Rafe Cameron had always been reckless, wild like the ocean he grew up beside. But the night he met her, everything slowed. It was at a beach bonfire, the flames flickering against her sun-kissed skin. She wasn’t like the girls who usually threw themselves at him—she barely even looked his way. That intrigued him.

“Want a drink?” he asked, flashing his signature smirk.

She barely glanced at him. “I’m good, thanks.”

That was new. Rafe was used to girls melting under his charm, but she stayed cool, collected. He liked that.

Over the next few weeks, their paths kept crossing—at parties, on the docks, even at the market. Each time, she was the same—unimpressed, but never unkind. It only made him more desperate to crack the mystery of her.

One night, he found her sitting alone on the beach, the moon casting silver over the waves. He sat beside her without a word.

“Do you ever get tired?” she finally asked, eyes still on the ocean.

“Tired of what?”

“Pretending you don’t feel things.”

Her words hit harder than he expected. No one ever called him out like that. He swallowed, glancing at her, realizing for the first time that maybe she saw the parts of him no one else did—the parts he tried to bury under bravado and bad decisions.

“I don’t know how to stop,” he admitted, voice barely above a whisper.

She turned to face him then, really see him, and for once, Rafe didn’t feel like running.

That night, under the moonlight, he kissed her—not because he was expected to, not because he was Rafe Cameron, the reckless Kook king—but because, for the first time, he felt something real.