LITTLE SECRET | RAFE CAMERON

80: 𝘕𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘦

Sometimes, Alice felt as if the universe had aligned against her, as if every piece of her life, every person in it, had been secretly working together to tear her apart. It was as though everything - the endless betrayals, the heartbreak, the failures - was designed to break her down.

She had convinced herself, time and time again, that after everything she'd been through, nothing could hurt her anymore. That nothing could be worse than the pain she had already endured. She'd survived it all and had come out the other side, scarred but standing.

But life, in all its cruelty, had a way of teaching her just how wrong she was.

And all it took was one phone call.

On the other end, Sarah's breath came in ragged, gasping sobs. The kind of breathless panic that made Alice's chest tighten with dread.

„Sarah?" Alice's voice was thick with sleep, but something else tugged at her, warning her something was terribly wrong.

„Sarah?" She repeated, but there was no answer.

Only another choking sob. Then another, louder this time, like a plea for help, a cry for someone to save her from the terror she was trapped in.

Alice's heart twisted. Her hands trembled as she pressed the phone tighter to her ear. „Sarah... please, what's going on?"

„I can't... I don't..." Sarah's voice cracked, the words almost too heavy to form.

She sounded like someone who had seen something she couldn't unsee.

Alice's eyes darted to the small clock glowing on her nightstand, the light cold. Past midnight. The rain outside battered the windows with a rhythmic violence, a steady pulse that seemed to match the frantic thumping of her own heart. But above everything, it was Sarah's sobs, breaking apart in the silence of Alice's room, that drowned everything else out.

Each one felt like a nail being hammered into her chest.

The longer Sarah cried, the deeper the sickening weight in Alice's stomach grew, as if something terrible, something she couldn't even name, was crawling closer. She felt it, like a cold hand on the back of her neck.

„Sarah, where are you?" Alice's voice cracked, the fear so raw it bled through her words.

And then, through the silence, Sarah whispered the words that shattered her entire world.

„The hospital...Rafe..."

The air seemed to leave Alice's lungs. The world tilted, like the ground had suddenly disappeared beneath her. Her body went cold, her heart frozen, and for a moment, the noise of her own blood pounding in her ears drowned out everything else.

She sat up so quickly, feeling like the world itself had snapped into focus. „what do you mean...the hospital?"

„I found him at the party..." Sarah's voice was broken, each word strained, as if she couldn't even bear to speak the truth. „god, I don't even know how much he took..."

Alice's chest tightened, her vision narrowing. This couldn't be real.

„How much he took?" She whispered, her voice barely there, disbelief coating her words like a thin layer. She clung to the hope that she hadn't heard right, that she'd misunderstood. „of what?"

„Alice..." Sarah's voice trembled. „Rafe overdosed."

The words hit like a fist to the chest.

The world around Alice went silent, suffocating in the aftermath of that one word.

Overdosed.

It hung in the air like a death sentence.

Her thoughts fractured, her pulse ringing in her ears. The air around her seemed to still, as if the universe itself had paused to take a breath.

Overdosed.

The word felt foreign, lodged in her throat like a curse she couldn't expel. It didn't make sense. Only a few hours had passed since she last saw him, but now she couldn't stop the gnawing feeling in her gut that whatever happened after she left was somehow her fault.

She had left him.

She had left him.

„He still had a pulse when I found him..." Sarah began quietly. „he was all alone...lying there...and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't..." Her voice broke again, too heavy to continue. „someone called an ambulance, but...I just...I couldn't..."

Alice was frozen, her whole body numb, like time had stopped and everything was happening too fast. Her throat tightened as if the words she wanted to say had been ripped out of her. She could hardly breathe.

Why didn't you call me sooner? The words screamed in her mind, but they wouldn't come out. Why didn't you call me?

Her hands were shaking so badly that she almost dropped the phone. Her knuckles turned white from gripping it so tightly, as if it was the only thing keeping her tethered to this world, to reality. But even that felt fragile, slipping through her fingers like sand.

And then, just as she thought she might fall apart, the faint sounds of the hospital chaos filtered through the phone - shouts, footsteps, a hallway full of voices of fear and urgency. The sounds were distant, as if they belonged to someone else's nightmare.

But they were hers. This was her nightmare now.

A silence settled between the two girls, and Alice wondered if Sarah could hear the first tear slipping down her cheek.

The one she couldn't stop, even if she tried.

The broken pieces of their friendship, of everything they'd once been to each other, lay between them. Unspoken. Unforgiven.

An irreparable rift, born of lies, betrayals, things they had never dared say aloud. And Rafe. Rafe, who had somehow become the wedge between them. His presence had driven them further apart, each time pulling them in different directions, until there was nothing left but this silence, this distance.

But now?

Now it wasn't just Rafe's condition that shattered everything. It was the brutal truth. The painful, undeniable truth that no matter how much they had hurt each other, no matter how many secrets they had kept, no matter the lies, neither of them had been there for him.

And that knowledge hit Alice like a punch to the gut.

That they had both failed him.

She wasn't sure if the sob that escaped her was hers, or Sarah's. But it didn't matter anymore. The pain was the same.

„Ali, I know I'm the last person who should ask anything of you..." Sarah's voice sounded the way it did when they were kids - so small, so careful. „...but could you please come? I need you."