Drew Starkey Imagines

Religiously Pt 1

It had been exactly eleven months and six days since you left Rafe Cameron.

Not that he was counting. Not out loud, anyway.

But time had a funny way of dragging when you were stuck in the same place you swore you'd never go back to. Alone. Lost. Hollowed out. The kind of loneliness that didn't just sting — it ached. Somewhere deep, behind his ribs where your voice used to echo.

He never saw it coming — you leaving. Not really. You always loved him too much. Too fiercely. You had this fire about you, this unwavering belief that if you just held on a little tighter, fought a little harder, he'd come back. That the man he was when you first met — the boy with broken dreams and too many shadows behind his eyes — would fight too.

But he didn't.

You fought for the both of you, until you couldn't anymore.

And now? Now he watches your life unfold through filtered snapshots and tagged smiles. Instagram stories filled with sunlight and laughter, your eyes brighter than he remembers, your friends loud and alive around you like they always used to be before he dragged you into his darkness. You're happy — or at least, you look like it.

And God, he wishes it was him making you that way.

⸻

The first girl after you? A distraction. Blonde, attitude, kind of wild. She kissed like she had something to prove, but he didn't feel a thing.

The second one? Softer. Quiet. Sweet eyes and borrowed perfume that lingered on his hoodie longer than she did in his memory.

Neither of them mattered. They weren't you. They didn't believe in him like you did. They didn't look at him and see something worth saving.

You did.

You always did.

⸻

He's sitting on the porch now — the one you used to dance barefoot on when the world got too loud. A beer bottle sweats against his palm, barely touched. He's on his fourth one, but it's not the buzz he's chasing tonight.

It's the memory of you in that sundress, laughing like the world hadn't broken you yet.

His phone buzzes once. Snapchat story notification.

He doesn't have to check it. He knows it's you.

He always knows.

You're out again — music, friends, that one guy who always hovers too close to you in every photo. The one Rafe could never quite stand. The one he hates knowing makes you laugh now.

He takes a slow pull from the beer. Lets it burn.

You were supposed to be it. The girl he gave up the coke for. The pills. The rage. You found him in pieces, kissed every broken edge, and didn't flinch. You prayed over him, held his hands in that tiny chapel off the backroads, the one no one else in Outer Banks even remembered existed.

He remembers your voice whispering, "You're not what they say you are, Rafe. I know you. I believe in you."

You believed in him religiously.

And he still let you go.

⸻

He went back to church last Sunday.

He sat in the back — same pew he used to sit in when you made him go. It still smelled like dust and old Bibles. The wood creaked under his weight, like even the church didn't believe he deserved to be there anymore.

He didn't pray for much. Just one thing.

"Please... just make it stop hurting."

But it didn't.

Not when he walked out of those doors. Not when he climbed back into his truck. Not when he drove past the beach you always swore was your happy place.

Because happiness, to Rafe, was always you.

⸻

You were the only one who saw through it all. Through the Kook prince act. The gold chains and daddy's money. The bruised knuckles and bloodshot eyes. You didn't flinch when he showed you the worst parts of himself — the violent bursts, the nights he didn't come home, the mornings he cried harder than he ever let anyone see.

You held him through hell.

And he repaid you with silence. With slipping back into the darkness, inch by inch, until you couldn't find him anymore.

You begged. You screamed. You stayed longer than you should have.

But eventually, even angels get tired of bleeding for someone who won't stop picking the scabs.

So you walked.

And Rafe? He's been trying to follow ever since.

⸻

He thinks about texting you almost every night.

Sometimes he types it all out — the apology, the confession, the "I still love you" wrapped in a thousand different words — but he never hits send.

What would he even say?

"I'm sorry I let go of the only person who ever saved me?"

"I miss your laugh more than I miss the high?"

"You're the only thing I ever got right?"

None of it feels like enough.

He sees your joy now, how light you seem, how free. And he tells himself maybe it's better this way. Maybe he deserves to watch you move on. Maybe he's the villain in your story, and he just needs to accept that.

But damn if it doesn't kill him every single day.

⸻

And then one night — nearly a year to the day since it all fell apart — he walks into that little church again. Alone. Same pew. Same silence. But this time, he's not asking for the pain to stop.

He's asking for another chance.

Not just to fix things with you — but to deserve you again.

Because here's the truth:

He doesn't want to be free if it means being free from you.

⸻

He's still got your necklace. The one you forgot on his nightstand the night you left. It's tangled now, tucked inside the front pocket of the jacket he wears like armor.

Sometimes, when it gets real bad, he holds it and swears he can still smell your perfume on it.

He still hasn't opened your last message — the one that just said, "Please take care of yourself."

Because if he opens it, it means it's really over.

But maybe... maybe it doesn't have to be.

Maybe there's still a version of this story where he gets to be worthy of the girl who believed in him when no one else did.

Maybe, just maybe, he'll fight for you this time.

All the way.

⸻

Would you take him back?

He doesn't know.

But he's willing to spend the rest of his life proving he can be the man you always saw in him.

Even if he has to do it religiously.