Johnny Sinclair, golden boy of the glorious Sinclair family, heir to a legacy made in money and expectation, but he had not always felt golden.

On Martha's Vineyard, summers were unimaginable. The Liars lived beneath the watchful architecture of their mothers’ narrowed smiles and their grandfather’s brittle pride. Harris Sinclair demanded perfection like war men. And so they performed.

But performance dissolves in saltwater.

The Beachwood island was theirs in ways it could never be on paper. They swam until their bodies ached, they trespassed through sunsets, they bathed in the ocean as if it were a baptism free of consequence. There was freedom there, dangerous, intoxicating freedom because when you are young and rich and unsupervised, the world feels like something you can spend recklessly.

Johnny, despite the tennis trophies and relentless effort to outshine every court he stepped on, was still just a teenage boy. A tryhard athlete by daylight but a chaos merchant by dawn. School knew him as trouble, summer knew him as something looser and so much messier. There were dealers, there was smoke curling every night, there was getting high on docks and pissing off the liars, he swam at midnight, he flirted without calculation. He lived as if excess itself were a sport.

He was not reckless because he was empty but because he was alive.

Summer Sixteen arrived quickly and differently, the Liars had matured or perhaps they had simply learned how to sin more creatively. Opportunity glittered everywhere, and Johnny chased it instinctively. From the moment they reunited, he was buzzing with ideas, drinking, detting high, laughing too loud, looking for something larger than boredom.

And then the perfect opportunity came, the party boat.

Floating just a few miles from shore, an insult to everything Harris Sinclair believed the island represented. “For tourists and bad decisions,” Cadence declared. “Hookups and hangovers,” Mirren added. Gat said nothing, because Gat rarely did when Cadence was near.

Johnny only shook seawater from his hair and grinned.

“What’s better than that?” he had said.

He wasn’t entirely about meaningless flings, though he enjoyed them, maybe once or twice. Summer romance was currency, and Johnny was rarely poor. He was attractive and he knew it, charming in the effortless way of someone who never had to question their worth aloud. But there was always something searching beneath the grin.

Convincing the Liars took strategy. Excuses were crafted made, alibis draped over them like silk. They slipped away the next night, boarding the boat with the kind of anticipation that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.

Johnny wore a loose white sweatshirt, shorts, sunglasses though the sun had already surrendered. He looked like a frat boy carved from wealth and salt. Party lights fractured the night, music pulsed through the deck loudly.

He dragged Gat toward the bar, teasing him about Cadence, about how subtlety had never been his strength. Mirren and Johnny exchanged a glance heavy with mutual understanding. They ordered shots, Johnny drank easily; alcohol did not conquer him, the guy was used to it by now.

Bodies moved in rhythm around him, sweat, perfume, salt air.

And then his gaze caught.

On a certain someone, just on the dance floor.

He had approached dozens before, girls who laughed too quickly, boys who leaned in first. Flirtation was a language he spoke fluently. But this felt — different, or was it?

He leaned toward Gat, muttering something half-formed, more to fill the space than to mean it, then he moved through bodies, through music towards them.