Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day JJ and Kiara broke up, the sun was out. It was a stupidly beautiful day for a breakup, which felt unfair. Breakups should come with thunder, or at least a strong breeze. But no—just sunshine, salt air, and a seagull watching them like it was judging the whole thing.

They were at John B’s place, because where else would they be? The Chateau was home base, the land of half-baked plans and even more half-baked people. The others were inside, probably aware of what was happening but pretending not to be. That was the rule: If a breakup was happening on the porch, you ignored it until someone came inside looking like they needed a beer or a distraction.

Kiara sat on the railing, swinging one leg idly, like she wasn’t about to pull the pin on a grenade. JJ sat in a rickety chair across from her, pretending to carve something into the armrest with his pocketknife. He wasn’t. The knife wasn’t even open.

“So,” she said, because someone had to start.

JJ exhaled sharply through his nose. “So.”

Seagull blinked at them.

Kiara sighed and crossed her arms. “I think we both know where this is going.”

JJ looked up at her then, blue eyes flickering with something between guilt and relief. That was the thing about JJ—he was always waiting for someone to pull the trigger for him. Kiara had always known that if this was going to end, she would have to be the one to do it.

She loved him, but she wasn’t an idiot.

“You love Pope,” she said.

JJ flinched like she’d hit him, but he didn’t argue.

“Kiara—”

“I mean, I get it. It’s Pope.” She gestured vaguely, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did. Pope was Pope. And JJ, for all his chaos, had always revolved around him in a way that made sense only if you were really paying attention. Kiara had paid attention.

JJ ran a hand through his hair, messing it up worse than it already was. “I didn’t—” He stopped, let out a sharp breath. “I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”

Kiara shrugged. “It is like this.”

And there it was. The quiet, messy truth of it.

JJ stared at the ground, then at the knife in his hands. He finally opened it and pressed the tip against his thumb, just enough to feel something. Kiara waited.

“You mad?” he asked eventually, looking up at her.

She thought about that. “No,” she said, and was surprised to find she meant it.

JJ’s face did something complicated, something sad and grateful and maybe even a little ashamed. He nodded, then put the knife away.

“Are you mad?” she asked, tilting her head.

JJ let out a short, breathy laugh. “I don’t know. Feels like I should be, but I’m not.”

Kiara nodded. It made sense. None of this was anybody’s fault, not really. It was just another thing in the long, strange history of their lives—something they could maybe laugh about someday, if they were lucky.

”Anyone want a beer?” John B stood in the doorway like a bartender at the end of the world, waiting for their answer.

Kiara hopped off the railing, brushing invisible dust off her shorts. “I’m good.”

JJ stretched, exhaling through his teeth. “Yeah, nah. I think I need to go break something instead.”

John B nodded like that was a perfectly reasonable response. “Cool. I’ll be inside when y’all are ready to pretend this never happened.”

He shut the door behind him, leaving Kiara and JJ in the sun-soaked silence.

Kiara turned back to JJ. He was still sitting, arms draped over the sides of the chair like he was trying to melt into it. He looked tired.

“You gonna tell Pope?” she asked.

JJ groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Jesus, Kie. Let me suffer for like—ten minutes first?”

She smirked despite herself. “You’re really gonna make me be the mature one here?”

“God, I hope not.”

They stood there for a second, the weight of everything settling in.

Finally, JJ stood, stretching his arms over his head like shaking off a bad dream. He shot her a sideways glance. “We good?”

Kiara rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“Like, I can still hit you up for free food at The Wreck?”

“No.”

JJ put a hand over his heart, mock-wounded. “Damn. Cold world.”

Kiara bumped her shoulder against his. “You’ll survive.”

JJ grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Alright. I’m gonna go…I don’t know. Jump off a dock or something.”

Kiara snorted. “Try not to drown.”

“No promises.”

And with that, JJ strolled off into the sunlight, hands in his pockets, whistling like he hadn’t just broken both their hearts a little.

Kiara sighed and turned toward her Jeep. Broken heart or not she needed to go to work. 

Chapter Text

Rafe was not stalking Kiara Carrera.

Let’s get that straight. Stalking was for guys with bad skin and worse cars, for men who muttered to themselves in grocery store parking lots. Rafe wasn’t one of those guys. He had good skin. He had a great car.

No, Rafe was simply watching Kiara from a safe and respectable distance.

A distance that just so happened to shrink whenever she moved.

Currently, she was at The Wreck, flipping chairs, wiping down counters, locking the register like she was the most responsible waitress on the island. He watched from his truck, parked just far enough away to be deniable. The windows were down. He could smell the ocean. Or maybe that was just Kiara—some mix of salt, sweat, and whatever weird patchouli crap she rubbed on herself.

She hadn’t seen him yet. Or if she had, she was pretending not to.

Typical.

Kiara was good at pretending. Pretended she wasn’t a Kook when she absolutely was. Pretended she and Rafe had never once been friends. Pretended like she hadn’t looked him in the eye that day in Barbados and left him behind like old luggage.

And now? Now, she walked around town like nothing had happened.

Rafe tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He could feel it—this slow, acidic thing curling in his gut.

Kiara stepped outside, keys in hand, stretching like she had no idea he was there.

He tapped his fingers against the dashboard.

She still hadn’t apologized.

Not for Barbados. Not for treating him like a ghost before he was even dead. Not for the way she’d kissed him once, years ago, when they were just kids and thought they were nothing like their parents.

She didn’t remember that, did she?

Of course not.

Rafe exhaled sharply, running a hand down his face.

That was fine.

He’d just have to remind her.

~

But first he needed a drink. 

Not enough to be drunk, exactly. Just enough to loosen the screws in his head, to make his thoughts slosh around instead of sitting still and rotting. Just enough to finally do what he should’ve done days ago.

He got out of the truck.

The pavement felt strange, like it wasn’t quite connected to the rest of the world. The Wreck glowed dimly against the night, and through the window, Kiara moved around like she wasn’t a liar, like she wasn’t a traitor, like she didn’t owe him something.

Rafe pushed open the door, and the bell above it let out a stupid little chime, like this was just another normal transaction.

Kiara looked up, and for a second—just a second—her face twitched into something like surprise. Then she just sighed, dropping a bundle of rags onto the counter. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Rafe smiled. “Nice to see you too, Kie.”

She wiped her hands on a rag, unimpressed. “What do you want?”

“You never apologized.”

“For what?”

Rafe took another step forward. “For shoving me off my own damn boat and leaving me in the middle of the ocean.”

Kiara’s laugh was sharp, humorless. “Right, because I should’ve trusted you after you refused to help my friends?”

“I got you out, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, and then you lost your mind two seconds later when you wouldn't even consider saving your sister.”

Rafe scoffed. This was so typical. Kiara rewriting history to make herself look like the hero. She always did that.

“You left me there,” he said, voice quieter now. “You pushed me.”

“You deserved it.”

Rafe let out a dry little laugh, shaking his head. “You didn’t even hesitate.”

“Nope.”

There it was. The truth. Brutal and clean, like she hadn’t even thought about it since. Like he was just some problem she’d solved, and then forgotten about.

Rafe felt something in his chest twist.

Kiara leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “If you came here to make me feel bad, it’s not gonna work.”

Rafe studied her. She really, truly, did not care.

And yet.

Yet.

He sighed, rolling his shoulders back, the fight draining out of him all at once. “I forgive you.”

Kiara frowned. “What?”

He swallowed. “For leaving me.”

Something flickered in her face—confusion, disbelief. Maybe even the tiniest hint of unease.

“I don’t need your forgiveness, Rafe.”

And the worst part?

She meant it.

Rafe exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah. I know.”

Then he turned and walked out the door, feeling Kiara’s eyes on his back the whole way.

~

He did what he always did when his brain got too full. One of his little habits to curb the violence. He likes to think of himself as a man of habit.

Not the good kind, of course. No early morning jogs or green smoothies. No gratitude journaling or stretching before bed. Rafe’s habits lean more toward the self-destructive, the kind people whisper about in gas stations and country clubs alike.

One of those habits is taking his boat out past Kill Devil Hills with a 24-pack of beer, a pack of smokes, and the singular goal of tempting fate.

Not that fate gives a damn about Rafe Cameron.

It’s tradition. Emo Bitch Time, Sarah used to call it, back when she still bothered. She had no idea just how far he took it. Killing his phone, killing his thoughts, driving straight into the most treacherous waters on the Outer Banks. Then tying a rope around his waist, tossing a life jacket into the black abyss, and jumping in after it.

He never wears the jacket.

It’s not a death wish, not exactly. It’s more like a game of chicken with the ocean. The sandbars shift constantly, dragging full-grown men under like they were never there at all. It’s a stupid way to die.

But Rafe isn’t sure if he wants to die. So he makes sure the life jacket is always close. He just never puts it on.

Destruction comes naturally, like breathing. If he doesn’t numb himself out here, he’ll do it another way, a way that might land him in a jail cell or a body bag.

The water laps against his skin, lukewarm and endless, while Kurt Cobain wails through his speaker about trapping animals beneath a tarp. A sick fuck, that guy. Rafe hums along anyway, watching the moonlight ripple over the surface. The beer is warm and piss-flavored at this point, but he drinks it anyway. All things lose their taste eventually.

Then the song changes.

“I need an easy friend, I do—”

Rafe groans. That song.

Kiara’s song.

That insufferable, self-righteous, traitorous little—

He doesn’t want to think about her. But Rafe has never been particularly good at doing what’s best for him.

His mind drifts, despite himself, back to that spring break years ago. Before the betrayals. Before the bloodshed. Before he’d become a murderer.

Sarah had brought a friend home that break. Another one of her Pogue projects. Rafe had braced himself for the worst—some idiot in cargo shorts preaching about capitalism. But instead, it was Kiara Carrera. All wild curls and tanned skin, rattling on about dolphins and recycling and saving the planet.

Annoying as hell. He’d wanted to put a bullet in every last dolphin just to make her shut up.

But she had this way about her.

The way her voice lit up when she talked, the way she truly believed in all the bullshit she spewed. She was alive in a way Rafe never had been.

That was the first night she slept over.

Not the first night he kissed her.

But it wasn’t long after.

Rafe lets out a breath, floating, face toward the sky. He stretches his arms out wide, fingers grazing the life jacket he doesn’t want to need.

The great lie people tell themselves is that Rafe Cameron doesn’t know he’s a bad person.

He’s always known.

Knowing doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make him good.

Does Rafe even want to be good?

Lately, it’s been getting harder and harder to figure out what he wants. His head feels too full—too many thoughts, too many memories, too much of her.

The song is ending now, the same line repeating like a slow, drowning heartbeat.

“But I can’t see you every night—free.”

“I do, I do, I do, I do—”

Rafe has always hated being told no. Hated being told what to do.

And Kiara? All she did was tell him no.

She pushed him. Pushed him into the water, pushed him away.

Made it clear she didn’t know him.

But she would.

Rafe opens his mouth and screams into the Atlantic, as loud as his lungs will let him.

The ocean swallows the sound whole.

But he’ll make sure she hears it.

Chapter Text

Kiara Carrera had woken up that morning with a clear set of goals.

1.Open The Wreck. 

2.Make herself indispensable to her parents, they won't want to send her away to boarding school. 

3.Avoid thinking about her breakup with JJ.

4.Avoid thinking about Rafe Cameron.

Simple. Doable.

Then she saw the snake.

It was fake. That was the first thing she noticed—its beady little eyes frozen in place, mouth gaping open in a dramatic hiss, rubber body stiff and lifeless. The second thing she noticed was the knife.

A big one. Stabbed straight through the snake’s head, pinning it to the bait shop’s door like some kind of demented art installation.

Kiara stared at it.

Her brain, always so eager to piece things together, clicked into place almost immediately. The rubber snake. The knife. The note.

Of course there was a note.

She didn’t even have to read it to know who it was from.

But she did anyway, peeling the paper off the handle with slow, careful fingers.

“I forgive you. But I haven’t forgotten. I’ve never forgotten anything between us.”

The signature was just a single letter.

“R.”

And the R—oh, the R—wasn’t ink.

Rusty brown. Dried. Streaked just enough to make her stomach turn.

Kiara knew blood when she saw it.

For a long, terrible moment, she just stood there, holding the note in her hands, pulse thudding against her ribs like a warning.

Then she folded the paper neatly, slipped it into her bag, and looked around.

The street was empty. Just the usual mix of sand and salt-stained pavement, the morning light bouncing harmlessly off shop windows. No signs of lurking psychopaths. No hints of wild-eyed rich boys lurking in the bushes.

Rafe was nowhere to be seen.

But that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

Kiara swallowed, forced herself to take a breath.

Then she yanked the knife from the door, let the rubber snake flop to the ground, and stepped over it like it wasn’t even there.

Instead, she let herself think.

It wasn’t a habit of hers—thinking about him—but every once in a while, a memory crept in like a cockroach under the fridge. She could squash it, ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there. But it always came back.

The first time she spent the night at Sarah’s, she had heard the stories. Rafe Cameron, the human cautionary tale. A walking, talking PSA for why rich white boys shouldn’t be given too much money and not enough parenting.

“He’s crazy,” someone had whispered to her at school once, like they were talking about a rabid dog. “Like, actually crazy.”

So. She wasn’t afraid of him.

Even when he made it a point to scoff at every single thing she said.

“Saving the ocean is stupid,” he’d muttered once, half-sprawled across the couch, the smell of weed and beer clinging to him like cheap cologne. “The ocean doesn’t care about you.”

And Kiara, fourteen years old, full of righteous anger, had looked him dead in the eye and said, “Every time I hear someone being apathetic, it just makes me want to care more.”

Rafe had grinned at that. Not a nice grin. The kind that let her know she had just put a target on her back.

Maybe he saw her as a challenge. Maybe he was bored.

But after that, every time she slept over at Sarah’s, she saw him. Just in passing. Leaning against the kitchen counter, licking powdered sugar off his fingers. Laughing too loudly with his friends. Sitting on the dock at night, beer bottles clinking against the wood.

A background character in her life. Static noise.

Until the hallway.

She had gotten up to pee, the floor cold under her bare feet, the house quiet except for the occasional creak of shifting wood. And then there he was, stumbling toward his room, too drunk to walk straight.

She should have let him fall.

Instead, she caught him.

His hands went to her waist, hers to his arms, an instinct as old as human clumsiness. He was warm. Too warm. His breath smelled like whiskey and cinnamon gum, like someone who knew he had bad habits and was trying to cover them up.

They stood there for a second too long.

Kiara’s heartbeat went from zero to sixty, like she had just touched an electric fence. He was a loser. A mess. A hurricane of a person, and she had spent her whole life preaching about protecting the environment, not chasing natural disasters.

But.

He looked at her like he was seeing something new.

And then, just as fast as it started, the moment snapped. He pulled back. She let go.

No one said anything.

The next morning at breakfast, Rafe barely glanced at her.

And that should have been the end of it.

And yet.

The memory stuck.

It was the last time she had spent the night at Sarah’s house. And Sarah, being Sarah, had already started acting weird. Moody. Distant. Like Kiara was a childhood toy she’d outgrown but was too guilty to throw away just yet.

So Kiara had done what any sane person would do—she had clung harder.

But Sarah spent most of the night on the phone with whatever new boyfriend had captured her attention that week, lying on her stomach, twirling a piece of hair around her finger, giggling like she wasn’t the same girl who had once dared Kiara to eat a live cricket for twenty bucks.

Kiara had sat there, waiting for Sarah to remember she existed.

Eventually, she gave up.

It wasn’t late enough to sleep, but it was too late to call her parents without them hearing the pathetic homesickness in her voice. If she went home now, she might as well admit defeat—admit that they had been right about her all along, that she wasn’t a real Pogue, that she was just a rich girl playing dress-up.

So instead, she wandered.

The Cameron house was too big. A maze of cold floors and dimly lit hallways, the kind of place that felt more like a museum than a home. She found herself in the library, an enormous room that smelled like old paper and expensive wood polish.

And of course, because the universe was an asshole, she wasn’t alone.

Rafe sat in the dark, slouched in one of the leather chairs like he had grown there, a beer bottle dangling from his fingers. His face was half-lit by the glow of a lamp he hadn’t bothered to turn on all the way.

Kiara should have turned around and walked out.

But she didn’t.

“What are you doing?” she asked instead, because she had never been very good at avoiding trouble.

Rafe lifted his beer in a lazy toast. “Celebrating.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Celebrating what?”

“Getting suspended.”

Kiara snorted before she could stop herself. “What for?”

Rafe sighed dramatically, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders and not entirely his own fault. “Some bullshit prank.”

She crossed her arms. “So, what? Your dad yell at you?”

He laughed at that. “Oh, yell? No. Ward Cameron doesn’t yell. He just…looks at you, and you know you’ve failed him. And then he tells you exactly how much you’ve cost him.”

Kiara didn’t know why she sat down. Maybe because she didn’t want to go back to Sarah’s room, where she would be ignored. Maybe because, for once, Rafe wasn’t being a total dick.

Maybe because, in that moment, he wasn’t Rafe Cameron, Kook Prince and Professional Asshole. He was just a guy. A guy who was pissed off at his dad. A guy who was sick of disappointing people.

For a little while, they just…talked.

About nothing. About everything.

About how the world was burning, about how the ocean was dying, about how her parents worked so hard to give her a life she didn’t want.

And for a moment, Kiara forgot.

Forgot about the whole Pogue-versus-Kook thing. Forgot about Sarah ditching her. Forgot about the way Rafe smelled like expensive cologne and self loathing.

She even forgot about the pull.

That quiet, stupid, magnetic thing that had been there from the start.

Rafe smirked, tilting his head at her like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “You’re not half bad, Carrera.”

And then, before she could process it, his hand was on hers. Warm, a little sweaty. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, almost like a question.

Kiara’s breath caught.

She should have pulled away. She meant to pull away.

But she didn’t.

Rafe’s fingers curled around hers, gentle but firm, and then suddenly, she was in his lap.

“What are you doing?” she asked, frozen.

Rafe’s eyes flicked over her face, searching. She didn’t know what he was looking for. Maybe she did. Maybe it was the same thing she was trying to find in him.

He leaned in. “This.” 

And then he kissed her.

It was a little messy. A little hesitant. Like even he couldn’t believe he was doing it.

She pulled back, just for a second.

Their eyes met.

There was something there—something sharp and electric, a challenge.

And Kiara Carrera had never been one to back down from a challenge.

So she kissed him back.

And that—that was not hesitant.

They made out in the dark for what felt like forever. His hands on her waist, her fingers in his hair, the heat of him pressed against her like a fever she didn’t want to break.

And when she finally stumbled back into Sarah’s room, her lips swollen and her pulse thrumming in her throat, Sarah didn’t even ask where she had been.

Kiara didn’t care.

She fell asleep with the taste of Rafe Cameron still on her lips.

~~

The next weekend was Sarah’s birthday.

Kiara wasn’t invited.

Which was how she knew, without a doubt, that she had lost her best friend.

Which was also why she called the cops on Sarah’s party.

Because if she was going to be exiled, she might as well make it count.

The next time she saw Rafe, it was two weeks later.

He had her number. He knew where she lived. He could have called. He could have done something.

But when she saw him at the Cut, he just looked straight through her.

Like she was nothing.

And that—more than Sarah, more than the stupid party, more than anything—was what had really hurt.

And ever since then, it had been this thing.

This weird, unspoken, unresolved thing.

Something she had spent years trying to ignore.

But now, standing in the restaurant, staring at a rubber snake and hunting knife in her bag, she was starting to think she hadn’t ignored it well enough.

Chapter Text

 When given the choice between a serious discussion and food, the gang will always choose food first. This is why John B, despite having what he believes is the most important job opportunity of their collective lives, has to bribe them into coming to Heyward’s Seafood by framing it as just a casual meet-up.

The group is already assembled in their usual spot: a sun-bleached picnic table just far enough from the restaurant to avoid paying customers complaining about the “dirty kids who reek of gasoline and poverty.” Pope is eating like he hasn’t been fed in a week. JJ is watching Pope eat like he hung the moon. Sarah is trying to balance hot sauce bottles into some kind of pyramid. Cleo is watching it all like a scientist observing doomed lab rats.

John B sits down heavily, slapping his hands on the table. “Alright, listen up. We’ve got a job.”

Pope, through a mouthful of shrimp, says, “Define job.”

“We get paid.”

JJ whistles. “Keep talking.”

John B leans in, dramatically. “Someone’s hired us to find Thomas Calloway’s treasure.”

The table goes quiet, which, for this group, is a feat.

“Wait, wait, wait.” JJ holds up a fry like it’s a conductor’s baton. “The Thomas Calloway? The pirate? That’s, like, actually real?”

“Dude, yes.” John B nods. “And we’re also looking for some lost letters between him and Eleanor Sinclair.”

Pope frowns. “Eleanor Sinclair. Why does that sound familiar?”

JJ, always prepared with the weirdest local lore, grins. “Oh, you mean the ghost that steals men’s hearts?”

Kiara, unimpressed, rolls her eyes. “That could mean a lot of things.”

JJ ignores her. “Okay, listen. People say she still haunts the old Sinclair estate. Like, full-on ‘wandering the halls, luring men to their doom’ kind of ghost. And apparently, there’s a pirate ghost too. A tall Black guy, seen on the property at night, standing out near the woods.”

Sarah huffs. “Oh, so we’re ghost hunters now? Great. Love that for us.”

Kiara leans back, arms crossed. “Alright, let’s say this isn’t just one of your weird conspiracy theories. What exactly are we looking for?”

John B spreads his hands. “Treasure, for one. But mostly, we need to find Eleanor’s letters to Calloway. They might prove that he didn’t kill her.”

Cleo wipes her hands on a napkin. “And our client is…?”

"Lady named Margot. She gave me half a map," John B shrugs. “Didn’t say much. Just that the money’s good.”

JJ slaps the table. “Say no more. When do we start?”

“Tonight,” John B says.

Of course, it had to be tonight.

They spend the next twenty minutes finishing their food and cracking jokes, JJ and Pope slipping into their usual game of “insult but make it flirt.” It’s normal. Easy. The same as always.

Which is why it stands out when Sarah suddenly turns to Kiara and lowers her voice. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Kiara, mid-sip of her drink, blinks. “Huh?”

Sarah gives her a look. “You know. The breakup. You and JJ. That whole thing.”

Kiara waves a hand. “Oh. Yeah. I’m good. It was the right thing to do.”

Sarah watches her like she’s trying to see past her face and into her soul. “And JJ?”

Kiara glances over at JJ, who is currently grinning at Pope. “I think he’ll be fine.”

Sarah smirks. “Yeah. If he ever grows a pair and actually does something about it.”

Kiara snorts. “Right?”

Then she hesitates. Second-guesses. But it’s Sarah, so she goes for it. “Have you, uh… have you talked to your brother recently?”

Sarah’s expression shutters immediately. “What? No. Why?”

Kiara shrugs, casual. “No reason. Just wondering.”

Sarah narrows her eyes. “Kiara.”

Kiara looks away, playing it off. “He came by the restaurant the other day. Just being his usual weird self.”

Sarah stiffens. “Weird how?”

Kiara forces a laugh. “Like, weird weird. Not, you know, dangerous weird.”

Sarah studies her. “You sure?”

Kiara thinks about the fake snake. The knife pinning it to her door. The note with the rusty brown ‘R’ written in blood.

She smiles. “Yeah. Of course.”

They let it go. For now.

They left the restaurant, bellies full, minds racing. None of them noticed Barry, sitting in the back corner, picking fried fish off his plate, pretending not to listen. None of them saw the way his eyes flicked up as they passed, the way he was already working out how he could make their job his job.

~~~

Rafe did not want to see Barry. Barry was what people called a “business associate,” which meant Rafe gave him money, and Barry gave him drugs, and sometimes, when Rafe was really spiraling, Barry made sure he didn’t die. Not out of friendship—out of debt collection.

Barry was also one of those guys who smelled like cigarettes even when he wasn’t smoking. Who wore sunglasses indoors. Who called people “brother” but meant it in a way that suggested he’d sell you out for gas money.

Unfortunately, Barry was also a man who knew things, and Rafe had decided he needed to know things.

The two met at an abandoned gas station on the Cut, where the flickering neon OPEN sign was a goddamn lie. Rafe pulled up in his truck, rolling the window down just enough to let the smell of nicotine and bad decisions seep in.

Barry stood there like a man who had never paid taxes and never would, scratching his ribs through a T-shirt that had more stains than fabric. He grinned when he saw Rafe pull up, which was never a good sign.

“Rafael,” Barry said, because he was the kind of guy who liked to say things just to piss people off.

“Barry,” Rafe answered, because he was the kind of guy who was always pissed off.

“You’re looking well,” Barry lied.

Rafe ignored that. “You called me. Talk.”

Barry took a long drag of his cigarette, savoring the moment. “Got somethin’ you might wanna hear. Your sister—Princess Sarah—and her idiot friends were runnin’ their mouths at Heyward’s. Seems they got themselves a job.”

Rafe exhaled slowly. He had done his best not to think about Sarah’s idiot friends. More specifically, one idiot friend. The one who smelled like vanilla sunscreen and moral superiority.

Kiara.

Barry grinned, like a man who saw right through him and enjoyed the view. “They’re huntin’ treasure.”

Rafe blinked. “Come again?”

“Treasure, Rafe. Gold. Money. Riches beyond your wildest dreams. You know, the kind you like to snort up your nose.”

Rafe flexed his jaw. “You got about two seconds to get to the point before I run you over with my truck.”

Barry laughed, which was insulting, because they both knew Rafe would do it.

“Some rich lady hired ‘em to find a dead guy’s fortune. Old pirate gold, some letters. Supposed to clear some dude’s name.” Barry squinted, like the memory was physically hurting him. “Thomas Calloway? Callahan? Something like that. One of them historical types white people like to name schools after.”

“Why do you care?” Rafe asked.

Barry’s smile widened. “Because where there’s treasure, there’s money. And where there’s money, there’s me.”

Rafe considered this. Barry was, unfortunately, making sense.

And then there was her.

Kiara.

Who had been avoiding him. Who had left him in Barbados like an old couch someone didn’t want to move. Who still thought she was better than him, even after all these years.

If he got to the treasure first, he could show her. Show all of them. He wasn’t some pathetic waste of space. He wasn’t just some screw-up. He could be good. Or at least, he could pretend to be.

For a little while.

Barry was still talking. “They’re going out to some old manor tonight. Big abandoned place. Probably haunted. Who gives a shit? The point is, you in?”

Rafe let the question sit between them, weighing his options.

Option one: Let the idiots go dig around in the dirt like the morons they were, and spend the night doing literally anything else.

Option two: Show up, take the treasure, double-cross Barry, and maybe—just maybe—see the look on Kiara’s face when he did something she never expected.

Rafe smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m in.”

Barry smiled back.

Only one of them would still be smiling by the end of the night.

Chapter Text

Rafe had spent an inordinate amount of time looking at himself in the mirror. Not because he particularly liked what he saw, but because he was trying to decide if Kiara would.

Sarah was calling him again. Her name lit up his phone, over and over, like a mosquito buzzing near his ear. He let it ring. She could want any number of things—an intervention, a lecture, a plea for him to just be normal for once in his godforsaken life. It didn’t matter. He had better things to do.

Tonight was about the treasure, sure. But mostly, it was about Kiara.

Rafe adjusted his shirt collar. He didn’t look crazy. At least, not crazy crazy. Just the normal amount. He thought about Kiara again, about the way she used to look at him like he was some kind of human oil spill—something the earth itself wanted to reject. That was fine. Oil spills were still powerful.

One last glance in the mirror. Then he grabbed his keys and left, stepping into the humid Outer Banks night.

~~

“This feels like a bad idea,” Pope said.

“All of our ideas are bad ideas,” JJ pointed out. “This is just one of our better bad ideas.”

“Speak for yourself,” Cleo said. “I have nothing but good ideas.”

It was late, and the air was thick with heat. The manor loomed in the distance, half-hidden by the marshland. It looked like the kind of place where old rich people went to die, or where Scooby-Doo villains got unmasked.

JJ and Pope had been flirting all night. Not that either of them would admit it. But they weren’t exactly subtle. Cleo kept making jokes at their expense, which Pope pretended to hate but definitely did not hate.

Kiara ignored all of it. She’d spent the entire day feeling like she was being watched, catching glimpses of something out of the corner of her eye—Rafe’s boat, Rafe’s car, Rafe’s general presence. Maybe she was just paranoid. Or maybe he really was there, lurking in the shadows like a feral cat someone once tried to domesticate.

Sarah and John B were being disgustingly in love, as usual. It was impressive, really. They had survived being chased by international criminals, lost everything they owned, nearly died multiple times, and somehow still acted like a couple in a Netflix rom-com.

As they crossed the marsh, JJ suddenly froze. “Did y’all see that?”

“No,” Cleo said.

“I swear to God, I saw—”

“A ghost?” Cleo interrupted.

JJ hesitated. “Okay, first of all, don’t say it like that. Second of all, yes.”

“What did it look like?” John B asked, mostly just to humor him.

JJ glanced toward the field. There was nothing there now. But for a second, he could’ve sworn he’d seen a man—tall, handsome, and dressed in dark clothing, watching them from the distance. The image had disappeared so fast that he wasn’t sure if it had ever been there at all.

He shook his head. “Nothing. Forget it.”

Sarah, being Sarah, needed a distraction. “Wait, what’s the story with this place again?” she asked.

JJ, being JJ, was more than happy to oblige. “Oh, you mean the incredibly cursed murder house we’re about to break into? Glad you asked. So, Thomas Calloway—pirate, con artist, possible homicidal maniac—was in love with Eleanor Sinclair, but her family hated him, because, you know, racism.”

“Classic,” Cleo said.

“Super classic,” JJ agreed. “Anyway, one night, he snapped. Killed the whole family. Or so the story goes. He took all their money, got on a ship, and—get this—was never seen again.”

“Because he was dead?” John B guessed.

“Because he got lost at sea,” JJ corrected. “Or, depending on who you ask, because Eleanor dragged him straight to hell.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so Eleanor is the ghost here?”

“Yup,” JJ said. “Supposedly, she still haunts the manor, luring men inside and stealing their hearts.”

“Like, literally?”

“I mean, I assume metaphorically,” JJ said. “But who knows?”

“Well, that’s deeply unsettling,” Pope muttered.

“Also, some people say they’ve seen Thomas around too,” JJ added. “Which is extra weird, because, again—lost at sea.”

Cleo snorted. “Maybe he just got tired of the ocean and walked back.”

JJ ignored her. He was still glancing toward the field, where the shadowy figure had been. If he had been.

Kiara finally spoke up. “Okay, can we stop talking about ghosts and start talking about how we’re getting inside?”

Because there was the manor, standing tall and broken in front of them. Waiting.

~~

The gang stood at the edge of the overgrown front lawn, staring up at the rotting facade of the Sinclair Manor like they were expecting it to speak first.

“Alright,” John B said, holding up the map Margot had given them, “so according to this part of the map–”

“Lemme guess,” Sarah interrupted, arms crossed. “The treasure’s not actually here, but we have to find something else that’ll take us to another place that’ll take us to another place and—”

The wind howled through the trees. The front door, though they were still several feet away, creaked ever so slightly.

Sarah snapped her mouth shut.

“Go on,” JJ said, grinning. “Finish your thought.”

Sarah punched him in the arm.

“This place got bad vibes,” Cleo muttered, adjusting the strap of her bag. “Feel like we about to be the dumbasses in a horror movie that die first.”

“We are the dumbasses in a horror movie,” Pope corrected.

Kiara was only half-listening, distracted by a prickle at the back of her neck. 

“Are we going in, or are we just gonna keep admiring the architecture?” JJ asked.

John B took a step forward. “Come on.”

~~

The door, of course, was unlocked.

Because the thing about haunted houses is that they always want you to come inside.

They stepped into the dark entryway, the air thick and stale like it had been sitting there, festering, waiting for someone stupid enough to breathe it in. The floorboards groaned under their weight, but other than that, the house was quiet. Unsettlingly so.

“This is where they kill us,” Cleo whispered.

“Relax,” John B said, but his voice was just a little too loud, like he was trying to drown out his own nerves.

JJ turned on a flashlight and swept it across the room, illuminating a grand staircase, the remnants of a chandelier still clinging to the ceiling like a broken spine, and a long hallway disappearing into darkness.

“This place is fancy as hell,” Pope muttered.

“Was fancy as hell,” JJ corrected. “Now it’s just haunted as hell.”

Sarah peered at the map over John B’s shoulder. “Okay, so where are we supposed to go?”

John B squinted at the markings. “The next part of the map should be somewhere in the house. We just have to find it.”

“Great,” Sarah said. “So, like, a scavenger hunt for people who enjoy being murdered?”

“Exactly,” JJ said, grinning.

They moved deeper inside, the air growing colder with every step. It wasn’t the kind of cold that made sense, the kind that came with old buildings or bad insulation. It was the kind that felt personal. The kind that crawled under your skin and whispered, You shouldn’t be here.

Somewhere upstairs, a door creaked.

Everyone froze.

“What was that?” Pope whispered.

“Wind,” John B said.

“Ghost,” JJ said at the same time.

Cleo smacked him. “Shut up.”

They continued on, but now, everything felt different. Kiara could swear she heard footsteps that weren’t theirs, the soft shuffle of movement just out of sight. Pope’s flashlight flickered. John B hesitated at the base of the stairs, looking up like he was expecting something to be looking back down.

“Okay, this is getting weird,” Sarah muttered.

“No, it’s been weird,” Cleo corrected. “Now it’s just gettin’ worse.”

Then the doors started slamming.

One after another, echoing through the house like gunshots.

“NOPE,” JJ yelled, already turning around. “NOPE, NOPE, NOPE.”

But the door they came in through? Yeah, that was shut too.

“Okay, okay,” Pope said, holding up his hands like he was negotiating with a ghost. “Everybody just stay calm—”

And then the house did what haunted houses do best.

It made them question everything first.

It started small. A whisper. A breath of cold air down the back of Sarah’s neck. The distant sound of something scuttling in the walls. The kind of things that could be explained away, if you really wanted to.

“Wind,” Sarah muttered when she shivered.

“Rats,” John B offered when they heard the scratching.

“Ghost rats,” JJ corrected, because he was an agent of chaos.

Then came the other things.

A chandelier that swung slightly overhead, despite there being no breeze. A grandfather clock that ticked when it had no working parts. A humming sound from upstairs—low, melodic, wrong.

The laughter started next.

It was distant at first, a thin, breathy giggle that might have been the house settling. Or maybe a bird. Or maybe neither of those things, considering it was now everywhere.

Cleo stopped mid-step, her whole body going still. “Tell me someone else heard that.”

Pope frowned. “The laughing?”

“Yeah.”

John B hesitated. “…I didn’t hear laughing.”

A second later, the laughter moved—closer this time, and undeniably human.

Then, all at once, the house got mean.

The floor shuddered beneath their feet, rattling the windows. JJ nearly lost his balance, catching himself on a dusty side table that immediately collapsed under his weight.

“Shit!” he yelped.

“Okay, did everyone feel that?” Sarah asked, voice going high.

“Oh yeah,” Cleo confirmed, already backing toward the nearest exit. “And I don’t like it.”

“We should stay together,” John B said, because John B was the kind of guy who believed disasters could be avoided if people just stuck to the plan. Which was exactly why he was always the first to be proven wrong.

A loud bang echoed through the house, followed by the sharp slam of a door. Then another. 

And suddenly, the house was closing in on them.

“Uh—”

“Run!”

It wasn’t clear who said it first, but they all got the message.

They scattered.

JJ and Cleo booked it down a long hallway, feet pounding against warped wood.

“This is the opposite of what we should be doing,” Cleo shouted.

“I know, right?” JJ grinned, like this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Cleo shot him a look. “Man, you are so messed up.”

But before he could argue, the hallway took a turn for the worse—literally. The ground sloped downward, like the house had just decided, No, actually, you go this way.

“Wait, wait, wait—!” JJ yelped as his feet slid out from under him.

Cleo made a last-ditch effort to grab onto something. She failed.

Gravity did the rest.

They tumbled into a room they hadn’t intended to enter, the door slamming shut behind them.

Sarah and John B didn’t run so much as stumble aggressively into what looked like an old sitting room, colliding with a couch that sent up a dust cloud big enough to be classified as a health hazard.

“Ugh—gross,” Sarah coughed, waving a hand in front of her face. “This place is gonna give us, like, old-timey tuberculosis.”

“Is that a thing?” John B wheezed.

“I don’t know! But if it is, we have it now!”

Then, as if the house just wanted to remind them who was in charge, the fireplace erupted with a sudden burst of flame.

Neither of them had touched it.

Sarah let out a shriek.

John B swore.

They backed toward the door, only for it to slam shut, the lock clicking into place.

“Oh, come on!” John B groaned.

Sarah turned slowly back toward the fire, where—for just a second—she could have sworn she saw something moving in the flames.

Meanwhile, in the world’s worst basement, Pope and Kiara had just realized they were well and truly screwed. 

“Uh,” Pope said into the darkness. His voice was unnervingly even. “Kiara?”

“Yeah?”

“Did that door just—”

“Yup.”

“And now we’re—”

“Trapped in a basement? Yup.”

“Cool, cool, cool.”

Pope turned on his flashlight. The basement was everything you’d expect from a house that had been rotting for a century: damp, cold, filled with broken furniture and shadows that moved when they shouldn’t. Somewhere in the distance, something skittered.

“Just a rat,” Kiara said quickly. “A normal, not haunted rat.”

Pope nodded like that was a comforting thought. It wasn’t.

And in the center of it all, sitting on a dusty old table, was something that looked an awful lot like—

“The second half of the map,” Kiara breathed.

Pope approached it cautiously. “Should we be concerned that it was just waiting for us down here?”

“Absolutely.”

They exchanged a look. Then, because curiosity had always been the Pogue way, they grabbed it anyway.

It was only after Kiara stuffed the map into her bag that they realized they were not alone.

Pope’s hand clamped around Kiara’s wrist. “Run.”

They ran.

Straight for the door, which—naturally—did not budge.

Pope yanked at the handle. Kiara slammed a shoulder into it. The door remained as immovable as a tombstone.

“Okay,” she exhaled. “That’s fine. We’ve been in worse situations.”

“Debatable,” Pope muttered.

“Name one worse situation.”

He threw her a look. “Barbados?”

Kiara scowled. “Okay, name another.”

But before Pope could answer, the flashlight flickered off.

And the footsteps started.

Soft at first, then heavier.

Kiara and Pope both went completely still.

The flashlight flickered on.

And for the briefest second, in that shuddering beam of light, Kiara saw him.

A man. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in something old, something heavy. His features obscured by shadow, but his eyes—his eyes—burned through the darkness like embers.

She knew, instinctively, who he was.

Thomas Calloway.

The man accused of murdering Eleanor Sinclair.

The pirate who had vanished into legend.

And now, they were trapped in a basement with him.

Kiara’s breath caught in her throat.

Then the flashlight blinked out again.

And the footsteps started moving.

Fast.

Toward them. 

Until he loomed right in front of them, their flashlights blinking on and off.

The ghost’s image flickered like a dying lightbulb, phasing in and out of existence. One moment, Thomas Calloway stood there—solid, real, undeniable. The next, he was just a ripple in the dark, a distortion of the air, a trick of the light.

Of course he did not politely excuse himself before vanishing completely.

No, he did the whole dramatic bit—glitching like bad reception, his form twisting and distorting before blipping out of existence. Just gone, like he’d never been there at all.

Which would’ve been great, except Pope and Kiara had seen him, and now they were standing in a basement that had very much just contained a 300-year-old dead man.

Kiara blinked. “Uh—”

“Did you just—” Pope started.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Silence stretched between them.

Then, out of the shadows, a slow clap.

“Damn,” a voice drawled. “That was some real spooky shit.”

Kiara whipped around. Pope turned with her.

And there, stepping into the dim glow of their flickering flashlight, was Barry.

Barry, who had absolutely not been invited on this treasure hunt.

Barry, who was currently looking very pleased with himself.

Barry, who was also holding a gun.

“Alright,” he said, casual as anything. “I’ll be takin’ that map now.”

Kiara blinked at him. Then at the gun. Then at Pope. Then back at Barry.

Pope exhaled. “First of all—no.”

Kiara nodded. “Yeah, huge no.”

“Second of all,” Pope added, pointing vaguely at the empty space where Thomas Calloway had just been, “did you see that? The ghost?”

Barry shrugged. “Man, I’m high all the time. I don’t trust shit I see.”

Kiara squinted. “You came to rob us high?”

Barry snorted. “I’m not dumb high. Just, y’know. Functionally high.”

Pope muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

Barry sighed like they were inconveniencing him, then raised the gun a little higher. “Alright, alright, enough chit-chat. Hand it over.”

Kiara and Pope exchanged a look.

Then, from absolutely nowhere, something heavy cracked against the back of Barry’s skull.

The man crumpled like a poorly made sandcastle, gun clattering to the ground.

And standing over him, grinning like this was all going exactly according to plan, was Rafe.

He gave Kiara his best heroic smile, like he hadn’t just followed them here with probably the worst intentions.

“Aren’t you glad I followed you?” he said.

~~

The moment Rafe hit Barry over the head, the universe split into two possible realities.

In one, He was the hero. Kiara would fall into his arms, Pope would shake his hand in solemn brotherhood, and Sarah and her friends—his mortal enemies—would finally understand that he wasn’t the bad guy. He was just misunderstood. Misunderstood and also incredibly handsome.

In the other, real reality—the one where Kiara had a functioning brain—she stared at him and said, “What. The. Fuck.”

Rafe, still holding the heavy piece of wood he’d used to knock Barry out, blinked. “Okay, but—”

A scream tore through the house. Not a normal scream. Not a fun scream. A blood-curdling, “I just saw my own death and it was ugly” scream.

The basement door flew open. It did not creak or ease open like a normal haunted house door. No, it slammed wide like an unhinged jaw.

Kiara and Pope did what smart people do: they ran.

Rafe did what dumb people do: he grabbed the gun.

And then he ran too, because even idiots have survival instincts.

~~~

They all found each other in the main hallway.

Sarah was pale, wide-eyed, and looked exactly like someone who had just seen a ghost, which was appropriate because she had just seen a ghost.

She clutched her arms around herself, breathing hard. “I saw her,” she said, voice hoarse. “I saw her.”

The group stared at her.

“Who?” JJ asked.

Sarah swallowed. “Eleanor. She was—she was standing at the end of the hall. She had brown hair. And her wrists—” She hesitated, then clenched her jaw. “She was bleeding. But she wasn’t moving. She just looked at me.”

Cleo, ever the practical one, sighed. “Great. So she knows we’re here.”

“She knows we’re here?” Pope repeated, his voice rising. “How do you sound so calm?”

“Yeah, what the hell,” Sarah snapped. “I am actively panicking—”

“That makes two of us,” JJ muttered.

The group erupted into frantic chatter, overlapping questions and theories flying through the air like sparks from a fire. They didn't seem to notice Rafe. 

But he wasn’t even looking at them.

Because across the hallway, a tall, antique mirror stood against the peeling wallpaper. And it was fogging over.

At first, Rafe thought it was just the heat in the old house clashing with the cool night air. But then he realized—no.

It was breath.

Not his. Not the panicking losers. 

Someone was on the other side.

Slowly, Rafe turned his head.

And there she was.

A woman stood in the mirror, her face eerily still, her brown hair falling limp against her shoulders. Her wrists were raw and red, streaked with blood.

She was staring at him.

His heart pounded so hard he thought his ribs might crack.

She looked so much like—

No.

No, that wasn’t right.

Rafe’s stomach twisted, his fingers curling into fists. Sarah’s ghost. Eleanor Sinclair. It had to be. But in the dim light, in the warped glass, she looked just a little too familiar.

Not just Eleanor.

His mother.

For the first time in years, he thought about the way their family used to talk about her. How, before the end, before the pills and the dark rooms and the locked doors, there were whispers.

She saw things, they said.

She heard things.

And now, Sarah had seen a ghost.

And Rafe was seeing one too.

His chest clenched, a dull pressure blooming between his ribs.

Was this how it started?

Was this what happened before you lost your mind?

Somewhere behind him, JJ was still talking. “Why the fuck are you even here, Cameron?”

“Yeah, seriously,” Pope snapped. “Were you just waiting in the dark like a creep?”

Rafe barely heard them.

Because in the mirror, Eleanor opened her mouth.

She was whispering.

Rafe couldn’t hear her, but he could almost feel the words in his bones.

You’ll do.

You’ll do just fine.

His entire body went cold.

Not like a shiver, not like stepping into air-conditioning after a hot day. This was something else. This was something crawling up his spine, slipping under his skin, sinking into his blood.

Something was slipping down his throat.

Rafe’s breath hitched.

His head felt light.

His chest, his stomach, his arms—they weren’t his anymore.

This wasn’t fear.

This was possession.

A sudden scream cut through the air.

A deep, agonized sound.

A man’s voice.

The entire house seemed to shudder.

And then—

The darkness got thicker.

Rafe squeezed his eyes shut as a sharp pressure pressed against the inside of his skull.

The house groaned. The floorboards trembled beneath them.

And that was it. That was all it took.

They ran.

Not in an elegant, cinematic way, but in the kind of full-body, panic-fueled sprint that only comes from truly believing you’re about to die a horrible death.

They crashed through the overgrown yard, tripping over roots, dodging branches, vaulting over the rusted-out remains of what was once, apparently, a wagon.

By the time they reached the treeline, their lungs were on fire, their legs felt like lead, and their cars were finally—finally—within sight.

But no one got in.

Not yet.

Because running from a haunted house and immediately jumping in your car to speed off into the night? That was how you crashed your car. That was how the ghost followed you home.

So instead, they stood at the edge of the property, bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch their breath.

Kiara stopped first, hands on her knees, catching her breath. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears, her limbs buzzing with something she couldn’t explain. Not fear. Not adrenaline. Something deeper. Something—old.

Rafe was the last to emerge from the woods, slower than the rest, his expression unreadable. He wasn’t out of breath. If anything, he looked eerily still, like a painting instead of a person.

Sarah rounded on him first. “Why the hell are you even here?”

Rafe blinked at her, as if the question was strange. “What, you’re not even gonna thank me?”

“Thank you for what?” Pope scoffed. “For stalking us?  For creeping around like a serial killer?”

“For saving your ass,” Rafe shot back, his voice calm in a way that made it worse.

Kiara should have had something to say. She always had something to say to Rafe. But her mouth felt strange. Her whole body felt strange. Like a suit that didn’t quite fit right.

Pope, sighed and turned to John B. “Alright, what’s the move? Because I, for one, am not sticking around to see what other horrors this place has in store.”

John B exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “We need to figure out the cipher. But that's tomorrow night's problem.”

Sarah threw up her hands. “No, but I saw her.” Her voice was raw, desperate. “She had brown hair, and she—” She cut herself off, arms wrapping around herself like she was cold.

JJ, quieter than usual, finally spoke. “What if they saw us too?”

Silence fell.

Kiara felt something flicker inside her at that. A recognition that didn’t belong to her. The ghosts had seen them. Of course they had.

Because they were looking for something.

Or someone. Somehow they just knew. 

Rafe, staring at the house, said nothing. His hands curled into fists, then relaxed. His mind kept going back to the mirror. To the woman’s face. To the words he almost understood.

Eleanor.

Not just a ghost.

A memory.

A feeling.

A homecoming.

Sarah was still staring at him, her eyes narrowed like she knew something was off.

“You’re not following us tomorrow,” John B said suddenly, pointing at Rafe. “You’re done.”

Rafe scoffed, snapping his attention away from the house. “Trust me, I want nothing to do with your little treasure hunt.”

“Good,” John B said.

“Great,” Rafe said.

“Fantastic,” JJ added.

“Perfect,” Cleo finished.

There was a beat of quiet before Kiara muttered, “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

No one argued.

They got into their cars, one by one, engines rumbling to life.

Rafe stood by his truck, watching them.

Watching her.

Kiara didn’t look back.

She should have.

Because she wasn’t Kiara anymore.

Not entirely.

And neither was he.

Chapter Text

Kiara went to sleep and dreamed of a life that was not hers.

Rafe did too.

This, in itself, was not unusual. People have dreams all the time. Sometimes they dream they’re flying. Sometimes they dream about their teeth falling out. Sometimes they dream about showing up to school naked, only to realize it’s not a school at all, but a supermarket, and also their grandmother is there, and also she’s disappointed in them.

This was not one of those dreams.

This dream was different.

This dream was a memory.

~~~

Thomas Calloway did not believe in fate.

But as he stood on the docks that night, watching Eleanor Sinclair with her wind-tangled hair and her too-bold smile, he thought maybe—just maybe—he had been wrong.

The girl was a disaster waiting to happen. He could tell by the way she held herself, chin high, shoulders squared, like she had never heard the word no and wouldn’t care if she did.

She was wealth and recklessness in a silk dress. She was danger, disguised as something delicate.

Thomas had seen white girls like her before. Girls who thought the world was theirs for the taking.

But none of them had ever looked at him like this.

Like he was something rare. Like he was something hers.

“You don’t belong here,” he told her, forcefully. Some part of him—some foolish, desperate part—wanted her to listen. Wanted her to leave.

Eleanor only smiled wider. “Neither do you.”

God help him, but she was right.

Thomas had spent his whole life not belonging. Too dark-skinned for the white aristocrats, too well-spoken for the rougher men at sea. He was always too much of something, not enough of something else.

And yet, when Eleanor stepped closer, her fingers brushing against his wrist like she had already decided on something, he felt something unsettling settle inside him.

~~

Eleanor Sinclair had decided she was going to love Thomas Calloway before he had even spoken a word to her.

She had seen him from her window, standing at the docks with his broad shoulders and the kind of sharp, knowing eyes that only men with blood on their hands seemed to have.

She liked men with blood on their hands.

And this one—this one belonged to her.

She knew it the moment she saw him.

So she had gone to him, stepping barefoot across the dock, her dress whispering around her ankles. And when he had looked at her, really looked at her, Eleanor had felt something thrilling and terrifying crack open in her ribs.

Because Thomas Calloway was not a man meant for her.

He was not a man meant for anyone.

And yet, here he was. Standing before her. Letting her touch him.

His skin was warm beneath her fingertips. She wanted to memorize the way it felt. She wanted to take him apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left that wasn’t hers.

She had been given everything—money, beauty, the finest silks, the best tutors. She had been told she was special, brilliant, too much for the world to contain. And the worst part?

She believed it. That could really mess up a person. 

“You’re handsome,” she said. “And brooding. I like that.”

Thomas looked at her as if she were an inconvenience. She loved that.

“And you are?” he asked, voice flat.

She gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said, because that meant he wasn’t after her money. Which meant he could only be after her.

Thomas exhaled, long and slow, as if he already regretted every choice that had led him here.

“Do you always act this odd?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “And you’ll love it.”

Thomas did not think so. At least not yet. But he would. Eleanor was certain of this. She had decided it.

She reached for his other hand. He hesitated, just for a moment, before letting her take it.

And that was that.

~~

The first time she kissed him, she did it because she wanted to see what he would do.

They had met in secret for weeks, always by the docks, always under the cover of night. She spoke more than he did, but he never walked away. And for Thomas Calloway, a man who could slip into the shadows as easily as taking a breath, staying was its own kind of confession.

“You’re in love with me,” she announced one night, swinging her feet over the edge of the dock.

Thomas, leaning beside her, did not glance up from where he was sharpening his knife. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I assure you, I’m not.”

Eleanor grinned, tilting her head to look at him. “Want me to prove it?”

He sighed, already exhausted. “Not particularly.”

She kissed him anyway.

It was quick, barely more than the press of lips, but it was enough. Enough for her to feel the way he froze, the way his breath hitched just slightly before he forced himself back under control. Enough to know she was right.

When she pulled away, she smirked. “See?”

Thomas exhaled, looking up at the sky as if searching for patience.

“You’re impossible,” he muttered.

“And you’re in love with me.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

Which meant she had won.

Thomas Calloway had spent his whole life keeping people at arm’s length. It was easier that way. Safer.

And yet—

Eleanor Sinclair did not believe in distance. Eleanor Sinclair did not believe in impossible things. Eleanor Sinclair did not listen.

She should have frightened him.

She did, a little.

But mostly, she fascinated him.

She was reckless and selfish and demanding, but she was also brilliant and sharp and entirely herself. She did not look at him the way the rest of the world did. She did not see a man to be ignored, or tolerated, or worse, despised.

She saw him.

So the second time she kissed him, he kissed her back.

—

Kiara stumbled out of bed, her body moving before her mind caught up. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to go.

The floor was cold beneath her feet. Her skin felt wrong, stretched over her bones like it didn’t belong to her.

The bathroom light was too bright. Too sharp. It cut through the dark like a blade, slicing straight through her skull.

She gripped the sink. Wild eyes. Pupils blown too wide.

She looked—

She looked like she had seen something.

A memory. A ghost.

Her fingers clenched the porcelain until her knuckles went white.

It was fine. She was fine.

She just needed to breathe.

Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

And then—without thinking—she reached for the chain around her neck.

Except—

She didn’t own a necklace. Not the type she was looking for. 

The realization struck her at the same time as the weight. Cold metal. Familiar where it shouldn’t have been.

Her stomach twisted.

She knew this necklace. She had worn this necklace.

Except she hadn’t.

Thomas had.

Memories not her own unspooled in her mind like thread:

A rough hand clutching the same chain. A woman’s fingers—delicate but possessive—fastening it around his throat. A promise spoken in the dark:

“Now you can never take me off.”

Kiara flinched, her fingers snapping away from her bare skin.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening.

But then—

A shadow moved behind her.

She felt it before she saw it, an unnatural cold pressing against the back of her neck, settling into her spine like something had slipped inside of her.

No.

Not something.

Someone.

Her breath hitched. Slowly—too slowly—she forced herself to look up.

In the mirror’s reflection, just over her shoulder, was a figure.

Tall. Broad. His shoulders tense, his posture rigid, as if he had been standing like that for centuries.

She didn’t turn around. Couldn’t turn around.

He didn’t move.

But he was there.

Kiara’s breath came faster now, ragged, uneven. Her body hurt—an ache deep in her bones, like she was supposed to be taller, heavier, someone else entirely.

Her hands trembled where they gripped the sink. They weren’t her hands.

They were his.

She could feel them, bigger, rougher, the ghost of old scars running across the knuckles. She could feel the weight of his shoulders, the weight of his past, the weight of the rope around his throat.

Her neck ached.

She gasped, shoving herself back from the sink, her shoulder slamming into the wall behind her. The figure in the mirror flickered.

No. No, this wasn’t happening.

But the weight—God, the weight—it was still there.

The pressure.

The phantom burn of rope cutting into flesh.

Her stomach twisted, bile rising in her throat. She needed out.

Kiara shoved open the bathroom door, her breath coming too fast, too shallow.

She turned on the hallway light.

Then the living room.

Then the kitchen.

Light. More light. As much as she could get.

But the house still felt dark.

Still felt haunted.

She swallowed hard, pressing a shaking hand to her throat, half-expecting to feel a necklace that wasn’t there.

Her body still ached. The shadow was gone, but she still felt him. In her bones. Beneath her skin.

Kiara wasn’t sleeping again tonight.

She was getting ready for work.

~~

Across the town, in a house too big and too empty, Rafe sat up like he’d been yanked upright by an invisible hand. His heart slammed against his ribs, his breath coming too fast, too shallow. His sheets were damp with sweat. The room was dark.

But he wasn’t alone.

He felt it.

Not in the way you feel someone standing in your doorway, or the way your skin prickles when someone watches you from across a crowded room. No—this was inside of him, coiled beneath his skin like something had burrowed there.

He exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair—but even that felt off. The fingers felt thinner. Smaller. His other hand ached. Fingers curled, muscles locked, like they had been holding something too tightly.

The side of a dress. A wrist. A knife.

He inhaled sharply, flexing his fingers, trying to shake the feeling off, but the whispers started before he could.

Soft at first. A murmur in the walls, a secret tucked into the corners of the room.

Then they grew.

A thousand voices, overlapping, layering over each other, slipping through the air like curling fingers.

“You will make it right.”

“You will bring him home.”

“You will finish what I started.”

“Kiara is ours.”

He flinched. His pulse stuttered.

The whispers laughed.

His window creaked open.

The mirror across the room fogged.

Rafe’s stomach twisted. He didn’t want to look.

But something made him.

His gaze dragged up.

A woman flickered in the glass.

Her dress was torn. Her brown hair wild, tangled around her shoulders. Her wrists—God, her wrists—dripping red, staining the lace of her sleeves.

She knew him. He saw it in her eyes.

She smiled.

“There you are.”

Rafe’s breath caught. His hands shook.

No. No, this wasn’t real.

She tilted her head, like she could hear his thoughts.

“You will take back what is ours.”

Rafe’s throat tightened. His pulse thudded against his ribs, frantic, unsteady.

She stepped closer in the glass.

“They stole from us. They made him a villain.”

The whispers pressed against his skull, into the hollow of his ribs, crawling up his spine.

“But you will make it right.”

Rafe staggered backward. The back of his legs hit the bedframe.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t real.

She laughed.

The sound slithered inside of him, curling around his lungs, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

Rafe gasped, trying to push it out—

But something else pushed in.

Cold. Heavy.

Like fingers slipping around his throat.

Like silk sliding over his skin.

Like a voice whispering in his ear:

“Hush now.”

His vision blurred. His body locked.

The cold rushed through him—filling his veins, settling in his bones, curling into the space beneath his ribs.

And then—

Silence.

Eleanor Sinclair had settled in.

—-

Kiara opened The Wreck at exactly 10:00 AM, which was unfortunate because she had been hoping for some kind of apocalypse that would make work impossible. A storm, a flood, a minor but inconvenient fire. Instead, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and her parents were already in the kitchen, which meant she was stuck here.

She felt weird. Off. Like her skin didn’t fit right, like she was wearing someone else’s bones. Her head ached, her muscles ached, and worst of all, she was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that she wanted to be on a boat.

Not just any boat.

A pirate ship.

This was a new and concerning development. Kiara had many dreams in life—protecting sea turtles, dismantling capitalism, kissing attractive people out of spite—but being a pirate had never been on the list. And yet, here she was, scrubbing down tables, staring longingly at the ocean, and wondering how difficult it really was to hijack a yacht.

She ignored the buzzing of her phone in the group chat. John B had probably typed out some unhinged conspiracy about last night, and Sarah was probably yelling at him for not using punctuation. JJ had been marathoning Supernatural and was telling everyone to carry salt tonight. 

The lunch rush came and went in a blur. Kiara took orders, refilled drinks, and spent an unfortunate amount of time doodling on her waitress pad instead of doing her job.

She wasn’t aware of how bad it was until Cleo, Pope, and JJ appeared at the counter, looking concerned.

“Girl, what the hell is wrong with you?” Cleo asked, snatching the pad from Kiara’s hands. “You’re writing Rafe’s name.”

“What?” Kiara blinked.

JJ leaned in, squinting. “Oh my God, she is.”

Kiara grabbed the pad back, and sure enough, there it was. Rafe. Rafe. Rafe. Over and over, like a bad teenage diary entry.

This was unacceptable.

“I was—” Kiara cleared her throat. “I was writing ‘Raft.’ You know. Thinking about boats.”

Pope raised an eyebrow. “You spelled ‘Raft’ with an ‘e’ at the end?”

“Yes,” Kiara said. “It’s French.”

JJ smirked. “It’s not.”

“Well, what do you know? You failed French.”

“And yet I still know ‘Raft’ isn’t spelled like Rafe.”

“Okay, well, it’s not my fault you guys can’t appreciate sophisticated spelling,” Kiara snapped. She shoved the pad into her apron and pointed at them. “Now, do you want free fries or not?”

Cleo held up her hands in surrender. “I’ll take free fries.”

“Then shut up.”

For a brief, beautiful moment, Kiara thought she’d won. And then it happened.

Some guy at table five started yelling.

“Hey, girl! I said no pickles! You people don’t know how to listen or what?”

Kiara turned, slow and deliberate, the kind of movement a snake makes before it strikes. She had been mildly annoyed before. Now she was homicidal.

The man at table five was middle-aged, red-faced, and wearing a visor despite the fact that they were indoors. He had the energy of someone who had once lost a fantasy football league and never emotionally recovered.

“I said no pickles,” he repeated, jabbing a thick finger at his plate. “What part of ‘no pickles’ don’t you understand?”

Now, there were many ways Kiara could have handled this.

She could have apologized in a fake, overly sweet customer service voice and removed the pickles. She could have stared blankly at him until he either left or combusted under the weight of his own frustration. She could have dumped an entire jar of pickles onto his lap and told him to adapt.

Instead—before she could even think—she spoke.

And what came out was not English.

It wasn’t even Spanish.

It was something else. Something older. Something that did not belong to her but was rising from her throat like an incantation.

“Joo no hab wit sense, ya?” she snapped, voice sharp, teeth bared.

Silence.

The entire restaurant froze. The fryers beeped. Somewhere in the distance, a gull screamed.

The man’s mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for breath. “What the hell did you just say to me?”

Kiara didn’t know.

But she wasn’t finished.

She slammed the order pad onto the counter. “Mi tek um pickle an chrow um een ya face, ya wan dat?”

The man recoiled. “Are you—are you threatening me?”

JJ, Pope, and Cleo were staring. Everyone was staring.

Because the words coming out of Kiara’s mouth weren’t just foreign. They sounded ancient. Thick with something heavy. Something that didn’t belong in this century.

Her breath was coming fast. Her skin was clammy. Her heart slammed against her ribs like it was trying to escape.

The man scoffed. “Whatever. Just take the damn pickles off.”

Kiara reached for the plate.

Then—without meaning to—she gripped the knife.

A new voice slithered into her mind. Low, quiet, deadly.

You could cut him, it whispered. Just a little. Just enough to remind him who he’s speaking to.

Kiara sucked in a breath and let go so fast the knife clattered to the table.

This was wrong.

She was wrong.

“I have to go,” she blurted.

And before anyone could stop her, she ripped off her apron and bolted for the door.

—

Rafe had three missed calls from Barry, one from Ward, and approximately zero intentions of calling either of them back.

Barry had even stopped by earlier, pounding on the door and yelling about how he “needed to talk” and how Rafe “better not be doing anything stupid.”

That was rich, coming from Barry.

Rafe, being a responsible young man with a well-documented history of excellent decision-making, had responded by doing exactly what Barry was afraid of: smoking a ridiculous amount of weed and deep-diving Figure Eight’s local folklore like he was writing a dissertation.

He took another slow drag from his blunt, exhaling through his nose as he clicked to the next article.

“The Tragedy of Eleanor Sinclair and Thomas Calloway—Figure Eight’s Most Enduring Ghost Story.”

God, people loved their dramatic headlines.

Wealthy family, butchered in their beds. Entire fortune, poof, gone. House abandoned. Pirate lover—blah, blah, blah.

Eleanor, predictably, was livid.

“They still think he did it.”

“Yeah,” Rafe muttered, rubbing his temple. “Tragic.”

“No one knows the truth.”

“They also think you were so in love that you killed yourself, and not your whole family so maybe take the win, sweetheart.”

Eleanor, who had spent the last twenty-four hours haunting his every waking thought, did not find this funny.

“Fix it.”

“No.”

“Find him.”

“Also no.”

“Go to her.”

“Extra no.”

“You’re being stubborn.”

“You’re being dead.”

Then someone knocked on the door.

Rafe ignored it.

The knocking came again, louder this time, more insistent.

“Rafe, open the goddamn door.”

Sarah.

He groaned, hauling himself off the couch and yanking it open.

Sarah frowned immediately, because that was her default setting with him.

“You need to stay away from Kiara.”

Rafe blinked. “Wow. Not even a ‘hello?’ No ‘how have you been, Rafe?’ No ‘you look great, Rafe, have you been working out?’”

Sarah did not laugh.

“I’m serious,” she said. “I know you’ve been following her.”

Rafe’s fingers twitched around the doorframe.

Oh, he did not like that.

“She thinks she can keep her from us.”

Eleanor bristled, her fury slithering through his chest, and for the first time, Rafe found himself agreeing with her.

He smiled. “Why? Afraid she’ll like me?”

Sarah’s face did something very interesting.

“No, Rafe,” she said, voice sharp. “I’m afraid you’ll kill her.”

That made him laugh.

Like, actually laugh.

A full-bodied, delighted little laugh.

Eleanor loved that.

Sarah did not.

“I’m serious,” she said, eyes flashing. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but whatever this is? It’s not gonna end well.”

Rafe tilted his head. “You sound like Dad.”

It was a funny thing, really. That flinch. That one, little muscle twitch in Sarah’s face. That tiny moment where she realized—remembered—that Rafe wasn’t the only one with Ward Cameron’s blood running through his veins.

Eleanor, ever the perceptive one, noticed it too.

“She fears you.”

No, Rafe thought. She fears herself.

“Oh, come on, Sarah,” he crooned, voice going almost affectionate. “We both know I’m not the only crazy one in this family.”

Sarah’s jaw tightened. She was getting mad now, which was fine. Rafe could work with mad.

Mad meant she was losing control.

Mad meant she wasn’t thinking straight.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Bingo.

Rafe leaned in, lowering his voice, just a little. Enough to make it intimate. Enough to make it a secret.

“You should watch yourself,” he said, slow and deliberate. “Before I have you sent somewhere.”

Sarah inhaled sharply.

It was so, so easy.

All it took was a few words, a well-placed suggestion, and there she was—back in that house, back in that nightmare, back in the place neither of them ever talked about.

Their mother.

The way Ward had handled her.

The way he’d gotten rid of her.

Sarah’s fingers curled into fists. “You’re a psycho.”

She meant it, too.

Not an insult. Not an accusation. Just a fact.

Rafe shrugged. “Probably. But I'm not the only one.” 

Then he shut the door in her face.

He pressed his forehead against the wood, exhaling sharply. His body was practically buzzing.

“She can’t stop us,” Eleanor whispered.

She sounded so pleased. So certain.

Like a queen surveying her kingdom.

Rafe huffed a laugh. “Yeah?”

“She wouldn’t dare.”

Eleanor’s voice curled around his brain, her satisfaction bleeding into his own.

Rafe ran a hand down his face. He really needed to stop smoking before noon.

He turned back toward his laptop, but something caught his eye in the reflection of the dark screen.

A figure.

Behind him.

Standing in the dim light of the kitchen.

A woman.

Rafe’s breath hitched, every muscle locking up.

Eleanor.

For the first time, she wasn’t just a voice.

She was there.

A silhouette. A shadow.

Her features were blurred, shifting, wrong. Like a memory half-remembered, just out of reach.

She didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

Just watched.

Rafe blinked—once, twice—and she was gone.

He let out a slow, shaky breath, shaking his head.

Yeah. He really, really needed to stop smoking before noon.

Rafe sat there for a minute, rubbing a hand down his face. His laptop screen flickered back at him, an open tab of an old, half-legible newspaper article about Eleanor Sinclair’s tragic, untimely death. Right next to it—another tab, this one detailing Thomas Calloway’s swift and public execution.

The words blurred together. None of it mattered.

Not now.

Not when he could feel her.

“It’s time,” Eleanor whispered.

Her voice slithered through his mind, curling around his thoughts, a pressure at the back of his skull like a hand pushing him forward.

“Find him.”

“Find Thomas.”

Rafe inhaled sharply. He stood before he even realized he was moving.

His hands weren’t his own as they grabbed a clean shirt from the back of the couch, tugging it over his head. His legs weren’t his own as he stepped into his sneakers, lacing them up with steady, deliberate fingers.

His reflection in the dark window caught his eye.

He expected to see himself.

But his smile—sharp and knowing—wasn’t entirely his.

“Good boy.”

Eleanor’s voice was practically purring now, full of approval, full of ownership.

Rafe cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck, letting out a slow breath. His pulse was steady. His hands were steady.

He felt—clear.

Focused.

Like he finally understood the assignment.

Like he finally knew what needed to be done.

Without another thought, he grabbed his keys and stepped outside, the door clicking shut behind him.

The air was thick with the scent of salt and wet earth, the night wrapped around him like an old friend.

The streets were quiet.

The island was waiting.

Somewhere out there, Thomas was waiting.

Rafe smiled.

Eleanor smiled with him.

It was time to find Kiara.

—

Kiara had not meant to walk this far.

Or maybe she had.

Maybe Thomas had.

Either way, she was here now, somewhere along the coast where the sand turned coarse and dark, where the water stretched out like a great yawning mouth. The wind bit at her skin. She barely felt it.

She had not been afraid for hours.

For years, fear had been the first thing she felt every morning. Fear had settled into her bones, made a home in the hollows of her ribs, curled up inside her like a stray cat that refused to leave.

And now—

Now she was empty.

Not in a bad way. Not in a way that made her feel lost. No, this emptiness was something else. Something steadier.

Something peaceful.

Thomas had carried her here. She had let him.

The waves moved like they were breathing. Inhale. Exhale. The tide curled around her ankles like fingers. She had never felt more like herself.

Or maybe she had never felt less like herself.

It didn’t matter.

Behind her, footsteps.

She did not have to turn around to know who they belonged to.

Thomas knew.

She licked her lips, still staring out at the water.

“Close your eyes,” came a voice from behind her.

Deep. Familiar. A rasp beneath the words, something heavy pressing into the syllables.

She exhaled slowly, lids slipping shut.

“Remember,” she said.

It was not a request.

Rafe had walked this same stretch of coastline hundreds of times before.

Drunk. High. Bloody-knuckled. Hands shaking from withdrawal. Hands shaking from too much power. Hands that weren’t entirely his anymore.

But never like this.

Never with a purpose that wasn’t his own.

Eleanor pulled at him like a hook in his ribs. She did not ask. She did not plead. She simply took.

And Rafe let her.

Because she was right. Because he needed to find Thomas.

Because he had never been able to leave well enough alone.

He saw Kiara long before he reached her. She was a small figure against the vastness of the ocean, her body still, her head tilted ever so slightly.

Eleanor inhaled sharply.

Thomas.

Rafe clenched his jaw, stepping forward. Sand shifted beneath his feet, his shoes sinking slightly with every step. It should have been frustrating, but he barely noticed.

His pulse was too loud in his ears.

He knew, somehow, that she could feel him approaching. That she had known he was coming before he even got there.

It made something inside him tighten.

Finally, he stopped just behind her. Close enough to reach out. Close enough to—

“Close your eyes,” he said.

He had not meant to say it.

It had slipped out of his mouth the way a memory did, unbidden and demanding.

Kiara did not hesitate.

She exhaled, a slow and steady thing, and let her lids slip shut.

“Remember,” she said.

And something in him did.

A boat rocking gently beneath them.

The salt in her hair.

The weight of a knife against his palm.

The way his hand had fit over hers.

Rafe swayed slightly.

No—

Eleanor swayed.

His fingers twitched at his sides.

The ocean stretched out before them, endless and knowing.

This was not the first time they had stood like this.

Chapter Text

They were found out.

Thomas never knew who betrayed them. Maybe it was one of his crew mates, drunk on greed and eager to trade his secrets for a few extra gold pieces. Maybe it was one of Eleanor’s servants, horrified by what they had seen—by who they had seen her with.

It didn’t matter.

The result was the same.

Her father found out. And Thomas barely made it out alive.

The chase had been swift, brutal. He had killed men before, but never the kind who wore powdered wigs and smelled like imported tobacco. Never the kind whose only true skill was owning things, including their daughters.

He had fled into the night, bruised and bleeding, with the knowledge that there was no coming back from this. No more whispered confessions by the water. No more reckless, impossible love.

But Thomas Calloway was not a man who left things behind.

Before he escaped town, before he disappeared into the horizon like a ghost, he met Eleanor one last time.

They were by the old stone wall on the edge of her family’s property, hidden by the overgrown hedges. She was waiting for him, as if she had known—of course she had known.

“You’re hurt,” she said, reaching for him.

He caught her wrist, stopping her.

“We don’t have time for this,” he told her. “Take this.”

He pressed a weathered scrap of parchment into her hands. Half a map. His treasure, buried deep where no one would find it.

Her brows furrowed. “What is this?”

“Insurance,” he said. “Just in case I never come back.”

Eleanor inhaled sharply. “You will come back.”

He smiled at her then, the sad kind. The kind that knew things she didn’t.

“I can’t.”

Eleanor’s face twisted, her hands curling into fists. “Don’t you dare.”

“Eleanor—”

“No,” she spat, stepping forward until her body was flush against his. “You belong to me, Thomas Calloway.”

And then she kissed him.

It was not a farewell kiss. It was not soft or sweet. It was a war, and Thomas barely made it out alive.

Her nails raked down his back. Her teeth found his lower lip, sharp and punishing. When he pulled away, he tasted blood.

Eleanor was wild, feral.

She clutched at him like she could keep him here through sheer force of will, her breath coming fast and uneven. “You can’t leave me.”

He cupped her face in his hands, pressing his forehead to hers. “If I stay, we die.”

Eleanor trembled against him, and for a moment, Thomas thought—hoped—that she understood.

She didn’t.

Because as soon as he took a step back, as soon as he let her go, she lunged at him.

Thomas barely managed to escape. He could still feel the bite of her nails in his skin, the ghost of her teeth on his shoulder.

And when he ran—when he forced himself to run—he heard her screaming.

Not crying. Screaming.

A sound so raw, so full of fury and anguish, that it followed him for miles.

It killed him to leave her.

But he never knew—could never have known—just what she was capable of.

Not until it was too late.

They caught him two towns over.

It wasn’t hard. He was easy to spot—too tall, too dark, too much of what men like them wanted to erase. But Thomas Calloway did not fight when they came for him.

Not after he heard the news.

Eleanor Sinclair was dead.

So was her father. And her mother. And her little brother, no more than ten years old.

Slaughtered in their own home.

By her.

Thomas had always known Eleanor carried a darkness inside her. He had seen it in the way she looked at him, like a queen surveying her next conquest. He had felt it in the way she kissed him, all teeth and possession.

But butchering her family?

Even the child?

And then turning the knife on herself?

No.

No, he hadn’t seen that coming.

When the men came for him, he didn’t bother running. He didn’t fight, didn’t speak. He let them drag him to the gallows like a lamb to slaughter, because what was the point of struggling when the only person who had ever truly had him was already gone?

The trial was a joke.

It lasted less than five minutes.

They didn’t care about the truth. They didn’t care that he had been miles away when the Sinclair family was torn apart. They only cared that Eleanor had loved him. That she had wanted him. That she had disgraced herself for him.

It was enough.

Enough to call him guilty. Enough to send him swinging.

And as they tightened the noose around his neck, Thomas lifted his head and looked into the crowd.

And he saw her.

Standing among the onlookers, her brown hair wild, her pale face twisted in fury.

Eleanor.

She was dead.

But she was here.

Watching.

Waiting.

And she was angry.

~~~~

Rafe comes back to himself the way a man wakes from a deep fever—slowly, painfully, and with the nagging suspicion that something vital has been lost in the night. His vision wavers. The ocean stretches out before him, dark and endless, but the longer he stares, the less he sees Kiara and the more he sees Thomas.

Eleanor whispers in his head, Go to him.

His feet move before he has time to think.

The body in front of him turns, and Rafe—Eleanor—grabs them none too gently.

Thomas’s face is wet with tears. “What did you do, Eleanor?” His voice is raw, stricken, like he’s standing in the wreckage of something he hasn’t yet realized is gone. “What have you done now?”

Rafe’s hands won’t stop moving. Her hair, her face, her neck—he has to touch. Eleanor is wild with sensation, frenzied with the sheer aliveness of it all. A hundred years without skin, and now she’s back. Now she can feel.

“I’m giving us another chance,” Eleanor whispers, voice caught between Rafe’s throat and hers. “Another chance to be together.”

“But your family—” Thomas chokes. The tears keep coming, and Kiara’s shoulders shake like she could exorcise him out of her body if she cries hard enough. “You killed them. You’re—” His breath hitches. “You’re a murderer.”

Rafe—Eleanor—grabs them by the throat.

“Don’t say that,” they growl, fingers tightening. “I did what I had to. You don’t know what it’s like to be left behind, to be tossed aside like garbage.”

Kiara gasps, body trembling under his hands. Her hands—Thomas’s hands—clutch his wrist.

“What’s happening, Rafe?” she asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Rafe’s own face is wet. He has tears on his cheeks, but he doesn’t remember crying.

“I don’t know,” he admits, voice ragged. “I don’t know, but I’ll fix it.”

And then Eleanor takes over again.

She kisses Kiara/Thomas.

It’s an earth-shattering kiss, the kind that rewrites time itself. A kiss for the lost years, the wasted lifetimes, the centuries of reaching for something that wasn’t there.

And Thomas, even in his grief and confusion, kisses her back. Because Thomas has never been good at telling Eleanor no.

The universe holds its breath.

And then Pope punches Rafe so hard he goes flying.

“WHAT THE HELL?!”

Rafe hits the sand with a dull thud.

John B, Sarah, JJ, Cleo, and Pope stand at the edge of the beach, all varying degrees of horrified.

Pope flexes his hand like he’s debating hitting him again.

Rafe groans.

Kiara is still standing there, dazed and breathless. She touches her lips like she can wipe away what just happened.

JJ blinks. “So… I did just see that, right?”

John B nods. “Oh yeah. That definitely happened.”

Cleo sighs. “Is Kiara drunk?”

Sarah, for her part, looks like she might actually vomit.

Pope scowls. “Okay, someone explain why Rafe and Kiara were making out like the world was ending?”

Rafe sits up, dazed. Sand clings to his face, his arms, his clothes. His lips still burn, and his heart is still hammering like it’s trying to break out of his ribs.

And Eleanor?

Eleanor is furious.

He feels her seething in his bones, in his blood, in the spaces between his thoughts.

You let them stop us, she hisses.

Rafe barely stops himself from answering out loud.

Kiara finally seems to return to herself, blinking hard like she’s trying to shake off a bad dream. “Wait, wait, wait,” she says, shaking her head. “What the fuck just happened?”

John B crosses his arms, skeptical. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Kiara’s hands curl into fists. “No, I mean—why is he here?” She jabs a finger at Rafe, like he’s a particularly aggressive cockroach. “Why am I here?”

JJ snorts. “Yeah, no offense, but you weren’t exactly giving us Kie energy just now.”

Kiara whirls around to look at the ocean like it might hold some answers.

The problem is, she doesn’t remember getting here.

She just walked.

Or—had he walked?

A shiver runs down her spine, sudden and ice-cold.

Rafe stands up, brushing sand off his arms with slow, deliberate movements. He’s shaking. But not from anger. Not from fear.

Something inside of him trembles.

Something old.

He looks at Kiara.

And for one brief, impossible second, she’s someone else.

Not Kiara.

Thomas.

And his own hands aren’t his.

They’re Eleanor’s.

A rush of something too big and too wild crashes over him, and for a terrifying second, he thinks he might drown in it.

We have to go, Eleanor whispers.

Kiara takes a step back. “I need to go home.”

Rafe licks his lips, staring at her like he’s trying to see through her skin.

Sarah catches his expression and stiffens. “Yeah, that’s a great idea,” she says, stepping forward to physically put herself between them. “Because you—” she jabs a finger at Rafe, “—need to stay away from her.”

Rafe blinks, slow. Eleanor’s rage curls inside of him, hot and sharp.

Sarah doesn’t get to tell him what to do.

She doesn’t get to keep him from what’s his.

He smiles.

Not his usual cocky smirk. Not even his wild, manic grin.

This is something else. Something softer. Something worse.

“Trust me, she didn’t hate it,” Rafe says.

“Ew,” Cleo says.

JJ, already on edge, throws up his hands and stomps toward him. “Hey, man, I’m warning you—keep your Kook hands off my girlfriend.”

The words are barely out of his mouth before his brain catches up with what he just said.

Silence.

“She’s not your girlfriend,” Rafe and Pope say at the exact same time.

More silence.

JJ blinks. “I mean, she’s a girl, and she’s my friend, so—”

“Abort,” John B coughs.

JJ spins to Pope, looking guilty. “She and I are broken up.”

“I’m aware,” Pope says, unimpressed.

JJ drags a hand through his hair. “It’s just—the breakup is so new, you know? That doesn’t mean I don’t feel—”

Sarah makes a strangled noise and physically waves her hands in the air, like she’s trying to swat the conversation out of existence. “JJ, please stop talking.”

Kiara, looking like she’s teetering between existential crisis and throwing herself into the ocean, groans. “Oh my God. I need to leave this conversation fast.”

Pope rubs his face like he’s considering walking into the sea himself.

JJ glares at him. “You could at least pretend this is hard for you, man.”

Pope sighs. “JJ, if I pretend too hard, you might propose to me by accident.”

John B snorts.

Cleo, delighted by this entire mess, grins. “He’s got a point, JJ. You’re right on the edge of monologuing about your deep, tragic love for him.”

JJ gestures wildly. “Then what the fuck are we doing right now?”

Sarah pinches the bridge of her nose. “This is literally the dumbest conversation I have ever heard.”

“Yeah, well, excuse me if I’m a little confused after watching that happen!” JJ shoots back, pointing aggressively at Rafe.

Rafe, who is now standing and brushing sand off himself like an agitated cat, scowls. “You know what?” he mutters, shaking his head. “I don’t need this shit.”

He stomps off down the beach, kicking sand as he goes.

John B crosses his arms. “Okay. So that was weird, right? Like, even for him?”

Everyone nods.

Cleo sighs. “I told y’all something was wrong with them.”

Sarah watches her brother disappear down the beach, uneasy.

Because if she knows Rafe at all, then she knows—

That’s not him walking away.

That’s him plotting.

Chapter Text

Kiara sits on the warped wooden planks of John B's porch, a lukewarm beer dangling from her fingers like a bad decision waiting to happen. The late afternoon sun paints the marsh in golds and pinks, but she isn't seeing any of it. All she can think about is the salt taste of Rafe's lips and the way her hands moved without permission - gripping his shirt like she wants to tear it open or maybe just tear him apart.

Not just the beach kiss - the brutal, drowning one that felt like swallowing a storm - but the first one, years ago in the Cameron's library. The smell of old books, the warmth of Rafe's lap beneath her, his mouth sloppy with stolen whiskey. A long-buried secret between them, a worthless treasure that never needed digging up.

Now her skin burns where he touched her.

'But that wasn't me,' she thinks desperately. 'It's Thomas. His memories. His hands—'

But the heat in her stomach when Rafe smirks? The way her pulse jumps when he rolls up his sleeves, exposing those corded forearms that pinned her to the sand? That's all her. And it makes her want to claw her own chest open.

A wave of nausea hits as another stolen memory surfaces:

Thomas pressing Eleanor against the mast of a ship, her laugh sharp as broken glass. "You missed me, didn't you?" she teases, biting his jaw. He growls, flipping her around, her back flush against his chest—

Kiara gasps, the porch swimming back into focus. Her nails have left half-moons in her palms. 

This is what possession feels like she realizes. Not some cheap horror movie exorcism, but this intimate unraveling. Thomas doesn't control her body - he lives in it. Breathes with her lungs. Blinks with her eyes. His longing for Eleanor is a live wire in her ribs, sparking every time Rafe comes near.

And Rafe—

God, Rafe looks at her like she's hung the fucking moon. Like she's the only fresh water in a sea of salt. It makes her want to scream. Because that gaze isn't for Kiara Carrera. It's Eleanor staring out through Rafe's eyes, and she's just the poor bastard caught in the crossfire.

The sliding door opens. Sarah steps out, haloed by the shitty yellow kitchen light. Kiara doesn't turn.

"You're avoiding everyone," Sarah says.

Kiara swallows. "I'm thinking."

"About Rafe."

Kiara's throat tightens. "Not Rafe."

"What about you and Rafe on the beach?"

"That wasn't—" Kiara squeezes the beer can. Condensation drips down her wrist. "It's complicated."

Sarah's laugh could cut glass. "Complicated. Right." She crosses her arms. "He tried to drown me, Kiara. He's shot at us. Multiple times."

The words land like bricks. Kiara flinches. "I know what he's done."

"Do you?" Sarah's voice drops to that dangerous quiet. "Because it sounds like you're forgetting."

The door bangs open. JJ spills onto the porch like a tornado in flip-flops. "Okay, okay, what'd I miss—oh shit, we're doing the Rafe intervention. Cool, cool." He plops down next to Kiara and steals her beer. "My two cents? Dude's a walking red flag. Like, 'abandon all hope ye who enter here' vibes."

Pope appears behind him. "Statistically, people who associate with Rafe Cameron have a seventy-three percent higher chance of—"

"Getting shot?" JJ offers.

"Being involved in a felony," Pope finishes.

John B leans in the doorway, arms crossed. His hair's a mess from running his hands through it. "Look, I don't know what happened on that beach today—"

"I do," JJ mutters. "And I need eye bleach."

"—but we've got a job tonight. Thomas's treasure isn't gonna dig itself up."

Kiara's hands start shaking. The can crumples in her grip, beer foaming over her fingers. "I don't know what's happening to me," she whispers. "Everything's moving so fast."

The confession hangs there, raw and ugly.

Sarah's expression softens for half a second before hardening again. "Are you saying you're into him? After everything?"

"I'm saying I don't know!" Kiara's voice cracks. "I feel like I'm losing my mind."

Kiara learns something new about the human heart then: it's not a democracy. It's a dictatorship, and rarely a benevolent one. Hers is currently occupied by two rival regimes—her own traitorous desires, and the ghost of a pirate who apparently loved like a house fire: beautiful, destructive, and likely to leave everyone homeless.

She tells herself it will pass. It has to. All hauntings do, eventually. But then, so do lives.

Before she can spiral further, Cleo arrives, slamming the screen door hard enough to make the porch lights rattle. She takes one look at the scene—Kiara pale and shaking, Sarah's furious crossed arms, JJ mid-theft of someone else's beer—and sighs like she's just aged forty years.

"Right," she says, snatching the beer from JJ and draining it in one go. "Who died?"

"Kiara's common sense," Sarah mutters.

"Allegedly," JJ adds.

Kiara presses her palms to her eyes until colors burst behind her lids. The headache is back—a dull, insistent throb behind her left temple where Thomas's memories keep pressing. She can feel him pacing behind her ribs, restless as a caged animal.

'Find her,' the ghost whispers. 'Find Eleanor.'

Her fingers twitch toward the pocketknife she stole from John B's tackle box earlier. She doesn't remember taking it. This is what possession looks like in the real world—not glowing eyes or levitating furniture, but missing time and stolen cutlery.

Cleo perches on the railing, studying Kiara like a coroner inspecting a suspicious corpse. "So. You and Rafe Cameron."

"It wasn't me," Kiara says automatically.

JJ snorts. "Looked like you."

Cleo leans in, nostrils flaring like she can smell the ghost on Kiara. "When's the last time you slept, Carrera?"

Kiara opens her mouth. Closes it. The truth is: she can't remember. Every time she closes her eyes, she dreams of rope burns and saltwater.

JJ waves a hand in front of her face. "Hello? Earth to Kie?"

She blinks. The porch lights have gotten brighter. Or maybe her vision's tunneling. "I'm fine," she says. The lies we tell our friends are rarely convincing, but we keep telling them anyway.

"Bullshit," Cleo says cheerfully.

JJ rubs his temples. "Okay. New plan. Kiara stays here tonight."

"What?" Kiara lurches upright. The motion is too sharp, too jerky—Thomas's reflexes, not hers. "I'm fine."

Pope frowns. "You just tried to open a beer with your teeth in the house earlier."

"And?"

"That's my move," JJ says, offended.

John B pushes off the doorframe, his bare feet scraping against the weathered wood. He studies Kiara with those eyes that have known her too long—the way her fingers tremble, the unnatural stillness in her shoulders like she's holding herself together by sheer will.

His voice cuts through the marsh air, calm but strained. "Can we focus? We need all hands tonight. Kiara—you in or out?"

Kiara looks down at her hands. The beer has left them sticky, the aluminum can crumpled under Thomas's grip, not hers. She flexes her fingers, half-expecting to see the calloused palms of an 18th-century pirate instead of her own familiar lines.

'Lie to them.' Thomas's voice slithers through her mind like rum-soaked silk. Not a thought anymore—a presence. His breath feels warm against the shell of her ear, though no one stands behind her. 'You need to be there tonight. Eleanor is waiting.'

The marsh air turns thick as ship's tar in Kiara's lungs. She swallows hard, tasting salt and something metallic—memory or premonition, she can't tell.

John B steps closer, his voice dropping to a whisper only she can hear. "Hey. Look at me."

She forces her gaze up. His brow furrows in that particular way—the same expression he wore when they found him bleeding out on the HMS Pogue last summer. Worried but trying not to show it.

"You good?" he asks.

Thomas's fingers—no, her fingers—drum against her thigh in an impatient rhythm from another century. 'Tell him yes. Tell him what he wants to hear.'

Kiara opens her mouth. The lie tastes like gunpowder and brine. "I'm in."

John B searches her face for three long heartbeats. Then he nods, clapping a hand on her shoulder. His palm burns through the thin fabric of her shirt, warm and alive and everything Thomas isn't. "Alright. But if you zone out again, I'm benching you. No arguments."

'He suspects,' Thomas murmurs, his voice curling like smoke in her skull. 'Careful.'

JJ chooses that moment to whoop, shattering the tension like a bottle against a ship's hull. "That's my girl! Now can we please talk about how we're gonna split the treasure?"

As the others erupt into their usual chaotic debate—Pope already calculating percentages, JJ suggesting they trade their share for a lifetime supply of Twinkies—Kiara exhales slowly. The ghost in her skull purrs with satisfaction.

'Good girl,' Thomas croons, the words dripping with poisoned honey. 'Now get ready. We have work to do.'

Somewhere beyond the marsh, a heron cries—a sound like steel being drawn from a scabbard.

Kiara closes her eyes.

And lets the tide pull her under.

—---

The Cameron house stood sentinel in the marsh, its white columns glowing bone-pale in the moonlight. Inside, Rafe Cameron was learning what it meant to be ridden hard by history.  

Eleanor Sinclair didn't possess him so much as unravel him.  

One moment he was gripping the steering wheel, the next his foot was flooring the accelerator without his consent. The car became a weapon in her spectral hands, roaring down the shell road like the vengeance she'd been brewing for two centuries.  

‘They took him from us,’ her voice slithered through his synapses, thick as marsh brine. ‘My Thomas. Your Kiara.’

His body moved with a violence that wasn't entirely foreign, just perfected. Cabinet doors tore from their hinges with the ease of petals from a magnolia blossom. His fist went through drywall and kept going, knuckles splitting on lath boards, the pain a distant thing.  

The Ming vase—purchased with Cameron blood money generations ago—exploded against the hearth in a shower of blue-and-white shards. Only when his PlayStation 5 teetered on the edge of destruction did Rafe find the strength to wrest back control, clutching the console to his chest like a talisman against the storm in his skull.  

They collapsed together against the foyer wall, Rafe's body spent, Eleanor's rage unsated. The destruction around them looked like the aftermath of a particularly creative nervous breakdown.  

Rafe was angry too, though he'd never admit it aloud.  

Not about the possession—that felt almost familiar, like slipping into a well-worn jacket of violence. No, it was Kiara's face on the beach that haunted him. The way she'd looked at him like he was more than his father's shadow. Like redemption might still be possible.  

‘Pathetic,’ Eleanor whispered, reading his thoughts as easily as she'd once read ship ledgers. ‘You want the girl who pretends to hate you because you hate yourself.’ 

Her reflection floated in the hallway mirror, fractured by the cracks his fists had put there. The ghost of a girl who'd murdered her own family for love stared back at him with something like recognition.  

‘We're the same,’ her lips formed silently. *You've killed. I've killed. If we need to—’

Rafe found his cigarettes with trembling hands. The flare of the lighter was the first thing that had felt like his own all night. He inhaled deeply, letting the burn ground him in his own flesh.  

"No killing," he said aloud, smoke curling around the words. "Not yet."  

Eleanor's laugh was the sound of ice cracking on a winter river. *Then what, pray tell?*  

Rafe exhales a smoke ring that drifts through her translucent form. His smirk feels dangerous even to himself. "Charm and terror, Ellie. The Cameron family specialties."  

In the broken mirror, Eleanor's ghost smiles back—all teeth and poison and perfect understanding. 

Chapter Text

The marsh smells like wet dog and decay as the Pogues dig. Mosquitoes swarm JJ like he's their long-lost king.  

Kiara's shovel moves with creepy precision. "Since when do you dig like a backhoe?" JJ asks, flicking a leech off his ankle.  

"I watched a YouTube tutorial," she lies. Thomas's ghost helpfully whispers *bullshit* in her ear.  

Pope squints at the dirt. "Fascinating peat composition here—"  

"Nobody cares about dirt science, nerd," JJ says, hip-checking him into the hole. Pope yelps, grabs JJ's belt loop, and they both go down in a tangle of limbs and poorly concealed flirting.  

Sarah sighs. "Are they fighting or foreplaying? I can't tell anymore."  

John B stabs his shovel into the ground. "I just wanted a normal treasure hunt! One! Single! Time!" His voice cracks. "But nooo, we've got Kiara doing her Exorcist impression, and those two—" he gestures wildly at JJ and Pope, now wrestling in the mud "—need to get a damn room."  

Cleo, ever the voice of reason, chugs her beer and crushes the can against her forehead. "Y'all hear something?"  

*CLANG.*  

Everyone freezes. Kiara's shovel has hit something metal.  

"Please be gold," JJ prays. "Please be gold, please be gold—"  

It's not gold.  

It's a rusted chest, oozing black bog water like it's been crying. Kiara pries it open before anyone can stop her. Inside: a slimy leather book, its pages weirdly intact.  

Pope gasps. "That's impossible! The acidic conditions should've—"  

"Haunted," JJ declares. "Definitely haunted. Ten bucks says it's got a murder confession."  

Kiara reads aloud: *"My dearest Thomas, if you're reading this, I've either killed my family or married that banker from Charleston. Honestly, worse fate first.  I died when they took you from me. But do not mourn me. I have made sure no one will ever take you from me again. Not my father. Not the law. Not even God."* 

A beat of silence.  

"...I like her," JJ decides.  

John B puts his head in his hands. Sarah pats his back. "Remember when our biggest problem was your dad?”

Kiara’s fingers catch on something tucked between the pages—a **silver locket**, tarnished with time and probably bad karma. It clicks open with a ominous *snick*, revealing a single slip of paper inside:  

‘Don’t worry. We will find each other again.’

Sarah blinks. "Well. That’s not creepy at all."

—-

Across town, Rafe’s whiskey glass slips from his fingers. It shatters on the floor of his dead father’s study, because of *course* he’s brooding in the most dramatic possible location. The amber liquid seeps into the Persian rug Ward Cameron definitely murdered a guy for.  

Rafe doesn’t move. 

‘She has the locket,’ Eleanor purrs.

Rafe’s hands curl into fists. 

‘What if? Eleanor murmurs, her ghostly fingers tracing the back of his neck, “I told you there’s a way we both get what we want?’ 

Rafe scoffs, kicking a shard of glass across the room. “Yeah? And what’s that?”

“I get Thomas.” Her voice drips with possession. “And you get her.’ 

Kiara’s face flashes in Rafe’s mind—her stubborn glare, the way her lips twisted when she looked at him like he was something she couldn’t decide whether to kiss or set on fire.  

He barks a laugh. “You’re full of shit.”

Eleanor’s grin widens in the mirror. “Don’t you trust me?”

Rafe meets her gaze, dead-eyed. “No. We’re too much alike.”  

“Exactly,” she purrs. “That’s how I know this will work.”

A beat. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks like a bomb.  

Rafe rolls his shoulders, cracking his neck. “ Let me guess," he drawls. "Your grand plan involves blood magic and questionable life choices?"

The ghost materializes fully now, her torn dress floating as if underwater. "Break the locket," she says, as casually as someone suggesting arson.

Rafe blinks. "That's your master plan? Smash the haunted jewelry?"

Eleanor's grin widens unnaturally. "Darling, I've been dead longer than Charleston's had indoor plumbing. When it comes to ghost rules..." She leans in, her breath frost against his ear. "I wrote the damn book."

Rafe opens his mouth. Closes it. Considers the fact that the craziest person he knows is currently the voice in his head - and that's saying something.

"...Fair."

"So?" Eleanor's fingers trail down his arm, colder than his father's disappointment. "Do we have a deal?"

Rafe weighs his options for exactly as long as it takes to remember that he would let Kiara stab him with a shrimp fork and he'd thank her for it. 

"Fuck it." He stalks toward the gun case. "But I'm bringing insurance."

Eleanor claps her hands - an impressive trick for someone who doesn't technically have corporeal form. "Ooh, is it the dueling pistol your ancestor used to murder his mistress?"

"No," Rafe says, yanking open the glass with more force than necessary. "It's the shotgun Dad kept for uninvited guests and tax collectors." 

The weapon gleams under the dim light, polished to a lethal shine. Rafe pumps it with a cha-chunk so dramatic it echoes through the empty house like the first act of a Greek tragedy.

Eleanor swoons, or possibly just flickers - ghostly reactions are hard to gauge. "Perfect. Now let's go make some poor life choices!"

Rafe shoulders the shotgun, kicking open the front door with the grace of a man who's fully embraced his role as the villain of this story.

—

Back at the grave, JJ pokes the locket with a stick he found. *"So, uh. This is definitely cursed, right?"*  

Cleo snorts. “Obviously. It’s basically a ghost’s ‘see you in hell, babe.”

Kiara’s skin crawls. The locket sits heavy in her palm, pulsing like a second heartbeat. Thomas’s ghost is suspiciously quiet. 

Pope, who has been mentally composing his resignation letter from this friend group, mutters, “This proves Thomas didn’t do it. But who’s gonna believe the diary of a murderous rich girl?"

John B shrugs. "Margot will. And she’s paying us in actual money, so."  

Sarah eyes the locket. “What’re we doing with *that*?"

Kiara’s fingers close around it. "I’m keeping it."

No one argues. No one wants to. 

—-

The van smells like regret, body odor, and whatever unholy bacteria JJ has been cultivating in his sneakers since 2016. Kiara presses her forehead against the cool glass of the window, the locket in her pocket radiating the kind of heat usually reserved for handmade weed bowls and Taco Bell at 2 AM.  

Thomas has stillbeen suspiciously quiet.

This should be comforting. It isn’t.  

JJ, who has the emotional subtlety of a fireworks display in a library, jabs Pope in the ribs. “Dude. Do something."

Pope, who has spent the last twenty minutes mentally composing his ‘Sorry I can't hang out, I've joined a monastery in Nepal’ group text, clears his throat. "So. Margot’s gonna lose her damn mind over this diary, huh?"

John B white-knuckles the steering wheel like it owes him money. “We’re gonna be *so* rich."

Sarah side-eyes Kiara like she’s trying to X-ray her soul. "You good?" 

Kiara’s fingers twitch toward the locket. “Fantastic."

The lie lands with the grace of a drunk pelican.  

Cleo cracks open a beer with her knife—because of course she does—and takes a long swig. “Right. So we’re all just gonna ignore the fact that our friend’s got a ghost DJ living in her brain. Cool. Super healthy group dynamic.”

**BANG.**  

The gunshot is so loud it temporarily deafens everyone except JJ, who’s been half-deaf since that Fourth of July incident with the bottle rockets.  

The van swerves violently to the left, nearly taking out a mailbox with a suspicious number of bullet holes already in it.  

And there, standing in the headlights like a nightmare in designer jeans, is Rafe Cameron.

Shotgun resting casually against his shoulder. Hair artfully disheveled like he’s in a cologne commercial for Eau de Regrettable Life Choices. He smiles sharp enough to filet a man’s ego in one stroke.  

“Evening, ladies and... JJ," he saya, tipping an imaginary hat. “Mind if I borrow Kie Kie for a quick existential crisis?"

John B slams on the brakes. "What the hell, Rafe?!"

Rafe’s grin widens. "Oh, you know. Just felt like taking a midnight stroll with a loaded shotgun. Really clears the mind."

Sarah leans out the window. "You are *such* a drama queen."

“Takes one to know one, sis."

Kiara hasn’t moved. She’s just... staring at him. Like she’s trying to decide if he’s actually there or if she’s finally cracked.  

Rafe’s smirk falters for half a second. "You coming willingly, or do I have to make this awkward?" 

Kiara’s lips curl. "Since when do you care about awkward?"  

"Fair point."  

Then—  

The van doors flew open with a chorus of angry shouts and at least one beer can hitting the dirt.  

JJ hit the ground first, already mid-tirade: “ALRIGHT CAMERON,—"  

John B was right behind him, looking more offended by the possible kidnapping of his treasure. "Dude. I am sick of this shit.” 

Sarah went straight for Rafe's face—because if there was one thing she knew, it was that her brother hated a break out. 

Cleo, ever the strategist, hung back to finish her beer. 

Pope lunged at Rafe with all the grace of a baby deer on roller skates—and his fist connected spectacularly with JJ's nose instead.  

A sound like a water balloon full of marinara hitting pavement filled the clearing.  

“GODDAMN IT, POPE!" JJ howled, blood gushing down his shirt. "MY FACE MY BEAUTIFUL, GOD-GIVEN—"

Rafe, still pinned under Sarah's grimy hands, blinked. “..Is this a fight or a Three Stooges reboot?"

And Kiara?  

Kiara just steps out of the van. 

No fight.  

No screaming.  

Just eerie, unsettling calm.  

Rafe blinks shoving Sarah off of him “..That was easier than expected."

Kiara’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She doesn't feel like herself. "You’re not the one I’m waiting for."

The locket in her pocket pulses with heat. Rafe’s shotgun suddenly seems small. 

It burns so hot it sears through Kiara’s pocket, branding her thigh. But it’s not her hand that pulls it out—it’s Thomas’s fingers trembling with two centuries of pent-up longing.  

Across from her, Rafe stands unnaturally still, his shotgun forgotten at his side. His grin is all Eleanor–sharp, victorious, and just a little bit deranged.

“Told you we’d find each other again," she purrs, plucking the locket from Thomas’s palm like she’s accepting a love letter. Her fingers linger, tracing his knuckles with a possessiveness that would be romantic if it weren’t so terrifying. 

Behind them, the Pogues are losing their damn minds.

John B is screaming. Sarah’s trying to tackle Rafe. JJ’s holding his bloody nose and yelling something about divorce papers. Pope’s having an existential crisis. Cleo’s filming the whole thing on her phone because someone needs to document this for the eventual Outer Banks podcast.  

But Kiara—Thomas—doesn’t hear them. Not really.  

She’s standing on a misty dock in 1841, salt spray stinging her cheeks.  

She’s kneeling in a marsh in 2024, Rafe’s/Eleanor’s cold fingers tangled with hers.  

Time isn’t a line anymore. It’s a knot.  

"Ready to go home?" Eleanor asks, like she’s suggesting a picnic and not an eternal haunting.  

She doesn’t wait for an answer.  

She doesn’t need one.  

The locket clicks open. 

Inside, there’s no photo. No lock of hair. Just a single drop of blood that shouldn’t still be wet after 200 years.  

Eleanor smears it across her lips like lipstick.  

Thomas chokes on a memory—her mouth, her teeth, the way she kissed him the night she promised to burn the world for him.

The world goes white.

Chapter Text

Rafe’s head feels like it’s been lit on fire, drop-kicked down a flight of stairs, and then stuffed back onto his shoulders as an afterthought. He groans, rolling onto his side, his cheek pressed against cold hardwood. The Sinclair foyer stretches out around him—but it’s different. The dust is gone, the chandelier gleams, and the air smells like lemon polish and something faintly floral.

“What the fuck?” He starts to push himself up, but—

Eleanor is there.

Not a flicker. Not a whisper. There.

Solid. Real. Alive.

Rafe’s breath catches. He scrambles back, his boots skidding against the polished floor.

“Jesus Christ,” he chokes out.

Eleanor laughs, and it’s not the eerie, echoing sound from before—it’s rich, full, the kind of laugh that makes the air tremble. She slaps her thigh, the fabric of her dress rustling, the sound real and present in a way that makes Rafe’s skin prickle.

“Crazy, isn’t it?” she says, grinning down at him. “Just a couple days roaming in the real world with you, a few drops of my blood, and—voilà! Here I am.”

Rafe’s stomach twists. Blood?

She gives him a sly, secretive smile—one that looks oddly familiar. “There were many rumors about me growing up. One of them was that I was a witch.”

Rafe gives her an unimpressed stare. God, he was sick of this supernatural bullshit. “Were you?”

She shrugs. “No. But I eavesdropped on the servants and picked up on things. I knew that leaving behind important objects with your blood—or the blood of someone you loved—meant a great deal.”

“It means you’re certifiable,” Rafe says.

Eleanor tilts her head, dark eyes gleaming. “Come now, stand. They’re waiting.”

“Who?” Rafe asks, even though he already knows.

Eleanor’s smile sharpens. “Thomas and Kiara, silly.”

A chill races down Rafe’s spine.

He’d gotten too comfortable with the ghost shit.

Now, for the first time, he’s terrified.

—

The van’s spare tire is on, but the vibes are off.

JJ spits blood onto the gravel—courtesy of Pope’s ‘heroic’ punch—and glares at the group. “Okay, real talk—since when does Rafe kidnap people? He usually just, like, yells and shoots them.”

Sarah checks her phone for the fiftieth time. “And since when does Kie just walk into danger like an NPC with no survival instincts?”

John B rubs his temples. “Maybe they’re on drugs?”

Pope, ever the scholar, “Statistically, this behavior aligns more with cult indoctrination than substance abuse.”

Cleo snorts. “Or they’re just dickheads in love.”

A beat of silence.

“Worse,” JJ declares. “Romeo and Juliet shit.”

“Ew,” Sarah gags.

A truck’s headlights flood the road behind them. The engine growls like a hungry predator. The Pogues turn as one—just in time to see Barry’s rusted pickup roll to a stop, the man himself leaning out the window with a grin that screams I’m about to ruin your night.

“Lost your friend?” Barry drawls, chewing on a toothpick like it’s the last shred of his dignity. “I know where they went.”

JJ narrows his eyes. “And why the hell would you help us?”

Barry’s grin widens. “Two reasons. One: I want a cut of that treasure. Two—” He holds up a fist, knuckles scarred. “I owe Rafe Cameron a punch in his stupid face.”

The Pogues exchange glances. A silent conversation passes between them, consisting entirely of raised eyebrows and subtle middle fingers behind backs.

John B steps forward, oozing fake sincerity. “Barry, my man! Of course we’ll cut you in. Teamwork makes the dream work, right?”

Pope nods so hard his neck cracks. “Generous splits! Very legal!”

Sarah fake-smiles. “We’re totally trustworthy.”

Barry squints. “Y’all are lying. I can feel it.”

Cleo slaps the truck’s hood. “Look, do you wanna bitch, or do you wanna punch Rafe?”

Barry considers this for half a second. “Get in.”

The Pogues pile into the truck, already mentally spending treasure money they have no intention of sharing.

JJ buckles in cheerfully. “So, Barry—you got any snacks?”

Barry’s eye twitches. “I hate you people.” He puts the truck in gear, driving like a man who’s definitely had his license revoked.

—

Kiara was having a spectacularly bad night.  

Tied to a chair. Gagged. Staring at a 200-year-old ghost having a full-blown existential crisis in front of her.  

Thomas paced the basement, his form flickering between translucent and way too damn solid,  muttering to himself like a man who just realized he left the stove on in 1823.  

*"I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t think she would go this far. I didn’t—" He raked a hand through his hair, which, wow, even as a ghost, the man had volume. “She's unwell. I can talk her out of this. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt—especially not you."

Kiara snorted through the gag.  

Thomas whirled on her, his dark eyes wide and guilty. “You have to understand—Eleanor isn’t—her family, they—"

Kiara rolled her eyes. Mm-hmm. She’d heard that excuse before—usually from Rafe when he was trying to convince her to do something stupid.  

Before Thomas could launch into another round of ghostly self-flagellation, the basement door creaked open.  

Eleanor glided in, her dress whispering against the floor like a threat. Behind her, Rafe lingered in the doorway, looking like a man who definitely hadn’t signed up for this level of supernatural drama.  

“Thomas," Eleanor sighed, like she’d just found a lost puppy instead of her undead ex-lover. “You’re being difficult.”

Thomas stiffened. “Eleanor, this isn’t right. We can’t just—"

Eleanor circled them, her skirts whispering against the stone floor. She held the locket aloft, the silver catching the dim light, the drop of blood inside glistening like a fresh wound.  

“It’s simple, really,” she murmured, her voice honey-sweet and razor-edged. "We break the locket. The blood binds us. And then?" Her smile widened, her teeth too white, too sharp. "We take what’s ours." 

She stared at the three of them, her face bright as if she was a teacher with her pupils. “You can already feel the difference, can't you? The house is slipping back into time. Back to its former glory.” She turned back to Thomas. “That's what will happen to us.” 

Rafe undid Kiara’s gag as Eleanor monologue. “Are you okay?” He mouthed at her, receiving an eye roll for his heroic efforts. After making sure Kiara was fine he tuned back into what Eleanor was saying, horrified at what he was hearing. Rafe hadn’t signed up for this. Sure, he’d kidnapped Kiara, but this? This was some next-level horror shit. Protectiveness surged in his chest, hot and unexpected.  

“No.” He stood up to face the ghost, his voice rough. "Like hell you’re taking our bodies."

Eleanor’s head snapped toward him. Her eyes—God, her eyes—were black pits, endless and hungry. "Oh, Rafe," she crooned. "You don’t get a say."

Kiara jerked against the ropes, her voice a snarl. “You’re not doing this." 

Eleanor laughed, the sound echoing off the walls like a dozen voices at once. "You think you can stop me?" 

The temperature dropped. The lantern light guttered, shadows stretching unnaturally long. Eleanor’s skin rippled, her perfect porcelain face cracking like old paint, revealing glimpses of something rotting beneath.  

Thomas recoiled. “Eleanor—stop this.”

“Why?" she hissed. Her dress darkened at the hem, spreading like ink, like decay. "You left me. You died. And now—" She gestured to Kiara and Rafe, her fingers elongating, nails blackening. "We can have forever."

Rafe’s stomach turned. Forever sounded a lot like she meant it. 

Kiara twisted in the chair, her voice low and furious. “You don’t get to use us like fucking puppets." 

Eleanor’s grin split wider, her lips peeling back from gums gone gray. "Oh, but I do.

A loud thud interrupted any other protest. 

The sound of the front door crashing open shattering the tension. 

"HELLO? MURDER HOUSE?” JJ’s voice rang out, followed by the distinct sound of Barry tripping over a rug. 

Eleanor’s head whipped toward the noise. Her body twisted, her form shuddering between beautiful and corpse, her rage making the air itself tremble.  

“No," she snarled. "No, no, NO—" 

The locket in her hand pulsed, the blood inside boiling.  

Thomas lunged for it.  

Rafe moved without thinking—grabbing Kiara’s chair and yanking her back as the world exploded in a burst of white light and screaming. 

The locket hit the stone floor with a sound like a gunshot.  

For one suspended second, nothing happened.  

Then the universe split open.  

Eleanor's form rippled, her beautiful face peeling back to reveal the corpse beneath—yellowed bone, strands of dark hair still clinging to her scalp, the elegant gown now just rotting linen barely holding together.  

“Thomas," she rasped, her voice no longer honey-sweet but the scrape of a coffin lid dragging open. “You would really choose oblivion over me?"  

Thomas—still flickering between his 19th century solidity and the ghostly impression of himself—reached for her. Not to embrace. To stop.  

“I'm choosing mercy,” he said, raw and aching. “For them. For us. Let go, Ellie." 

Her scream rattled the foundations of the house.  

Kiara's chair tipped backward as Rafe yanked her away from the erupting locket. She barely registered the impact of the floor, too focused on the way Rafe's body shielded hers, his forearm braced above her head as spectral wind tore through the basement.  

“You idiot,” she gasped, "you're going to get us both killed!"

Rafe's grin was all teeth, his eyes wild in the flickering light. "Yeah, but you'd miss me."

She would. God, she would.  

The realization hit her like a punch to the gut.  

-- 

JJ burst into the basement first, wielding a fire extinguisher like a battering ram. “Alright, which one of you ghost f—OH JESUS CHRIST!"

Eleanor's decaying face swung toward him.  

Barry, right behind JJ, made a sound like a deflating balloon. “Nope. Nope. My debt cleared, Cameron, I'm out—”

Sarah grabbed the back of Barry's shirt. “Oh no you don't, you brought us here!"*  

Pope, ever the scholar, threw a handful of salt at Eleanor.  

It passed right through her.  

"...Well," Pope said, "that's disappointing."

—

The blood inside the locket didn't just bubble - it seethed, churning like a living thing as the silver grew hotter, the metal warping with an audible scream of protesting atoms. The cracks spiderwebbing across its surface pulsed like veins, glowing the deep crimson of a fresh wound held up to firelight.  

Thomas's form flickered violently, his edges blurring as he shouted over the rising wind: “Kiara! The blood - it's not just ours, it's -"

Eleanor's decaying face split into a grin too wide for human anatomy. "It's the marsh's now," she finished, her voice layered with a thousand whispers from the blackwater.  

Rafe's fingers closed around the locket just as Eleanor lunged -  

- and the world split at the seams.  

The explosion wasn't light so much as absence - a vacuum of pure silence that sucked the air from their lungs before the shockwave hit. Every candle in the basement snuffed out at once. The stones beneath them groaned as centuries of trapped screams poured from the mortar.  

For three heartbeats, Kiara saw Thomas's hand reaching through the darkness, not for Eleanor, but for her his eyes full of an apology 200 years overdue. Eleanor's dress dissolving into swamp reeds, her skeletal fingers grasping at Thomas's coat as the rot finally took her whole.  Rafe, still holding the shattered locket, his reflection fracturing in the broken silver as something older than Eleanor, older than anything Kirara had ever been around, peered out through his eyes.  

Then the marsh outside answered.  

The sound wasn't a scream but a conversation- the wet, sucking chatter of something buried deep in the peat finally getting the last word. The walls wept black water. The floorboards sprouted fingerlike roots that curled around their ankles.  

And in the center of it all, the last drop of blood hovered mid-air before falling with a sound like a coffin lid slamming shut.  The basement stood frozen. No wind. No ghosts. Just living people covered in someone else's history, and the dawning realization that the marsh had swallowed the ending they expected.  

Rafe exhaled. “Well. That was -"

A single black pearl interrupted him by rolling from the locket's remains, coming to rest against Kiara's boot.  It pulsed once.  

Like a heartbeat. 

Rafe came to her on his knees, his hands frantically working at the ropes binding her wrists. His knuckles were split from the impact, blood smearing the frayed fibers.  

*"You're bleeding,"* she said dumbly.  

“You're alive,” he countered, voice rough. “We're calling that a win."

Across the room, JJ helped a shell-shocked Barry to his feet. *"So. Uh. You still want that punch?"*  

Barry stared at the spot where Eleanor and Thomas had vanished. “I want a drink.”

Sarah, ever practical, picked up the shattered remains of the locket. *"Guys? We've got a problem."*  

The drop of blood was gone.  

Outside, the marsh was singing.  

The sound wasn’t music. Not really.  

It was the groan of cypress roots shifting in blackwater peat. The hiss of gators sliding through moonlit channels. The whisper of Eleanor’s unfinished rage seeping back into the land that birthed her.  

But mostly?  

It was the blood.  

That single drop from the shattered locket didn’t vanish—it sank.  

Into floorboards. Into soil. Into the veins of the marsh itself, where dead things didn’t stay dead. Where the water remembered every sin committed on its banks.  

Sarah pressed her palm to the damp earth. “It’s in the ground.”  

Rafe’s grip tightened around Kiara’s wrist. “What’s in the—”  

A hand burst from the mud outside the window.  

Rotten. Skeletal. Familiar.  

JJ dropped the fire extinguisher. “Oh, come on.”  

—-

 For fifty-seven seconds the marsh screamed, the entire Outer Banks became a living instrument of grief. Cypress trees bowed like mourners, their roots groaning as the water between them heaved, vomiting up centuries of drowned secrets. The sound wasn’t music—it was a funeral dirge played on gator bones and shipwreck timber, a harmony of loss so loud it cracked windows in Manteo.  

The Pogues covered their ears. Barry dropped to his knees like a man struck by God. Rafe’s hands found Kiara’s shoulders, his body curling around hers as the world ruptured around them.  

Then silence. 

The water went still. The wind died. Even the crickets held their breath.  

Sarah was the first to speak, her voice shredded raw: “Is it… over?”  

A single bubble broke the surface of the blackwater.  

Then nothing.  

---  

Somewhere in the void between life and death, Thomas found Eleanor one last time.  

She was whole again—no rot, no rage, just a girl in a white dress standing on the dock where they first met.  

“You were always terrible at goodbyes,” she said, but there was no venom left.  

Thomas took her hand. “And you were always terrible at letting go.”  

The marsh sighed around them.  

Eleanor’s face fractured as if hit with the consequences of her sins and devotion. “I love you. Everything I did was because I love you. I can never regret that.” 

Even in death Thomas didn’t know how to handle Eleanor’s extremes but that wasn’t fixable in this lifetime. “I know, Ellie. I love you, too.” 

They dissolved like salt in the tide.  

---  

Pope poked the mud with a stick. “So… no more murder ghosts?”  

JJ, still clutching the fire extinguisher: “Can we get that in writing?”  

Kiara stared at the spot where the locket shattered. Rafe’s thumb brushed the blood from her cheek—a gesture so stupidly tender it made her chest ache.  

“You’re staring, Carrera.”  

“You’re bleeding, Cameron.”  

He grinned, all reckless charm and shotgun bravado. “Yeah, but you like me anyway.”  

She did. God help her, she did. 

---

The backroom of The Wreck smelled like stale beer and hormones - which, to be fair, was basically the Pogues' signature scent at this point. The neon "Shrimp & Grits" sign flickered outside, casting a pink glow over the stacks of cash covering their usual sticky table. 

Kiara drummed her fingers against her pile of bills, watching as JJ licked his thumb and started counting his share for the fourth time. His brand new $500 sunglasses - purchased five minutes after getting paid - were perched upside-down on his head.

"Pope's helping me invest mine proper," JJ announced, waving a wad of cash like a conductor's baton. "We're talking CD’s, stocks, tech stuff, maybe even..." He paused for dramatic effect. "A TV production company."

Cleo nearly spat out her beer. "You wanna buy what now?"

"Not buy! Invest!" JJ corrected. "Like them Shark Tank dudes. I got ideas. Reality show about me teaching rich people how to be poor. Call it 'From Yachts to Trailer Parks: The JJ Maybank Story.'"

Pope didn't look up from his color-coded spreadsheet. "What he means is I've allocated 60% to index funds, 30% to growth stocks, and 10% to..." He sighed. "Whatever this nonsense is."

John B squinted at Pope's notebook. "Dude, are those pie charts?"

"Asset allocation diagrams," Pope muttered, shielding his work as Sarah tried to doodle a dick on it.

Kiara smirked but kept rubbing her phone case. Three days since the marsh. Three days since they’d last touched. Three days of pretending she wasn't replaying that kiss every time she closed her eyes.

JJ suddenly gasped like he'd been electrocuted. "Y'all! What if we bought a Taco Bell franchise? Think about it - unlimited Chalupas and passive income!"

"That's not how franchises work," Pope said automatically, then immediately regretted engaging.

"Not with that attitude it's not! I'd be the Colonel Sanders of Crunchwraps!" JJ stood on his chair for emphasis, nearly kneeing the ceiling fan. "We could make the drive-thru workers call us 'Sir' and everything!"

Kiara zoned out of what JJ was saying preoccupied with the weight of her phone in her pocket. She could recite Rafe's number faster than the Pogue motto now which was technically "Pogue life for life" but really just "Don't die today". They hadn’t talked since getting rid of Eleanor and Thomas — although, honestly, it wasn’t really either of their faults. He knew where she lived. She knew where he was. But neither of them was making a move.

Meanwhile, she'd developed an unhealthy obsession with the second-floor left window of the Cameron mansion. Not that she was watching it from the beach or anything. Definitely not. She was just... very aware of coastal architecture these days.

John B's elbow nearly knocked over her soda. "You good?" 

"Perfect!" Kiara chirped, her voice an octave too high. "Just mentally spending my share on... ecological preservation. Or whatever Pope said we should do."

Across the table, JJ was making it rain singles like a stripper who failed math class. "Who needs investments when you've got style?" he crowed, tucking a bill into Pope's collar. "That's a 200% tip, my dude."

Pope peeled the sweaty dollar off his neck with two fingers. "This is why the wealth gap exists."

Kiara's fingers twitched toward her phone again. The logical part of her brain - the part that hadn't been temporarily possessed by a lovesick 19th century ghost - knew this was insane. Rafe had kidnapped her. Tied her to a chair. Tried to steal their treasure approximately seventeen times. 

But the other part of her brain - the traitorous, hormone-addled part - kept replaying the way his hands had fumbled with her ropes, his knuckles brushing her waist. That kiss that definitely didn't count because they'd been under supernatural duress.

Sarah smirked at her over the rim of her beer. "You're doing the thing again."

"What thing?"

"The constipated staring thing. Like when you tried to understand JJ's 'jet ski math.'"

"I'm not constipated!" Kiara's voice cracked. "I'm just... contemplating compound interest!"

Cleo snorted. "She's contemplating Cameron's compound interest."

The table erupted in "ooohs" while Kiara's face burned hotter than the time JJ tried to deep-fry sunscreen.

John B shook his head solemnly. "First the ghost possession, now this? Are you…what? Pining for Rafe?” He looked as if he wanted to throw up.

"I hate all of you," Kiara muttered, burying her face in her hands. Outside, the tide rolled in, steady and unconcerned with her crisis. Somewhere in Figure Eight, a light flickered in a certain bedroom window. 

And in her pocket, her phone stayed stubbornly, stupidly silent.

——

Three more nights. No text. Not that Kiara was keeping track. Or that she'd set up notifications for whenever Rafe's "last seen" status updated. Or that her bike routes now suspiciously looped past the Cameron estate like she was running GPS surveillance.

Sarah materialized on the porch at 2:17 AM, her shadow stretching across Kiara's crunches like an accusation. "Obsessive midnight workouts? How very healthy of you."

Kiara didn't pause. "Go away."

"Can't. I live here." Sarah dropped onto the steps, picking at her nail polish. "Honestly thought you'd be making out with my brother by now."

Kiara's elbows buckled. "Jesus, Sarah."

"What? The sexual tension could power the Outer Banks grid." 

Kiara rolled onto her back, studying the water damage on the ceiling like it held the meaning of life. "Shouldn't you be happy we're not together?"

Sarah snorted. "I don't want him to be miserable. Just slightly less... Rafe." She flicked a chipped nail. "Most of his problems stem from being a walking cry for help."

Kiara sat up. "Then why hasn't he called?"

"Because beneath all that Cameron bravado?" Sarah leaned in. "He's terrified you'll laugh in his face."

Kiara blinked. "We're talking about the guy who once stole a Coast Guard boat for fun, right?"

Sarah held up fingers to count: "Abandonment issues, pathological need for approval, enough repressed anger to fuel a demolition derby—"

Kiara's abs spasmed in protest. Her internal organs were staging a mutiny.

"If you want him," Sarah continued, "you'll need to kick down his door with a therapist and a stun gun. Maybe chloroform."

The porch light flickered in what was either an electrical fault or divine disapproval. Something screeched in the mangroves—possibly a heron, possibly JJ attempting to cook meth again.

Kiara wiped sweat from her brow. "You're the worst."

"Rafe's worse," Sarah corrected cheerfully.

A phone buzzed. Both girls lunged for Kiara's like rabid raccoons.

Pope: Did you eat my leftover lo mein?

Sarah groaned. "For fuck's sake."

Kiara wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed. The line between those emotions had become distressingly thin.

Somewhere across the island, Rafe was probably brooding in his ridiculously expensive bedroom, practicing his "emotionally unavailable heir" expression. And Kiara? She dropped back into another crunch.

At least abdominal muscles didn't ghost you. 

—-

Rafe Cameron had never been good at patience - a character flaw that had gotten him arrested twice, shot at once, and disinherited in his father's will no less than four separate times.  

By day two without hearing from Kiara, he'd convinced himself she'd blocked him, he checked - she hadn't. By day four, he'd nearly drunk-texted her at 3 AM, a pathetic "You up?" that he deleted so fast his phone got whiplash. By day six, he'd started a fistfight with his own reflection in the gym the mirror won, leaving him with bruised knuckles and significantly less dignity.  

Now, on day seven, standing in the wreckage of his bedroom that looked less like a living space and more like an FBI profiler's mood board, Rafe was officially losing it.  

Empty bourbon bottles stood like sad sentinels along his dresser. Clothes were strewn about with the chaotic energy of a crime scene where the victim had clearly put up a fight. At the center of it all: a single, crumpled Post-it on his desk with "DO NOT TEXT HER" scrawled in aggressive Sharpie. The "HER" underlined three times like his subconscious was screaming through a megaphone.  

Rafe stared at his phone, thumb hovering over Kiara's contact. His pride said wait. His ego said she should text first. His common sense - what little remained after years of Cameron-brand emotional neglect - was currently screaming you're being a pathetic little shit.  

Then there was the dream.  

Last night, he'd dreamed of Eleanor Sinclair standing at the foot of his bed in a rotting wedding dress, looking at him with the disappointed expression usually reserved for people who brought white wine to a steakhouse.  

"You're being stupid," dream-Eleanor had said. "And I would know - I invented stupid for love."  

"It's not love," dream-Rafe had protested, "it's just -"  

"A burning need to possess something beautiful before it destroys you?" Eleanor smirked, her teeth blackening at the edges. "Yes, I'm familiar."  

When he woke up drenched in sweat at 4 AM, Rafe had thrown his alarm clock at the wall. Now, in the harsh light of day, he couldn't decide if the dream was a supernatural nudge or just his own psyche's way of calling him a coward.  

"Fuck this," he muttered to no one, finally shoving his phone in his pocket.  

The transformation from disaster human to presentable Cameron heir took exactly 22 minutes - a new personal record. He showered with the intensity of a man trying to wash off his shit personality, scrubbed his teeth until his gums bled, and dressed in what he hoped said "I didn't try too hard" rather than "I tried extremely hard to look like I didn't try at all."  

He was just grabbing his keys when the knock came. Rafe froze. If this was Barry coming to collect on that favor or Wheezie needing bail money again, he was going to commit arson.  

The third knock nearly took the door off its hinges.  

"What?" he snarled, yanking it open—  

And there she stood.  

Kiara, looking like every decision he'd ever wanted to make, sweat glistening on her collarbones from what must have been a furious bike ride across the island. Her expression gave nothing away, but her eyes—those fucking eyes—burned right through him.  

Rafe's mental operating system crashed.  

"You look like shit," she announced.  

He blinked. "You broke first."  

"I didn't realize we were playing chicken," she said rolling her eyes. "Someone had to end this dumbass standoff."  

The air between them hummed like a downed power line.  

Rafe's mouth betrayed him. "I was literally about to come find you."  

"Bullshit."  

"Fine," he admitted through clenched teeth. "I was working my way up to it."  

Kiara exhaled like she was carrying the weight of his entire emotional dysfunction. "Christ, you're exhausting."  

"Takes one to know one, Kie Kie."  

She stepped into his space like she owned it. "Are we doing this or not?"  

Rafe's pulse hammered against his ribs. "Doing what?"  

Kiara fisted his shirt and yanked him down.  

The kiss was all teeth and desperation, seven days of pent-up frustration igniting between them. Rafe's hands found her waist on instinct, pulling her flush against him like two broken pieces that somehow fit together.  

When they broke apart, gasping, Kiara wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "That. We're doing that."  

Rafe's grin was all danger and dimples. "Took you long enough."  

Kiara's expression sobered. "This is going to end badly."  

The smile died on Rafe's face. He wasn't stupid—he knew exactly what she meant. He was a walking red flag in designer clothes, a disaster wrapped in privilege. The kind of guy who ruined good things by simply existing near them.  

He cradled her face, thumb brushing the apple of her cheek. "As long as we don't turn into vengeful ghosts haunting each other for centuries," he murmured, "I think we'll be okay."  

Kiara's lips curved against his palm. "I hope you haunt me anyway."  

Rafe's chest cracked open. "Count on it."  

Somewhere down the street, a dog barked its approval. The universe, it seemed, had finally decided to cut them a break.