This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
[19]
song: say, can you hear by men i trust

Hours passed without word from Rafe. Cassie didn't argue with him when he'd said she wasn't going to help get rid of Renfield's body. At first she felt like she had to, like this was just as much her responsibility as it was Rafe's. But there was this look in his eye that made her understand that whatever it was he was going to do, she wasn't going to like it.

She'd sat in his room, exhausted but wide awake. Anxious, but not enough to do anything about it. Hungry, but not enough to get up and find anything to eat. She was left unattended with her thoughts, and that was the scariest thing she'd experienced in days.

She wondered if Rafe would even come back. If he had left with his family and she'd never see him again. If all of this was some twisted, disgusting trick that he'd molded and twisted into getting her to sleep with him. She let herself accept that for a while, and she cried about it. Humiliated, and guilt-ridden.

And then she wondered if something horrible had happened. If Carla had come back and done something to him, and she'd never have any idea what truly happened. That she killed him, taken back the cross and blamed Renfield's death on him, too. Getting away scot free.

She wondered if Sarah'd gone and told everyone else about what happened. That he had the cross and a body in that truck, and the cops had gotten to him.

Cassie hadn't heard from Sarah in hours, it could've happened. The rest of the house had been silent, and she assumed Rose and Wheezie had already left. But Sarah, she wasn't sure what she would choose to do. To disappear and restart with the only family she had left, or to remain in the OBX without them.

Cassie felt like she couldn't move, couldn't live, until Rafe returned. That there was little to no point in any of it. She was leaving the island soon. She had nowhere to go until he came back and took her to the wharf with him.

Was it a healthy mindset? No. But it was the only place in her mind that she felt safe in right now. And she planned to stay there as long as she could.

At seven in the morning, it was the sound of trucks beeping, backing up outside, that brought her out of her haze. It was that state of not being asleep, but not really being awake either. Where all of your irrational thoughts and ideas felt so real, but you didn't have the grace of saying 'it was just a dream' to excuse the senselessness of it all.

Standing from his bed, from underneath the piles of blankets and warmth, her bare feet hitting the cold floor was enough to send her into a screaming fit.

Her body was battling itself to keep her functioning. She was freezing, but covered in sweat. She was panicked, but somehow still full of energy and joy. Her bones ached, but she could've ran a mile if she needed to.

She'd soon found herself leaning over the toilet, vomiting up whatever she'd taken the hours prior. In a test of self-control, she had promised herself she wouldn't touch the contents inside that little chest on the mantle. But in that promise, she'd forgotten to include all of the other drugs she found in this room.

It felt good to get out of her system. Whatever it was, she'd taken too much to get any enjoyment out of it. It'd just sent her into a painfully slow depressive state, where the world had turned silent, and stopped moving.