It ends with you (Rafe Cameron)

𝚟𝚒𝚒. 𝚌𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚛

She kissed him.

And his lips tasted like salt and his hands were warm against the bare skin of her lower back. And she regretted it the second she did it but she couldn't get herself to pull away because he kissed her back.

And God, he kissed her back.

He leaned back against his bike, allowed her to stand between his legs and they fit like the pieces of a puzzle as their lips moved against each other. He traveled one of his hands from her waist to the back of her neck and brushed his thumb along her jaw as he deepened their kiss.

And fuck, she hated it.

And fuck, she didn't want him to stop.

And she wished her hormones weren't going crazy inside her stomach and she wished Rafe's skin didn't feel so good against her own. She wished the kiss was bad, that both of them felt that it was the absolute stupidest thing they could do. That they'd laugh about how stupid it was and move on. But the second a moan escaped her lips, she knew she'd fucked up big time.

She forced herself to peel away from him, looked down at her shoes as she felt her cheeks heat up. "Shit."

"I was expecting something along the lines of wow, but I can work with shit."

She snapped her eyes up at him and quickly adverted them again, fixating them on the horizon as she cursed herself. "I'm so fucking stupid."

"It's just a kiss, Rue," Rafe said but she shook her head.

"No, cause now it's gonna be weird."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I kissed you."

"You think you're the first girl that I've kissed?"

"That's not the fucking point, Rafe."

"Am I the first guy you kissed?" She threw her hands in the air and groaned. He'd meant it jokingly but when Rue didn't answer his smug grin dropped and he looked at her with furrowed brows. "Fuck, am I?"

"Don't be stupid." She pushed him against his shoulder.

"You're worried I'm expecting sex now, aren't you?" She kept quiet. "You're not the only girl in town I can fuck, Rue."

She narrowed her eyes when she looked at him. "Don't be an ass."

"Nah, nah, you know what Rue, I don't need this shit," he growled as he pulled his helmet over his head. "Sure as hell don't need a Pogue's sloppy seconds." He shifted from the guy that had held her tenderly and kissed her as if she was the only person in the world to the kinda guy Kiara had warned her about.

"Don't make fucking assumptions about me, Cameron."

"What? Like you're making about me?" He climbed on top of his bike. "Or did the thought that I'd assault you back on the beach not cross your mind?" She felt the pace of her heart picking up. "You think I didn't see the fucking way you looked at me?" And she felt it shatter. Shatter as she realized that he hadn't needed any words from her to be hurt, a single glance of distrust and fear had been enough. He'd set his feelings aside, for her, to make her night as memorable as he'd promised. And she'd fucked it up.

"Rafe--" she tried but he shook his head.

"Go back to The Cut, Ruelle. You've picked your side."

✖

She didn't think she would cry over a boy the first week of being in the Outer Banks, but she did. As soon as she'd gotten home, she'd run up the stairs, locked the door of her room, and screamed into her pillow.

She'd lit a cigarette.

She only smoked when her body ached with emotions; anger, fear, sadness, plain stupidity. Now she hung out of her window and allowed the warm smoke to fill her lungs and glue back the shattered pieces of her heart.

She was such a fuck up. She could slam her head against the frame of her window, crack her skull open and drop her stupid brain on the ground, she didn't need it. It didn't do her any good.

She'd blown a possible friendship with Rafe because she hadn't been able to keep it in her pants. She'd warned him all night not to make a move on her and one proper glance from him had made her weak in the knees and she was ready to give all of her to him. He hadn't made any advances on her. He hadn't touched her in the wrong way, he hadn't added actions to the words he so jokingly told to her.

But she'd looked at him as if he was a rapist. Fleetingly, a thought that crossed her mind for the bearest second, but he'd seen and it had torn him apart.

"Fuck," she breathed out as she put the cigarette out on the windowsill and tossed it in the bin near her desk. She pulled her phone from her pocket and started dialing a number. "Hey," she said into the phone as the person on the other end answered. "You still up? ... I need your help with something."

✖

It was Rafe's little sister and John B's partner in crime that climbed through her window that night. Rue felt that if anyone was going to be able to figure the whole situation out without judging her it would be Sarah. But the blonde paced around her room with her hands on her hips as she chewed the inside of her cheeks.

"Honestly, Ruelle, it's a good thing," she started.

"How is your brother being mad at me a good thing?"

"Rafe is no good."

"So people keep telling me, but he's proven to be quite capable of doing good things tonight." She remembered how he carried her through the water, how he made her laugh. He'd left his own party to take care of a strange girl with a sad past. That was no villain thing to do. "I fucked this up Sarah."

"Why do you wanna fix it so bad?"

Because she had felt that when he yelled at her, he wasn't just yelling at her. That she wasn't the only one who'd looked at him and thought him to be some kind of fucked up. That everyone went behind his back to make him the bad guy, even his friends, even his family.

"I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I made him feel bad, he doesn't deserve it."

"Believe me, he does."

"Sarah—"

The blonde held her hands up in the air. "Fine. Look, Rafe's not really big on showing emotions alright. Anger is basically his default setting. He has a hard time trusting people and letting people in. He gave you a chance and—"

"I ruined it," Rue filled in and Sarah nodded.

"You wanna win his trust back? You gotta earn it and I promise you Rue, he won't make it easy on you."