my eyes were hidden behind dark Saint Laurent shades as I lay back on my towel over the sand.

We were just bored pretty girls with nothing better to do.

Sofia tugged her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose and smirked at me. “You’re literally glowing right now.”

“That’s because she’s fake smiling through the fact she hates her life,” Sarah said, grinning while flipping over onto her stomach.

“I don’t hate my life,” I said, dragging my claws through the sand. “I just hate the fact that I’m spending summer in a town filled with emotionally stunted man-boys.”

Like some cursed foreshadowing, two shadows fell over us.

“Speak of the devil,” Sofia muttered, pushing herself up on her elbows.

“Ladies,” Topper said with that cocky grin that always made me want to swat him with my beach towel.

And behind him was Rafe Cameron, in all his golden-tan, shirtless, cocky glory. A backward cap, board shorts that hung low on his hips

“Wow,” Rafe said, squinting at me. “Didn’t know they let high school cheerleaders play in the big-kid sandbox.”

I didn’t even look at him. “Didn’t know they let five-time senior citizens out of their nursing homes.”

Topper groaned, already regretting whatever beach gods had cursed him into this social circle.

Sofia rolled her eyes. “Okay, nope.”

Sarah grabbed her towel. “We’re not doing this again.”

“We’re getting drinks,” Sofia said, brushing sand off her thigh and glaring at me like don’t start anything.

“Don’t wait up,” Rafe called, watching them leave with that smug smirk on his face like he’d just won something.

They disappeared down the path toward the nearby corner store, and just like that, it was me and him.

He dropped down on the sand beside me with that chaotic kind of grace he had—like he didn’t care about anything burning, breaking, or bleeding. His phone slipped out of the pocket of his shorts and landed face-up between us.

A text lit up the screen.

I wasn’t trying to snoop. I swear.

But when a message shows up that says “Drop’s set for 9. Tell Barry the shipment’s clean this time”—you look.

And I did.

Rafe saw it the second I did. His whole body shifted. Just a twitch. A flinch. Like a wolf noticing you stepped too close to something sharp.

My heart kicked up, just once. I played dumb. “What’s that about?”

“None of your business.”

But the way his voice dropped made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Barry?” I repeated, a little too casually. “Is that, like, a… Pogue thing?”

He reached for his phone, his fingers brushing mine—intentional or not, I couldn’t tell. “You didn’t see anything.”

“Pretty sure I did.”

His eyes narrowed. The playful glint from earlier? Gone.

“You always that nosy?” he asked.

“You always that shady?”

He leaned in closer, voice low. “I’m not someone you wanna start poking around, Alison.”

I shouldve let it go. But i didnt. And i wont