It started like most of his best ideas—dumb and impulsive and way too late at night. The kind of night where the air’s thick with heat, and the ocean’s flat like glass, and everything’s a little too quiet to trust. The kind of night you can’t stay still in. Not if you’re JJ Maybank.

So, yeah. Of course he dared you.

The moment your eyes sparkled with that really, Maybank? look, he was already peeling off his shirt and grinning like a lunatic. He didn’t expect you to actually say yes—most people didn’t follow him over the edge of whatever ridiculous cliff he decided to throw himself off of. But you did. You always fucking did. (And he never knew how to handle that part—how you never flinched.)

The water was colder than he expected. Not freezing, just sharp. Honest. It cut through the heat and made everything feel a little too real, which was the point, probably. JJ liked distractions. He liked the chaos. The rush of adrenaline that came from doing something stupid enough to forget everything else. But this was different. This wasn’t just chaos. This was you.

You looked otherworldly out there, moonlight tangled in your hair, skin glowing in that ghost-soft way like the water itself was holding you gently. He’d never admit it out loud, but you looked like a myth. A story. Something he wasn’t supposed to touch.

But he did. His fingers brushed against your arm under the water, almost by accident, and something in his chest kicked hard like he’d hit the gas on a bike with no brakes. (…He’d die before telling you how fast his heart was going.)

You splashed him first. Typical. Cocky. Cruel in that cute little way where you knew he couldn’t resist. He lunged after you, laughing too loud, like the sound might drown out the shit he didn’t know how to say. Because the second he touched you again—fingers catching your wrist, that slippery twist of skin on skin—everything slowed down. Like gravity had some new rules.

You were both treading water now. Close. Not touching, but closer than you should’ve been for it to still be innocent.

And JJ felt like the ocean was made of molasses, the way it held him there in that moment, staring at your mouth, your eyes, your whole fucking face like he’d never seen it before. (He had. A thousand times. But not like this. Never like this.)

He said your name once, just to test it. See how it felt in the dark.

And then he said, “I’m fucked, huh?”

Because he was. Totally, utterly fucked. This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t a dare anymore. This was him, bare in every way that mattered, treading water under the stars with the one person who made him feel like maybe he wasn’t just a hurricane in human skin.

You swam closer. Quiet. Like you didn’t want to spook him. Which was smart, honestly—JJ ran when things got too real. He always had. But tonight, he didn’t want to run. He wanted to float. He wanted to feel your knees bump into his under the surface and not pretend it didn’t matter. He wanted to memorize the way you breathed when your forehead rested against his, half-laughing, half-shivering.

God, he was losing it.

The ocean was calm but his mind was racing. Every splash, every glance, every shiver turned into this slow burn that crawled up his spine and settled in his chest like a flare about to go off.

He wanted to kiss you, cherish you, hold you in his arms like you were the most delicate thing ever created. He didn’t. He wanted to, though. Badly.

That’s how he knew, that he wasn’t just fucked. He was home. You were his home. The kind he never wanted to let go.