Drew Starkey Imagines

Golden Boy Pt 2 (Finale)

You hadn't seen him since that night.

Not really.

There were glimpses, of course. His name in a headline about some coastal land dispute—"Cameron Holdings Maintains Control." A photograph from a gala in Charleston, where he stood with his signature disinterest beside a blonde who looked too eager to be real. A fleeting moment at a charity polo match where you thought he saw you across the field, and for a second, the world narrowed to just his eyes and yours. But he didn't come over. Neither did you.

That was the game, wasn't it? Always circling. Never touching.

Still, you'd be lying if you said he hadn't haunted you.

The way his fingers had lingered at your waist. The way he had watched you walk away like you were a storm he wasn't quite ready to weather. You'd felt it too—that pulse of something neither of you were supposed to want. He had everything. You had nothing to lose. Maybe that was the difference.

But then, months later, the invitation came.

Hand-delivered. Embossed. A single line written in his unmistakable scrawl:

"Try again."

And beneath it, an address. Not his family estate, but a different place entirely. One you'd never seen—somewhere secluded, coastal, wild. The kind of place people disappeared to when they didn't want to be found.

You almost didn't go.

But curiosity has teeth, and his name still lived under your skin like a bruise you couldn't quite stop touching.

So now here you were.

The drive had been long, winding, surrounded by nothing but Spanish moss and the hush of old trees. The house was different too—modern, glass and stone, all sharp edges and open space. No chandeliers. No audience. Just the sound of waves somewhere beyond the windows, and him.

Rafe.

Leaning against the doorframe like he'd been waiting hours just to see if you'd actually come. Dressed in white linen and barefoot, sun-drenched and too calm. He looked less like the golden boy tonight and more like something rawer. Realer.

"Wasn't sure you'd show," he said.

You arched a brow. "Wasn't sure you'd mean it."

He stepped aside wordlessly, letting you enter. The house smelled like salt and cedarwood. There were no portraits on the walls, no polished surfaces. Just open air and silence and the thrum of something unspoken between you.

"You disappeared," he said, once you'd made it as far as the kitchen, where two glasses of bourbon already waited—no ice.

"You let me."

That made him pause.

Rafe Cameron, speechless. A rare thing.

"You scared me," he admitted after a long beat.

You blinked. "That's not your style."

He handed you a glass. Didn't argue. Didn't smirk.

"No," he said quietly. "But you weren't like the rest. You didn't ask for anything. You didn't need anything. You were the first person who made me think about what I wanted, not just what I already had."

And there it was. The crack in the armor.

You sipped your drink slowly, letting the silence stretch until it became something intimate.

"You invited me here for more than bourbon," you finally said.

He nodded once.

"I wanted to see if you'd still walk away. Or if maybe, this time... you'd stay."

You placed your glass down. Took a step closer.

"That depends," you murmured. "Are you still trying to win?"

"No," he said, his voice low. "Not this time. This time, I'm just asking."

His hand brushed yours. Not possessive. Not demanding. Just a question, waiting to be answered.

And you—maybe you were tired of running. Maybe the memory of his touch had burned too long on your skin. Maybe the truth was simpler than all of that:

You wanted him, too.

So you didn't answer with words. You closed the space between you and kissed him.

Slow. Certain.

The kind of kiss that rewrites endings.

Outside, the sea sighed against the shore, and the world kept spinning, unaware that something inevitable had just fallen into place.

The golden boy was no longer untouchable.

And you—
You were no longer walking away.