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 wordfriendbecause 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 fainthint 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.
