LITTLE SECRET | RAFE CAMERON

81: 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥'𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘥

The car was wrapped in an unsettling silence.

There was a silence between the Blakely siblings that felt out of place. So unfamiliar it almost seemed oppressive.

Outside, the streets were empty, bathed in the pale glow of the streetlights that cast long shadows across the wet asphalt. The world beyond the car windows was dark, save for the flicker of a passing light or the dim outlines of sleeping buildings.

The island seemed to hold its breath, as if waiting for something to break the stillness of the night.

Ian drummed his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel as the third traffic light in a row turned red.

This wasn't how he expected his birthday to end.

His gaze flickered briefly to Alice, who sat motionless beside him, her attention absorbed entirely by her phone.

Not once did she look up.

Hesitantly he cleared his throat, breaking the silence. „who are you texting?"

„Sarah." Alice answered flatly, her voice still heavy.

The same heaviness that had lingered in her voice only minutes earlier, when she had burst into his room, beginning him to take her to the hospital.

Ian's fingers tightened around the steering wheel as the seconds dragged on, the returning silence between them pressing down on him like a weight. He took another glance at Alice, her empty face illuminated by the cold light of her phone, her eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the small screen.

He just couldn't hold back the question.

„Is there any news?" His voice was quieter than he meant it to be, and for a moment, he even regretted asking.

She didn't look up. Her thumb moved steadily across the screen as if the rhythm of it was the only thing keeping her grounded.

„No." She replied shortly, but there was something in her tone that Ian couldn't quite place.

A flicker of something.

Frustration? Exhaustion?

He couldn't tell.

Ian tried to keep his voice steady when he spoke, but it cracked a little under the weight of the question. „have you talked to him in the last few days?"

And that was the first time Ian saw something like a movement in Alice's face, but she didn't answer immediately.

Her eyes never left the screen of her phone and Ian even began to wonder if she had heard him or not.

It was probably the protective, brotherly instinct that had pushed him to ask the question.

By now, he knew what Rafe meant to Alice.

He had seen the way her heart tangled itself around Rafe, even in the moments when she tried to hide it. And he also understood - in his own way - what Alice meant to Rafe. But even with all of that, there was something deeper at play.

Something that lingered just beneath the surface of her emotional whirlwind.

He could feel the weight of her heartache as if it were his own, the protective love he had for her running deeper than words could say. No matter how much she tried to shut him out, he would always be there. It wasn't just instinct that pushed him to ask. It was love, the kind that bound them in ways they didn't always understand but that would never let them go.

„Yeah, but we...we fought" Alice finally admitted, her words careful, as if speaking them out loud made them real in a way she wasn't ready for. „hours before he—before it happened."