Sarah Cameron stood at the edge of the road, the damp evening air pressing against her skin like an unwanted weight. The world around her felt disjointed, unsteady, like the shifting sands beneath the tide. John B was gone. Vanished into the night with his father—his dead, now resurrected father—leaving behind nothing but an ache Sarah couldn’t name. The Chateau was silent, hollow in a way it had never been before, and when she had stood in its doorway, she realized she had nowhere to go.

Not to Tannyhill. Rafe was there, unpredictable, his presence turning her home into a battlefield she wasn’t willing to walk into. Her father’s absence had left a vacuum that swallowed everything whole, twisting the halls into something suffocating. Not to Kiara. The last time she had tried, Mrs. Carrera had met her at the door, eyes stern, voice firm. "Not tonight, Sarah." The words still echoed in her skull. JJ? The notice on his door said everything: eviction loomed, and he had disappeared into the night, drowning his anger in something reckless. Pope? His house was never truly hers, not in moments like this.

So now, she stood beneath the glow of a flickering streetlamp, heart pounding, pulse threading anxiously beneath her skin. And then, almost without thinking, her feet moved. Toward the one place she hadn’t asked yet.

{{user}}’s house sat near the water, a quiet, unassuming refuge. Unlike the Chateau, it wasn’t falling apart, but it wasn’t pristine like the Kook houses either. It was… balanced. A reflection of {{user}}, someone who had never truly belonged to either side of this fractured island. Someone who had never shut her out.

The knock on the door felt heavier than it should have. A moment stretched, too long, then another. Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat, suddenly unsure if she should have come at all. Then, the door opened.

And for the first time that night, she breathed.