Page 41 of Love at First Rep

Rafe found his phone in the pocket of the jeans Garrett had torn off the night before. He smiled, thinking of what they did last night, until the buzzing distracted him again. Few people had his number, and he didn’t want to hear from any of them at the moment. Instead, he slid all the way to the floor until he lay under the foot of Garrett’s bed, like a damn dog. Rafe almost laughed at the thought as he shifted to get more comfortable. He needed to shift around the room as quietly as he could to avoid waking Garrett with the ambient light of his phone.

As he turned so his phone would be practically under the bed to block the light, his hand bumped into a solid object.

He aimed his phone under the bed and turned it on, using the light of his screen to spot an old shoebox. Somehow he’d missed it when he first explored Garrett’s place. Was it an invasion of Garrett’s privacy to peek inside? Hell yes. Was that going to stop Rafe from doing it and learning one more thing about the man Garrett had become in the twenty years he’d missed him? Hell no.

Rafe’s brows furrowed after he opened the box to see random items inside. He wondered why Garrett would stash them like he did. They included old pieces of string, trinkets, a bag of sour—

Oh fuck.

His eyes caught on one of the many labels attached to the miscellaneous items, his heart breaking as the significance of what he held and how Garrett had been tortured for the last twenty years hit him.

Each label broke him a bit more.

On a piece of string: April 23, 2011, tied to the door handle of my car

On a bag of sour candies: February 17, 2015, on my porch

On a book of Mad Libs: October 10, 2019, inside my mailbox

He’d saved them.

Every message Rafe had ever left for Garrett sat inside this box, each one labeled with notes on where and when he found it.

Underneath the messages, he found

a worn journal. Garrett had a

writeup for every item in the

box, his own analysis of how the

item could have gotten there and ruminations about being haunted.

From what he read, Garrett had never considered that the messages meant Rafe was alive.

Shit. That didn’t work like I thought it would.

No wonder Garrett thought he was being haunted or stalked or he was losing his mind.

Garrett had a right to be mad at him. Maybe Rafe should have left clearer messages, but he was under strict orders to avoid contact with anyone from his previous life. He didn’t want to put their lives at risk.

If Rafe had known his messages would upset Garrett as much as they did, he wouldn’t have left them in the first place.

He couldn’t believe how much he’d fucked with Garrett’s head. But what he hated more was that he wasn’t done.

Two messages waited for him after he unlocked his phone.

HERMAN O’CABRÓN: Team is on site and ready for action.

HERMAN O’CABRÓN: Prepare for phase two. RAFE: I hate lying to him. I don’t want to do this anymore.

HERMAN O’CABRÓN: It’s for the good of the case. He’ll understand once it’s over.

RAFE: I don’t think he will. I’ve already been lying about being dead for twenty years. He’s never gonna trust me after this.

Herman O’Cabrón is typing…

Herman O’Cabrón is typing…