Page 104 of Pack Frenzy
Jess: “Cassian.”
I don’t flinch. “Yeah?”
“You just cheated.”
“Pirates cheat.” I nudge it again. “Tradition.”
Eli laughs under his breath, and Rowan’s pencil stops moving.
“She sees right through you,” he says flatly, but I hear the tension underneath. He’s watching her more than the ball, same as me.
I feel that tone slide under my skin and stay there. “Add a penalty stroke if it makes you feel better.”
Jess bends for her shot, focused. The ball goes straight in, and she grins like she just won a war.
“Beginner’s luck,” I say.
“Skill,” she shoots back.
I tell myself to focus on the ball. It’s safer than the way Jess’s shorts hug her when she bends over the next tee.
Hole Three’s some plastic pirate treasure chest with dry-ice fog leaking out the top. The whole course smells like sugar and bleach.
Rowan crouches to read the angle like it’s a crime scene. “If you hit at forty-five degrees?—”
“Rowan,” I cut in, “no one’s writing a dissertation on putt-putt.”
He straightens, gives me that patient look that makes me want to shove him into the lagoon. “You could improve your average if?—”
“My averages fine.” I smack the ball. It ricochets off the pirate chest, bounces twice, and still drops.
I tip him a grin. “See? Flawless technique.”
Jess claps, mock serious. “Pure skill and zero physics. Impressive.”
Eli snorts. “Pirate magic.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Science can sit this one out.”
Rowan mutters something I don’t catch, but the tone’s pure restraint.
Jess lines up, tongue caught between her teeth. When she sinks another clean shot, her laugh hits like the first drag of oxygen after being under too long.
Eli whoops.
Rowan’s jaw ticks. I catch it, the tell. He wants to celebrate her, claim her, but he’s choking on it because she hasn’t given him permission yet, and he’s a second from losing it anyway.
Can’t blame him. We’re all orbiting the same sun, pretending we’re not burning.
By the fifth hole, I’m halfway through my bottle of water and twice as restless. The place is crawling with families, strollers, and shrieking kids. Normal life. Feels like a world we don’t get to keep.
Jess elbows me as we step onto the plank bridge to the next green. “You look like you’re planning a heist.”
“Just calculating wind resistance,” I say, even though I want to drag her behind the waterfall and make her forget her own name, but I don’t. Not here.
Rowan’s staring again, eyes too sharp, tracking every shift in her body. I meet his gaze and hold it.
Neither of us looks away. It’s not hostile—just acknowledgment. We both see her, want her, and we’re both trying not to make it harder on the other.
