This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

twenty three

TWENTY THREE
[23]
song: i love me after you by mitski

"I swear." Cassie reiterated.

Rafe eyed her, not as easily susceptible to her tricks anymore. He was cautious of everything she said, of every way her body moved, trying to pick apart the truth. "Then how did you know where the map was?"

Cassie, still freaking out from the gunshot, moved away from the window with a hand clutched over her stomach, trying to catch her breath. "Map? What map?!"

"The map at Tannyhill— on the walls." Rafe spoke impatiently, following Cassie as she moved from the window. "The Island Room."

She shook her head quickly. "I— I just guessed, I don't know?!"

"You just guessed that there was a hidden map behind the wallpaper in my house?" Rafe looked at her with narrowed eyes, talking to her like she was an idiot.

"It was already falling off, I just peeled back more—"

"They'll kill you." He interrupted her, speaking sternly. "Cassie, if you have it, just give it up—"

"Don't—" she could barely finish her sentence, a laugh falling from her lips, as she took a step back from him. The chaos of the situation gave her a moment to let her guard down, but as it all started to settle, she began to process the fact that she was still locked in a room with him. "Don't act like you care whether I live or die, Rafe, please. You already proved that once."

Rafe didn't move, he just stared at her with those unreadable eyes she was so used to being met with before any of this. He'd become so unrecognizable to her, just completely unaware as to where his mind was.

They stood there for a long while in silence, mulling over her words, recalling past events. She tried hard to keep calm, to not let him see how upset she was. But he looked at her with such regret, with such a deep sadness behind those empty eyes, that she felt herself begin to grow angry.

How dare he feel sad for her? How dare he look at her with such pity?

"Did they do that to you?" He asked quietly.

When she heard his voice, she remembered they were actually here in this room together, and it wasn't some hallucination.

He gestured toward her, and she looked down to the wound on her arm, opened up and bleeding again, probably from the way she was drug up the stairs.

"Shit." She muttered, walking over to the bathroom, where the leftover bloody wraps sat in the sink.

She looked in the cabinets for anything else, for spare toilet paper or tissues, but it was all empty. She grabbed her towel from earlier, and pressed it against the wound.

She heard a pound on the door to the hall, and thought it had come from the other side, until she heard Rafe.

"Hey," he starts. "Hey!" He repeats, louder, slamming another fist against the door. "She's bleeding."

She poked her head out from the bathroom, keeping the towel to her arm, watching as Rafe hit the door again.

"She needs—"