You didn’t mean for the rain to start when it did. But it felt fitting—like the sky had been listening in earlier that day when you’d said his name like it meant nothing.

Now it poured, thick and punishing, soaking through your shirt and into your skin as you walked the muddy path behind the chateau, your shoes slipping on the uneven stones. You hadn’t meant to come here. You’d meant to go home. But your feet had other plans.

So did your heart.

You found him near the old shed by the edge of the property, half-covered by the overhang, arms crossed, hair plastered to his forehead. Even with the storm around you, JJ Maybank looked like something out of a story—eyes dark with anger, mouth pulled tight with restraint, shoulders heavy with something too old for seventeen.

He didn’t look surprised to see you.

“You’re gonna catch your death out here,” he said flatly.

You stepped forward anyway.

“JJ—”

“Don’t,” he cut in, shaking his head. “Don’t say my name like that. Not after today.”

Your throat tightened. The words sat on your tongue, heavy and useless. You had done this. You had walked past him at the beach like he was just another Pogue boy. You’d smiled at your friends like you weren’t breaking something sacred. Like he wasn’t everything.

“I panicked,” you whispered.

His laugh was humorless. “Panicked? What, did someone say my name too loud and you thought it might stain you?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No,” he snapped, stepping out into the rain now too. “What’s not fair is being in love with someone who only loves you when no one else is looking.”

That hurt more than it should have. Because it was true. Not the part about not loving him—Gosh, you did. You loved JJ in a way that made your chest ache, that made every moment without him feel like standing on the edge of something. But loving him in public? As the sheriff’s daughter? That was a risk with teeth.

Your family hated his. Not because of who they were—but because of what they weren’t. Not powerful. Not clean. Not Kooks. His father once called the sheriff a coward in front of half the town. He was a Pogue, you were a Kook. Your family never forgot things like that.