Page 48 of Knot Your Sugar Rush
“No,” I answer honestly. Then, clearer: “Yes.”
Jamie lifts his jar. “To excellent decisions made with incomplete information.”
“Very on-brand,” Theo says dryly, but he clinks his jar against mine. Dane grabs a clean glass from my desk and joins with water.
The lemonade is sharper now that I’m smiling.
When they trickle back out—promises of meeting me in the morning at the pier, boat logistics, jokes about sea legs—the room feels different. Not emptier. Held.
I slide the last notebook into my backpack—the pocket journal withTry this!sketched at the top. The cover is scuffed in a way that fits my hands now, as if it has been waiting in the back of a drawer for me to be ready to carry it again.
The sun has dropped low enough that the light is honey-thick. I stand at the window and watch dust motes drift like tiny stars. My reflection in the glass looks a little older than it did when I left this town, a little more used, but steadier too. There’s a hum in my ribs that I can’t quite name—part fear, part hope, part the thrill of a story breaking open.
I think of Zae, of the grave I’m not ready to visit. I think of placing a square of candy on the stone someday soon, fingerstrembling for a better reason, and telling her,We did it. You led the way.
The suitcase handle is warm in my palm when I haul it off the bed. The wheels thrum a low steady sound across the wooden floor as I tug it to the door. Lilac air slides in through the window. Somewhere a neighbor’s wind chimes tangle a quiet song.
“I’m going, Zae,” I say to the room, to the notebooks, to the girl I was. “I’m really going.”
Downstairs, a car door shuts, and one of the boys laughs, the sound carrying up the stairwell soft and bright. It threads through me like a little strand of courage.
I turn off the light. The room falls into dusk-blue, the suitcase a dark shape at my knees, the lingering scent of lavender and lemon sweet on the air.
Tomorrow: the boat. The island. The flower.
Tonight: I press my palm to the notebooks one more time, and in the quiet, grief is not a rip current. It’s a tide that lifts and lowers and leaves me standing on my own two feet.
My fingers find the loose recipe card, edges soft from handling. I smooth it flat and whisper, like a promise and a prayer, “petal sugar.” For half a breath, the air tastes faintly floral—impossible, delicate—then it’s gone, like a secret keeping itself.
I breathe, and for the first time in a long time, the breath goes all the way down.
Chapter thirty
Cam
The morning sun is already high by the time I make it down to the pier, the air warm enough that I tug at the collar of my light shirt. The water glitters hard and bright, each wavelet catching the light like cut glass. Somewhere out beyond the harbor, gulls wheel and call, their cries sharp over the steady lap of waves against the pilings.
Halfway down the pier, I spot them.
Three tall, broad silhouettes against the pale wood and blue water, the kind of image that makes your brain sayyep, those are definitely alphas.Dane, Theo, and Jamie are moving easily around a sleek, deep-hulled boat, ropes looped in strong hands, voices carrying low and warm over the hum of the dock.
Jamie’s the first to see me, grinning wide enough that I can’t help but grin back. “There’s our adventurer,” he calls, lifting a hand in greeting. “Right on time.”
“I think I’m early,” I point out, stepping from sun to shadow as the dock creaks under my sneakers. The faint smell of salt and engine oil mixes with the faint sweetness of cinnamon—thescent curling off Jamie in particular today, warm and spicy, like he’s been leaning over a bakery counter.
“Then we were earlier,” Theo says with a smirk, tightening a cleat hitch like it personally insulted him.
“Overachievers,” I mutter, though my smile lingers.
Dane straightens from where he’s been checking a cooler, the sun lighting a sharp line along his jaw. He’s wearing a faded navy cap low over his eyes, and when he tips his head toward me, there’s no mistaking the authority in his voice. “Welcome aboard, Vale. You’re on my ship now, so you follow my rules.”
I arch a brow. “Oh? And what are these rules, Captain?”
Jamie jumps in before Dane can answer. “Rule one—don’t listen to Dane. Rule two—always bring snacks for Jamie. Rule three—”
“Rule three,” Dane interrupts, “is ignore Jamie.”
Theo snorts. “Rule four isdon’tlet Jamie near the helm unless you like spinning in circles.”
