Collateral || Rafe Cameron

𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕

Every day at the Cameron estate was a delicate balancing act, the tension between Rafe and me growing thicker with each passing moment.

I'd expected our confrontation to shift something between us, to put an end to the little games and snide remarks. But instead, it seemed to have pushed us both further into a strange, twisted dance of watching, waiting, and never fully trusting each other.

I kept working, kept pretending that I was just another maid blending into the background. But the truth was, every second I spent in that house felt like a ticking bomb. I wasn't here to clean or to serve. I was here to dig deeper, to find out what had happened to Alden. And every time I saw Rafe, every time I caught a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye, I knew he was hiding something.

But I wasn't the only one watching.

Rafe had started paying more attention to me, too. I could feel his eyes on me whenever we crossed paths, studying me in a way that made my skin crawl. He wasn't the carefree, arrogant rich kid he wanted everyone to believe he was. There was something more beneath the surface — something darker, something that made him just as dangerous as his father.

I could see it in the way he moved, the way his hands clenched into fists when he thought no one was looking. He was always on edge, like he was one bad day away from snapping. And it wasn't hard to see why.

His reputation preceded him. Rafe Cameron was a mess of drugs, alcohol, and fights — barely held together by his family's money and power. He had everything handed to him on a silver platter, but instead of being grateful, he was angry. Angry at the world, angry at his father, and most of all, angry at himself.

It became a routine. I'd get to work early in the morning, just as the sun was rising, and more often than not, I'd find Rafe passed out somewhere. Sometimes, it was in his truck, slumped over the steering wheel after another wild night of partying. His face would be pale, lips slightly parted, a beer bottle still rolling around on the floor of the truck.

Other times, he'd be on the porch, sprawled out on one of the lounge chairs, looking like he hadn't slept in days.

I'd watch him for a second, just long enough to remind myself of who he was, of the kind of person he had always been.

A Cameron. A spoiled, entitled Kook who didn't know what it was like to struggle for anything in his life.

And yet, despite all the privilege, all the money, there was something broken in him. Something he couldn't fix, no matter how many fights he picked or how many bottles he drank.

There was one morning that stuck with me more than the others. I'd come in just after dawn, expecting to go straight to the kitchen to start the day's work, when I heard the sound of running water coming from the bathroom down the hall. Curiosity got the better of me, and I crept closer, trying to stay quiet as I peeked through the crack in the door.

Rafe was standing in front of the sink, his back to me, his hands braced on the counter. His shoulders were tense, his head hanging low as he stared down at the basin. The sound of water splashing echoed softly in the small space, and it didn't take long for me to realize what he was doing. He was washing blood off his hands.

I stepped back, my breath catching in my throat as I watched him scrub furiously, as if he was trying to erase whatever fight he'd gotten into the night before. I didn't need to see his face to know he was angry — angry at the world, angry at himself. It was written in the way his fingers gripped the edges of the sink, in the way his knuckles turned white as he scrubbed.

I should've felt a sense of satisfaction seeing him like that, vulnerable and raw. But instead, all I felt was a cold knot of unease twisting in my gut. Rafe was a mess, and I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was eating away at him had something to do with Alden.