"What the hell are you doing here with him?"

Lolla froze for a few moments, her mind full of thought and the words just at the tip of her tongue, but she was frozen on that bench, staring into his eyes.

The same eyes that were such a beautiful blue, like the ocean if you go far away enough from the shore now looked like ice. As cold as ice. And his stare made goosebumps raise on her skin.

Except from a split second that his eyes flashed an emotion that Lolla did not have the time to understand, his eyes were full of hatred.

JJ, who was sitting next to her was looking at the eye contact the two were exchanging felt really out of place, almost as if he was walking in on something. He sat up from the bench.

"This looks way too personal for me to be here-" before he could finish that sentence, Rafe was holding onto him by the collar of his shirt, lifting him up slightly into the air and slamming his body against a wooden pillar.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing here with her Maybank?" Rafe spat out at him, his jaw clenching from anger.

"Listen here Polo boy, put me the fuck down right now" JJ replied in that same angry tone, but he didn't fighting back. Mostly for the sake of Lolla.

Lolla had stood up with a gasp as he stared at what was unleashing in front of her, but she didn't know what to say.

"Nah I don't think so man, didn't daddy ever teach you not to play with shit that isn't yours?" Rafe asked sarcastically, tilting his head slightly to the side.

"Didn't daddy ever teach you that violence doesn't magically solve everything? And last time I checked, she doesn't belong to you" JJ replied sternly.

"Rafe put him down" Lolla said, to which Rafe didn't even turn his head. He didn't hear her over the rage inside his body.

"If I ever see you near her again, I swear to god Maybank-"

"That's Lollas decision, you don't get to dictate her life you psycho!" JJ said as he shoved Rafe back, but Rafe walked up to him again in a slow pace, his eyes scarily empty, until he was right up at JJ, his face right infront of his.

"Psycho? You want me to show you just how psycho I can be? Because it won't be fucking pretty"  Rafe asked in an eerie tone.

"Stop this Rafe" Lolla said a bit louder, but Rafe still didn't acknowledge her.

"Do it then asshole. Beat me up to make yourself feel better. But do you really think that beating me up is gonna make Lolla come to you with open arms? News flash buddy, no it won't."

With what JJ said, Rafe seemed to snap out of it. He turned around to face Lolla, her eyes a mixture of brown and all the negative emotions a person could feel. But her eyes were pleading with him to stop this. Not just right then with JJ, but stop treating her like that over all.

"Lo I-" Rafe tried to speak, to which she interrupted him.

"Fuck this" She said as she began walking away.

Rafe didn't know what to do, he felt time moving in slow motion. He couldn't go after her, but he couldn't just stand there and do nothing.

He felt like Lolla was leaving him forever, like she wouldn't be able to forgive him again like she had done so many times before. And he had taken advantage of that. Taken advantage of how sweet and forgiving she had been to him since they met.

"Don't let her get away" Rafe turned to look at JJ, who stood beside him also watching Lolla walking away from the pier. "You'll regret it, don't let her get away" JJ added.

That was all Rafe needed to hear, as he sped walked to her direction, trying desperately to catch up with her. Trying not to let her go. As selfish as it was, he just couldn't let her go.

What he didn't know, is how she also couldn't let him go. Her heart felt like it was physically hurting at the idea. As she was walking away, with her arms wrapped around her and her eyes glassy with tears threatening to escape, her heart felt like it was physically hurting. She had so many emotions towards him in that moment, both good and bad.

"Lolla please wait up!" Rafe yelled from behind her, but she didn't stop walking. Her heart was threatening to go through her back, to the destination it wanted to go, but her legs didn't stop moving.

"Lolla please don't leave me!" Rafe practically fell on his knees and begged with how much desperation was in his voice

That phrase got her to turn around. That phrase made a switch tick inside of her brain, almost going into survival mode.

She was going to finally let go, let go of everything she had been feeling for so long.

All those years of bottling up her feelings inside of her, but that simple phrase overflowed the bottle inside of her.

"Not leave you? Not fucking leave you? Every time we get close what do you do? You leave you fucking hypocrite!" Lolla yelled at him, walking closer to him.

"You don't get to act like that Rafe! You can't act like you fucking own me like I'm some plastic doll, but whenever shit gets serious you bail. You can't treat JJ like that when I literally just went there because he wanted to fucking apologise! You can't do that! It's not fair!"

"I've given you chance, after chance, after chance but you always hurt me in the end of it! You always leave me! Why? What did I do to fucking deserve this?! I've given you everything, I'm always there Rafe, always. I took care of you yesterday when you were drunk, and you just left! Again! Like you left after you told me about your dad!"

She was going off on him, and he had no choice but to just stand there and hear it. He knew that all her anger wasn't only directed towards him, but he stood there and took it. She was yelling at the same time as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"All I ever wanted was to be enough for you, but I'm not. Whatever I do won't be enough, never." She let out a sob. That sob traveled into Rafes heart and shattered it.

"Lo come here" Rafe spoke in a soft tone as he went to reach out to her, to which she just flinched.

"No! Just leave me alone! Leave! Just- just leave" She was full on sobbing at that point. Rafe took a step closer to her and wrapped him arms around her, tightly, pulling her into a hug.

"Stop- stop let me go! I hate you! Leave me alone!" She yelled at him. But when she saw that Rafe wasn't moving even an inch as Lolla tried to escape from his grasp, she broke down again. She clung onto his body as she cried against him.

This whole situation with Rafe had triggered all of her past trauma, both with her ex boyfriend and with her father. That's why it affected her so badly.

She held onto him as if she was holding onto her life. She needed that comfort desperately.

"I'll be better for you, I will. I promise baby" Rafe said against her hair as he held onto her, not wanting to let her go. Ever.

Rafe always ran away when things got serious, in every aspect of his life. It wasn't like he didn't know what he was doing when he treated other girls like shit, he had seen many of them begging for him to take them back, and it didn't affect him in the slightest.

But this was different. It killed him inside to see Lolla so hurt. He didn't know why, but it was so much worse than those other times.

The reason he left her in the morning, was because he looked at her while she slept. She looked so peaceful, like an angel that had just fallen from the sky. He couldn't ruin that, he couldn't ruin her. He couldn't pull her down into hell with all of his issues. So he left. But he felt horrible.

He wanted to capture every single one of her tears, every piece of her sadness and trauma and throw it away. Because such a kind and caring girl like her didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve everything that had happened to her in the past, or the way Rafe was treating her.

She had let him in, and he treated her that way. He felt disgusted in himself, absolutely disgusted.

His heart hurt more than the black eye that was still on his face from where his father had hit him. It hurt more than the pain he felt when he realised that he would never be his father's favourite child.

"Kiss me"

Her words were soft, quiet enough to where he barely heard them. He thought he was hallucinating, he must have heard her wrong. He turned his gaze to look down at her.

"What?"

"Kiss me Rafe. Prove to me this is real. Prove to me that you aren't just playing with my head and my heart."

So he did just that. He held onto her face with both of his hand, leaned in and kissed her.

That kiss held onto everything. It wasn't just a random kiss at a party, no, it was everything. They felt it past their mouths, like the kiss traveled through their bodies and into their hearts.

As many things as she had been through with him, from being nothing but his dealer, to being a fling, to him ghosting her, the whole thing with Mandy, the whole thing at that dinner where he hurt her, through everything, she was willing to risk it all.

Because she had never felt this way before. Never had another person be so consuming, and she never had a person who she wanted to give everything to.

Her heart, her body, her mind, her soul, everything.

Rafe was like a tumour that she could never get out of her, for better or for worse.

He pulled away from the kiss and rested their foreheads together, just both of them staring into each other's eyes.

"What happened to being just friends, little liar?" He said with a smile on his face, one of the first times he had genuinely smiled in the last few months.

"What happened to me being nothing but your dealer?" She teased him back with a smile on her face.

I'd be was able to, he would drown in her smile. It lit up a  place inside of his heart that he thought was dead forever.

"You were always so much more than that, always"

This was good, they were finally good.

But how long would it last?
——
authors note:
well finally

this might seem like the book has ended, but trust me it hasn't.

there is soooooo much more drama, for example Lolla still doesn't know that Big John is her actual father (spoiler alert: that won't go well)

thank you all so much for supporting my story though! it truly means a lot!

don't forget to vote and leave a comment!

is there anything that you want to be added to this book? let me know!!!