quiet and unaware that my entire world just came back and stood on my porch with tired eyes and a beating heart.
Then Rafe lifts his head. His gaze moves to my mouth like he can’t help it. I meet him halfway.
Our kiss is immediate. Hungry. Relieved.
Familiar enough to make my chest hurt. It’s not slow, not tentative, not polite.
It’s the kind of kiss that says finally with every press of lips.
Rafe’s hands slide up my chest, fisting my hoodie like he needs to anchor himself.
I grip the back of his neck, fingers sinking into curls, and he makes a soft sound that turns my knees weak all over again.
But there’s carefulness threaded through it, too, like a bruise beneath the skin. The kiss deepens and then stutters, not because we don’t want it, but because we both feel the weight of everything we didn’t fix before this moment.
We pull back just far enough to breathe.
I keep my hands on him, palms framing his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks like I’m proving he’s real. My chest rises and falls too fast. My body is buzzing, electric, as if I’ve been starving and someone finally put food in front of me.
Rafe’s gaze flickers over my face again. Then his eyebrows knit slightly. “You look different,” he says quietly.
I try to laugh, but it comes out thin. “So do you.”
He huffs something like amusement, something like sadness. “Tour’s over,” he says, voice softer. Like he’s trying to convince himself.
“I know,” I reply.
The unspoken words hover between us, sharp and inevitable: Now what?
Neither of us touches it.
Rafe glances behind me into the house, and his expression shifts. Not disappointment. Just… observation. Like he’s absorbing a new version of my world. “This is… you,” he says.
I swallow, suddenly embarrassed for reasons I can’t even fully name.
The house isn’t bad. It’s nice, actually.
It’s practical and roomy and warm. It’s a place I picked because the team recommended the neighborhood and because I needed quiet and because I couldn’t bring myself to choose something flashy.