This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

fifteen

September fifteenth, which was today technically, given that it was a little past midnight. A meeting with the Kildare Parks & Rec department for her grandma in the morning, and in the afternoon, at five PM, Kitty Hawk was coming for another wellness check in.

She relished in the absence of her panic, swallowing her three pills with a serenity that was surely caused by lack of logical thinking. There was a calmness to the realization of their visit that would usually concern her, but she just didn't really care anymore. There were bigger things at stake than a wilderness therapy camp. And she knew they had no reason to be concerned. She wasn't an addict anymore, and she didn't just relapse, she just had a lapse in judgment— and she'd be fine in the morning.

Headlights pulling onto her street distracted her focus from the calendar to the windows by the door, where a car came to a slow outside of her house.

Her heart was pounding at the thought of seeing him again. And just like that, all of her previous worries were out of mind.

She was expecting to see the black mercedes she'd been in and out of all day, not an old moving truck. Quietly, she closed the front door behind her, stuffing her keys in her coat pocket as she peered through the darkness towards the truck.

Rafe must have sensed her hesitation, as he got out of the front seat and came around to the back, waving her over.

Cassie looked both ways, taking in the quiet, dark environment where only the cicadas sang, before she made her way over to where Rafe unlocked the back of the truck.

"Do you want to see it?" He asked, his voice quiet.

She felt like she was doing something she shouldn't, constantly looking over her shoulder to make sure no one saw them.

Cassie, turning to look at him with a sort of eagerness that really had nothing to do with the cross and everything to do with him, nods.

He opens up the big, wooden doors with a loud creek as Cassie steps out of the way. Inside were a few empty wooden crates, thin cuts of plywood stacked up on top of each other, and something cross-shaped tied up with duct-tape, and padded blankets.

She examined it, and when it clicked in her head, she turned to Rafe with wide eyes that he had been waiting for. "No way." She says, shaking her head in disbelief.

"It's real." He says, watching carefully as he face changes from excited, to inquisitive, to shocked, then confused, then excited again.

"No way?!" She says, louder than needed, before clasping a hand over her mouth.

He was nodding along, letting her get the initial reactions out, but knowing they had somewhere to be.

"Where did you... Are you sure?" She kept her hand over her mouth as she spoke, still not quite understanding it all.

Cassie couldn't decipher whether the reason she was having trouble processing this was because it was all happening very fast, or because of the drugs. She'd been in a sort of strange state of separation these past twenty four hours, where nothing really felt real. She was just existing outside of her own body as life went on around her.

And now, an item worth one billion dollars, which she helped locate, and was promised a cut of, was in front of her and she couldn't really get her brain to comprehend the extremities of it all. Of anything that's happened lately.