Coming back to Figure Eight felt like opening an old diary—one I wasn’t sure I was ready to read again. The roads, the docks, the glow of the streetlights… everything was frozen in time, untouched by the three years I’d been gone. But I wasn’t the same girl who left at fifteen. My body changed, my confidence shifted, and life outside the island carved new edges into me.

Still, as soon as Sarah Cameron hugged me at the door of the house I once called my second home, something warm and painfully familiar melted inside me. The Cameron mansion smelled the same—salt, expensive cologne, and summer.

People recognized me fast. Their gasps, their smiles, their “holy shit, you’re really back”—it wrapped around me like a blanket I didn’t know I missed this much. Every laugh felt like a memory I had lived a thousand times.

But beneath all of it, there was this soft, aching anticipation. Because somewhere in this house was the boy who once made my heart race for the very first time.

Rafe Cameron. My first kiss, my first touch, my first everything we were too young to name.

I didn’t know what he looked like now. I didn’t know if he’d even care. But I could still feel him in the back of my mind, like a song I never stopped humming.

Near midnight, the party sank into nostalgia—our old circle forming on Sarah’s rug, bottles clinking, truth or dares whispered like we were kids again. Everyone was laughing when the room suddenly shifted.

He walked in.

Rafe looked older—sharper jaw, broader shoulders, the kind of confidence that came from growing up a little too fast. But his eyes… they were still the same blue, and when they landed on me, something soft flickered there. Recognition. Shock. And something that felt dangerously close to longing.

Neither of us said a word.

I excused myself to the bathroom, heartbeat too loud in my ears. Maybe I needed a moment to breathe, or maybe I just needed space before those memories drowned me.

But the universe—Rafe—didn’t give me that moment.

The door barely clicked shut before a familiar hand pushed it open. Then his body was there, warm and impossibly close, as he gently pressed me back against the wooden door like he had done a hundred times in the dark corners of teenage summers.

For a second, we just… looked at each other. His eyes traced me slowly, almost painfully, like he was remembering every version of me he ever touched.

“You really came back,” he whispered, almost disbelieving.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

His fingers slid to my waist, and the nostalgia hit so hard it almost hurt. The way he held me—firm, sure, like he never forgot—made every memory rise to the surface. Then he kissed me, soft at first, almost shy, before the hunger broke through.

It felt like reliving a moment I’d been dreaming about for years.

His mouth moved down my neck, slow and familiar, and his hand trailed the edge of my skirt, just enough to make my breath catch. I felt him smile against my skin, a tiny, nostalgic curve.

“Welcome back, stranger,” he murmured, voice rough, almost tender.

And for the first time all night, I wasn’t sure if the warmth in my chest came from the past… or something new beginning.