Delorah slid out of her car and into the cold slap of the Monday morning. A California kind of cold, rare and radiant, the wind cutting clean as verdict and the sun detonating on every chrome edge. She blinked against the brightness, eyelids fluttering like the inside of a bell.
Even through the low quilt of fog, even with the invisible salt in the air, the light found her, made her squint and shield her face with the flat of her hand. Fall here was always a contradiction: the sky a blue so thin it might shatter, the wind a coastal blade that slipped straight through wool and flesh and whatever armor she'd tried to drape herself in last night.
Her blazer, starched and navy, pressed against her body like a memory that wouldn't let go. A straitjacket made elegant by expensive tailoring and parental expectation. She stuffed her hands into the pockets, curled her fingers until her knuckles went white. The chill wouldn't leave her. It spidered in through the seams, collected along her spine until even her bones felt like glass.
Hawthorne loomed ahead, old money solid. The brick was freshly power-washed, the brass plaques still gleamed, but it was unchanged: a temple to repetition, ritual, generations piling up unremarked. The flag above the courtyard stood out stiffly, snapping in the wind, sharp as gunshot. And yet: not even that sound could puncture the thick insulation that had muffled everything since Friday.
She waded through clusters of uniforms, their laughter bright and sharp as sea glass underfoot. Shouts tangled with the cawing of gulls. The feral scavengers who owned this stretch of sky. There was a moment, there, poised between the bricks and the blue: a pulse of life she couldn't touch, couldn't join. The world spun on in messy little orbits, people anchoring to their own momentum, while she drifted somewhere outside the gravity of it all.
It felt like walking underwater, like listening to the world through a closed diving bell. Every conversation turned to distortion, pressure, distance. She wondered distantly if, when she finally spoke, her voice would come out strange. Garbled, blurry, the language of someone no longer native to this place.
An opportunity. For all of us.
Her mother's voice fluttered in her skull, so breezy and crystalline that Delorah wanted to smash every museum bell in the world. Opportunity. A word that could cover teeth, claws, blood. The memory clung like wet silk to her ribs. The contract waited, a bruise she couldn't show, the future burned onto her skin by the signature she hadn't written.
Was that why she kept looking for Kit? Reflexive. Ache and impulse braided. She let her eyes flicker across the heads and shoulders moving toward the doors—searching for that particular shape, the awkward slouch, the telltale movement: practically smelling for him, her body remembering after her mind pleaded for numbness.
He wasn't there. Not yet. She pulled her sleeves down to the tips of her fingers, trying to retreat, to disappear into the uniform. It didn't dull the electric edge of the secret she was hoarding. Her inheritance of rot. Not even the open sky was wide enough to dilute it. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket, message unread. The world hurtled forward as if nothing was rotting under its surface.
The cold went deeper. It felt like a warning. A countdown, not quite audible, but she could feel it: tickticktick—her whole life a live wire.
Elsewhere, Kit moved through shadow and geometry.
His boots struck dumb rhythms on the cold sidewalk, heavy-footed, each step looping back on itself, echoing louder inside his ribs than in the world itself. The city's winter draped itself over him, thin and petulant, eucalyptus mingling with ozone and the slow-burn exhaust of a thousand Monday commutes. His jacket was too thin. His mind, thinner.
Visibility hurt. The morning sliced fat stripes of sunlight across his path, aiming for his eyes, intent on hunting him from the inside out. He walked quickly, head down, feeling the city pressing up against Hawthorne's gates: a city that would just as soon eat the rich as ignore them. This school was meant to be a fortress, but for Kit it was a mouth. He could feel it: the front doors gaping, the velvet darkness just beyond, ready to swallow him the way it did every day.
He moved through the entrance, the automatic hush of privilege giving way to the oily buzz of fluorescent lights and murmured conversation. The halls roared and dripped: concrete veins, lockers coughing open and shut, the scent of teenage anxiety mingling with rosewater and expensive perfume. Here it was possible, with practice, to disappear: slipstream along the lockers, face a mask in the crowd, heartbeat drowned by a thousand others.
Delorah finally moved. It was just enough to tilt her head, just enough for the pale curtain of her hair to shift and let one eye glance out into the crowd. The look found him like she'd known exactly where he was, exactly how long he'd been watching. Not a smile, not even a smirk. Just that stillness she wore like armor, the kind that dared you to speak first.
Kit pushed off the locker, slow enough to make it look casual, fast enough to keep the courage from leaking out. The hall thinned between them in fits and starts. Backpacks swinging, shoes squealing on tile, a teacher's voice barking somewhere far away—and then it was just the two of them in the space that wasn't space at all.
"You look like you're plotting a murder," he said, voice pitched low, almost swallowed by the hum of the building.
Her brow lifted by a millimeter. "Maybe I am."
"Victim got a name?"
She slipped her phone into her blazer pocket, leaning her shoulder into the metal door like it might hold her up. "Depends. Are you volunteering?"
Kit's mouth twitched—half a grin, half the kind of dare that could ruin a day if you took it seriously. "Could be I'm offering you an alibi instead."
That earned him a sideways look, quick and sharp, like the flash of a blade before you feel the cut. "An alibi for what, exactly?"
"For not being here." He glanced at the clock above the hall's double doors, its minute hand dragging like it hated its job. "Place'll still be here tomorrow. We don't have to be."
Her breath made a ghost in the air still trapped in her lungs. "And where do you think we'd go?"
Kit leaned in just enough to make it a secret. "Anywhere they'd hate to picture us."
For a heartbeat, she said nothing. The noise of the hall rushed back in. Lockers clanging, laughter shattering against the brick, the gulls outside screeching like they knew a dare when they heard one. Then Delorah's lips curved, slow and certain, like she'd been waiting for him to suggest it all along.
Delorah didn't move right away. She stayed braced against her locker as if she could feel the temperature of his suggestion in the metal. Warm in the center, cold at the edges. A curl of wind slipped in from somewhere down the hall, carrying the faint tang of eucalyptus and the wet mineral smell that followed every overnight mist in this part of California. It brushed the back of her neck like a reminder that the day was still young, that there was time to decide what kind of trouble to make.
Kit shifted his weight, the laces of his boots dragging on the tile with a sound that could've been impatience or invitation. "We could vanish," he said, softer now, like it wasn't a challenge anymore but a possibility they could both taste. "Whole day's ours if we just… step sideways."
Her fingers toyed with the edge of her sleeve, pulling it down until the cuff covered the knuckle of her thumb. She should have laughed. Should have called him an idiot and walked into homeroom. But the thought of sitting through another hour of Hawthorne's rituals—the bell's smug clang, the teacher's voice droning like a ceiling fan—made her chest tighten in the wrong way.
"Step sideways to where?" she asked, eyes narrowing, but there was no real bite to it.
Kit tilted his head toward the double doors at the far end of the corridor. Beyond them, sunlight poured in wide amber bands across the floor, the kind that made dust motes look like they were moving in slow motion. "Away from here. Far enough you can't hear them calling your name."
She let her gaze follow his, past the doors, into that gold. The edges of her mouth softened, barely. "You've got somewhere in mind."
He shrugged, but it was the kind of shrug that came with a glint in his eyes, like the secret had been burning there since before first bell. "There's a park by the pier. Rides, lights, salt on the wind. No one taking attendance."
The mention of the pier cracked something open in her—a stored-away memory of gulls chasing each other over the water, the whir of carnival rides against the ocean's low roar, the way the horizon felt closer at night when everything else was lit up. She didn't smile, but she didn't shut the door either.
Kit stepped back half a pace, enough room for her to follow if she wanted. "We walk out now, they won't notice 'til we're already halfway there."
Her answer didn't come in words. She closed her locker with a muted slam, the sound swallowed by the building's high ceilings, and slung her bag over one shoulder. The motion was simple, but it felt like a match striking.
Kit caught the spark in it. "That a yes?"
She didn't look at him as she started toward the doors. "You're the one offering the alibi. Keep up."
He did.
She rolled her eyes, but it came out softer than it should have. The sharpness wasn't there—not all the way. Maybe because she could see the edges of him unspooling at the seams. Maybe because the recklessness wasn't performative this time. It was need. Naked and humming.
"You want me to take the other half," she said, deadpan.
He leaned back, head thunking against the seat rest with a soft, almost romantic sound. His mouth curved, but there was no mischief in it—just longing and the echo of something unspeakable.
"I want you to feel good," he said. "Not the pretend kind. Not the filtered, socially acceptable kind. I mean the kind that makes your heartbeat louder than your thoughts. The kind that makes music feel like it's living in your teeth. I want your skin to forget what it means to hold tension. Just once."
She turned toward the window. The trees at the edge of the lot danced in the breeze, shadows slashing across the asphalt like reminders of things she hadn't admitted out loud yet.
Then she shook her head.
"If I take it, we're stranded. I'm not letting you drive back high after dark."
He laughed—quiet, wrecked, almost grateful."Responsible and hot. Pick a struggle."
He folded the rest of the tab back into its foil like it was a relic. A prayer. Fingers lingering like he wanted to kiss it goodbye.
"Maybe later," he murmured. It wasn't a promise. It wasn't a plan. It was just something to say to the version of himself that was already halfway gone.
Then he threw the car into reverse like it had dared him to stay.
Kit's hand brushed against hers for a moment too long as they slipped down the side steps of Hawthorne, the late morning sun catching in the tips of his hair like he was already glowing—with fever, with defiance, with something that burned just hot enough to warn you not to touch.
They hovered at the bottom step, shadows overlapping, neither quite sure who would move first. The light, sharp in their eyes, etched everything in high definition: the chipped green paint on the rail, the neat line of sweat at Kit's temple despite the fall breeze. He watched her, half-smirk, half-dare, until Delorah blinked and looked away.
He cut through the parking lot like he was being pulled forward by a thread only he could feel—urgent, unblinking, squinting against the light like it was judging him. The blacktop shimmered, broken glass winking from cracks, the staccato rhythm of his boots carrying both impatience and purpose.
His car was parked crooked, naturally, its paint dull beneath the weight of salt and sun. Dust traced lazy swirls across the hood, fingerprints lingering from other, more reckless nights. Kit unlocked it with a flick, slid into the driver's seat like slipping into character, settling in with practiced ease, the battered upholstery molding to him as if it knew his weight.
Delorah circled to the passenger side, her steps careful, measured. She watched him like someone watching a match hesitate before the spark, aware that the smallest exhale could ignite everything. The handle bit cool and metallic against her palm. She hesitated—half a beat, no more—then opened the door.
"Shotgun," he muttered anyway, knuckles drumming the wheel, already smirking even though he was the one behind it. There was challenge in his tone, ritual in the word.
She raised a brow, the question unspoken at first, then tipped her head. "You good?"
"Better than ever," he said with a smile too wide, too white, too late.
"C'mon. Let's haunt the highway."
She slipped in, pulled the door shut with a quiet clunk. The space inside was tight with the scent of heat and vinyl, the air humming with things left unsaid. "Who are we racing?"
"Time. God. Sebastian. Pick your fighter."
The engine choked once, twice, then caught with a low, pissed-off growl. The dash vibrated, bits of sun catching in the cracked plastic. Music screamed to life—distorted, angry, left over from the last time he tried to outrun himself. He turned it down absently with the flat of his hand, like it wasn't worth the argument, the song sputtering into irritation before sinking back to almost-silence.
Then silence.
The kind that dripped with heat and hesitation, the aftershock of adrenaline giving way to second thoughts. Dust motes hovered in the slanted light, their paths slow and aimless. Delorah clicked her seatbelt. The sound was small, insistent, a reminder of rules even here. Kit didn't move.
He was staring at the glove box like it had insulted him. Then, with the same grace he used to set fires in people's minds, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a crumpled square of foil. Torn. Shiny. Empty but for a single half-melted tab stuck inside wax paper like a pressed flower from a bad memory. The air shifted, weighted by old choices and something almost sweet laced in with the bitter.
He didn't say anything. Just looked at it.
A beat too long.
Delorah's gaze flicked to his pupils. They were already blown wide, swallowing light like they were starving. His breath slowed, shallow and measured, his jaw loose. He hadn't blinked in nearly thirty seconds.
"You already took one," she said, flat.
He grinned, slow and late, the expression surfacing like something found underwater. "Only half."
"Kit."
His voice dipped lower, silk stretched over teeth. "C'mon. We're already skipping. Already cheating the day. Why not push it off the cliff?"
Her hand hovered over the armrest, fingers curling, the shape of worry and something else threading through her chest. Outside, the world waited with tension. Hot, bright, steeped in possibilities she wasn't sure she wanted to name. Inside the car, time paused, the next moment hanging, fragile and suspended, daring them both to move.
The road unwound like a lazy cigarette: cracked and sun-bleached, lined with eucalyptus trees and the kind of fences rich people installed to pretend they owned the horizon. Heat shimmered in slow waves above the asphalt, distorting each passing fence post into something almost mythical. The car's shadow, double-wide and dancing at the edges, flickered over tufts of wild grass and the litter of old leaves shed from last season's wind.
Kit drove like he was trying not to think. One hand on the wheel, the other catching wind out the window, fingers tracing invisible constellations in the breeze. His wrist flicked absent patterns, dipping palm-up then palm-down, as if offering something to the sky and then stealing it back. He was smiling again, but it wasn't at her. It was at nothing. At everything. His lips parted every now and then as if to speak, but whatever sentences formed never found the air.
Delorah watched his profile from the corner of her eye. His sharp jaw, flushed cheeks, the line where stubble faded into the fretful blue of a recent all-nighter. That untamable mess of dark hair caught the sun like it was conspiring with the drugs, light pooling in ink-black strands. His pupils still swallowed the whites of his eyes, but there was a calm to him now. Like the storm had passed and left the wreckage prettier. He breathed easier, the tension easing from his neck and shoulders, movements smoothing out as if gravity had relaxed its grip.
The stereo hummed low. Something synth-heavy and reverent, like a spaceship lost in prayer. The sound pressed into the soft parts of their silence, filling it up but not breaking it. Just a current under the surface.
"You good?" she asked, more softly this time. Her voice skimmed the music, tentative as a leaf on water, then waited. She twisted a stray thread on her sleeve, knuckle brushing the door, gaze flickering from his grip on the wheel to the road spinning out ahead.
He didn't look over. His mouth curved, stretching slow, that lazy don't-worry-about-me shape. "Everything tastes like color. So yeah."
She couldn't help herself as the corners of her mouth twitched, threatening a real smile. She turned to watch him more openly, amusement and concern tangled together in her eyes. "That's not how tasting works." The teasing was gentle, a drop of warmth in the late-morning glare.
"Maybe for you." He drummed his fingers lightly on the metal edge of the door, as if punctuating his point, still grinning at the horizon.
They passed a cyclist. Kit's hand shot up in a wide, theatrical wave, palm slicing the sunlight. The man glared, sweat staining his neon jersey, pedals jerky with annoyance.
Kit laughed, full-bodied and breathless, a sound that filled the small car and bounced off the dash. He pressed harder on the gas, and the engine responded with a hungry purr, like joy had its own momentum and if he just leaned into it a little more, maybe they'd outrun the ordinary.
Delorah felt it too—the impossible lift in her chest, the sharpened shimmer of the day. The coast glittered beside them. The kind of gold that made you believe in reckless choices. She let her window down an inch more and closed her eyes for half a heartbeat, letting the salt air sting the edge of her smile, letting the world slip by, bright and dangerous and just theirs.
She let the world slip by, bright and dangerous and just theirs.
And then—blue.
Red.
Blue again.
A soft flicker in the rearview at first, then a flare. Loud. Arrogant. The scream of authority breaking through the hush like it had always been waiting just around the bend.
The colors cut through the car in pulses, sharp as knife wounds, bleeding over the dashboard and stealing the gold right out of the day. Delorah's eyes snapped open, instincts slamming awake as the dream went brittle.
Behind them, a patrol cruiser loomed. Too close, too sharp in the morning sun, the roof lights pulsing with judgment. The lenses on the front grill flashed in regular patterns, washing the car's faded ceiling in blue halos. The metallic taste of adrenaline pooled on her tongue before she spoke.
Kit didn't startle. He blinked once, slow and lazy, like he was seeing a firefly. The corners of his mouth curved upward, serene in a way that made her want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him back to earth.
"Ooooh," he breathed. "Pretty."
Delorah's spine went rigid. She gripped the edge of her seat, nails pale against the fabric.
"Kit," she hissed, already straightening in her seat, heart crawling up her throat. "That's a cop."
"I noticed."His tone was light, almost bored, but she could see the pulse in his neck, just beneath the skin. Her chest tightened.
"Pull over."
He did. Smooth, elegant, as if they were arriving at brunch instead of being pulled out of a dream by blue-lit consequence. The tires brushed the curb with a small, thoughtful jolt before settling. The car drifted to stillness, the engine's idle suddenly too loud, reverberating in the sticky, closed air.
Delorah watched him with growing dread. His fingers flexed on the steering wheel, the movement slow and measured, skin almost translucent in the storm of color from behind. He looked like a statue asked to wait.
"Kit. Look at me."
His eyes stayed fixed at some impossible middle distance, lashes fanned dark, jaw set.
He reached for his jacket instead, slipped his hand inside like a magician about to make something disappear. When it reemerged, it was holding his wallet. A simple, battered thing, edges fraying, the corners soft from years of use.
"You are high," she whispered. "You're driving on X, and you're about to hand your license to a cop—"
"I know," he said gently, like they were talking about the weather.
Her voice was shaking now, something feral and pleading underneath. "This is insane. This is literally—"
"Del," he said, and it wasn't loud, but it was enough to make her stop. "I got it."
The lights kept flashing behind them, painting the dash in strobe. Each pulse cast shadows up his arms, across her fingers, making the ordinary interior strange and theatrical. The siren didn't sound, but it didn't need to. The pressure was already there, thick as smoke in the car, heavy as an accusation.
The officer appeared in the mirror: a shape at first, then a pair of mirrored sunglasses, catching all that restless sunlight, face set in studied blankness. His uniform pressed, tan and severe, badge glinting, boots grinding methodically in the gravel as he approached. Each step was purposeful, deliberate, weighted with the unspoken.
Delorah's breath faltered. She reached for the window crank, fingers trembling, and rolled down the glass. The hum of the mechanism was jagged in the hush, stretching the moment as the breeze cut a sharp slice of outside into their tiny, suffocating world.
The officer didn't even get to speak.
Kit handed out his license like it was a prophecy. His hand was steady. He didn't flinch, didn't rush.
The man caught it mid-sentence. Looked at it. Paused. The hesitation rippled out, freezing even the dust motes, and for a fraction of a second it felt like the world had dialed down to just these three: officer, driver, passenger. Waiting.
"Adrian Honey." he said, like reading it was enough to shift the entire balance of the moment.
The name settled into the car like a cold hand between the ribs.
But Kit didn't stiffen. Didn't curse under his breath.
Didn't even blink.
He tilted his head slightly toward the open window, lashes low, pupils dilated to drowning. And he smiled. Not wide. Not smug. Just… absent. Like someone hearing a song they used to fall asleep to before the house burned down.
"Haven't heard that one in a while," he said softly. The sound of it barely disturbed the air. "Thanks for the nostalgia."
Delorah turned to him in a sharp snap of breath,startled. He wasn't supposed to react like that.
That name was supposed to hurt. It was supposed to twist him into something she could recognize. Something sharp, ashamed, or angry.
But all she saw was a boy who looked like he was floating.
The officer faltered, just a second. His fingers closed tighter around the license. He glanced at it again.
Delorah felt it then. The change. The subtle recalibration. The power, coiled beneath the surface of Kit's half-lidded eyes. The officer's stance loosened, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders as though the name had smothered whatever heat he'd carried up to the window.
"You know how fast you were going?" the officer asked, but the tone had already softened, wary now, maybe deferential.
Kit blinked at him with something like reverence, a slow-motion grace that made time feel unreliable.
"Felt like we were going the right speed to leave something behind."
The cop looked at him. At her. Back at the license, as if searching for something he couldn't admit to looking for.
He handed it back. Quick. Efficient. His movements were clipped, perfunctory, the script of danger abandoned for an older, quieter story.
"Watch yourself. You've got a lot riding on that name."
"So I've heard." Kit's tone was clipped, but not in a cold way. More like he just couldn't bother with responding.
A beat hung open, something that could have been a warning or a blessing if they listened close enough.
"Get off the road."
Kit smiled. Not mockingly. Not smug. Just tired. Something emptied out in his eyes, and for half a second, Delorah saw right through him.
"Working on it."
And then the officer was gone. Back to the cruiser. No ticket. No breathalyzer. Just the scent of something bitter left in the air between them. The door slammed in the background and the police lights lingered, echoing off every surface for another long moment before blinking out.
The sirens faded. The silence returned in a rush, broken only by the tangle of their breathing and the blood pounding in Delorah's ears.
She turned to Kit, stunned, searching his face for any crack in the mask.
"What the fuck was that?"
He didn't answer right away. He gripped the wheel, knuckles whitening, his thumb tapping once, twice, and then stopping.
The road ahead was empty again. Sunlight dappling the blacktop in long, golden threads. Everything looked the same, but none of it felt the same as before.
"That," he murmured, easing back into the lane with the smooth, lethal grace of someone born in the passenger seat of a dynasty, "was what power smells like."
She stared at him. Mouth slightly open, trying to process the aftertaste of adrenaline, recognition, and all the things she couldn't name.
"Have you used that before?" The words tasted strange. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know.
"Not often." His expression looked almost faraway with the utterance.
"Did it feel good?"
He didn't look at her. His hand tightened on the wheel, just slightly, his jaw set in a line of exhaustion and something darker.
"No," he said. "It felt easy."
And that was somehow worse.
They didn't talk much after the cop.
Kit just drove. The weight of what happened still clung to the air, thick and cloying, refusing to dissolve in the rush of wind through the open cracks of the windows. Delorah didn't ask where. She just watched the world slide past, the sharpness of sunlight on glass, the way the familiar coastal stretch looked a little stranger now.
The road did what roads always did. It ended somewhere bright.
The coast curled in around them, salt in the back of her throat, wind sliding under her hairline. Gulls rode invisible currents overhead, looping wide and lazy against the sky as if nothing on the ground was worth their attention. The landscape outside the window had softened showing beach grass tipping in gusts, picket fences giving way to battered chain-link, the ocean a pale strip growing thicker and more insistent with every curve.
The signs for the pier started cropping up. Painted arrows and weathered billboards with peeling images of cartoon clowns, funnel cakes, and promises of wonder that felt more like memories than invitations. The sky above the pier was streaked with early haze, a shimmer that made the sun look tired.
But Kit didn't follow them. His hands stayed steady on the wheel, knuckles relaxed. He let the signs scroll by, indifferent. His eyes flicked to the rearview, not looking for more cops but as if checking the past was still firmly behind them.
Instead, he veered off the main road, tires nudging over the crumbled lip without hesitation. The asphalt gave way to a narrow side street shadowed by leaning palms and crooked telephone poles. A sign for "NO OVERNIGHT PARKING" glared from under a web of old stickers.
Gravel spat beneath the tires as Kit guided the car into a lot behind a fringe of vendor stalls. The stalls were ghosts in daylight: faded paint, candy-striped awnings drooping, rust streaking down metal legs. Every gate was padlocked or propped open just enough to beckon dust instead of customers. The scent of stale sugar and old seaweed lingered beneath the cleaner salt air, a reminder that even attractions could be abandoned.
Kit slowed, easing the car into place beside a string of empty lines. The silence that followed had changed. Now it was less brittle, more like a held note after the music fades. He cut the engine and for a moment, all that moved was the heat pressing through the windshield and the ticking sigh of cooling metal.
Delorah undid her seatbelt, the click sharp in the hush. She didn't move beyond that—not yet. Her hands rested on her knees, tense without meaning to be. She watched her reflection in the dark window, hair haloed with sunlight, the shape of her uncertainty clear in the glass.
Kit didn't move either. He stared straight ahead, cheekbones slashed with light and shadow. His jaw flexed once, as if he were about to say something, but he didn't. His shoulders settled just a bit, the high-wire tension from the stop bleeding out, leaving behind something closer to resignation.
For a while, they just sat. The sun painted gold across the dash, burning dust into glitter. Somewhere beyond the fence, someone laughed. A thin, tinny sound which was quickly swallowed by the wide hush. It wasn't uncomfortable, the silence between them. In some way, it was relief.
A stray breeze rattled a loose awning, but inside the car everything was still. Delorah let her gaze drift to Kit's hands,they were calm now, not shaking, simply resting on his thighs. She let out a small breath she didn't know she'd been holding.
Then Kit reached into the center console. It wasn't a rush or a secret; he moved in the same unhurried way he'd done everything else since the flashing lights. His fingers brushed aside a wrapper, fished out a small metallic vape: sleek and black, the kind that caught the sun in a cold, perfect line. The letters etched on the side glinted when he turned them in his palm.
He tapped it against his thigh. His eyes stayed straight ahead, not seeking her reaction.
"It won't last as long," he said, finally, voice low but easy.
Delorah blinked, the words taking time to settle. "What?"
He rolled the vape between his fingers, studying the reflection, almost casual. "The high," he clarified. "Compared to the tab. It's weed. Cart, not a joint. You'll feel it faster, but it's not as deep."
He didn't offer it to her just then. He let it sit in his palm, waiting like a choice she hadn't said aloud. The vape caught the sunlight and fractured it, a thin blue edge glinting against the paler skin of his hand. For a moment, he just looked at it, then at her. His thumb traced along the flat edge, slow, almost nervous, letting something settle.
"I figured…" Kit started, his voice already somewhere else. He gave a shrug that tried too hard to be indifferent, mouth twisting in an easy, practiced motion. "You seemed like you might want to float a little."
The words lingered and curled in the close air. Kit finally glanced away, as if the truth of it might be written on the dashboard and not the space between them.
Delorah hesitated.
Not because she didn't want to. The urge to escape, to weightlessly drift, pressed against her ribs. But the inside of the car suddenly felt very small—roof too low, seats too close, her own pulse ticking against her collarbone. Windows half-fogged from breath and sunlight, the world outside smeared and unreachable. Even the gulls sounded unreal, their distant cries muffled by glass and nerves.
Kit looked like something feral pretending to be calm. One of his legs up on the dash, collar loose, jaw relaxed as if he had all the time in the world. But his eyes didn't match. They were too quiet. Too awake. They tracked her carefully, as if she was both the question and the answer to something he hadn't dared to ask.
She reached for it anyway. Took the little pen with a careful, uncertain grip, as though it might bite or break or mark her in some way she couldn't undo. Her fingers brushed his for just a second. He was warm, impossibly steady.
"What do I do?" she asked, holding the vape gingerly, watching it as if it might reveal hidden instructions.
"Inhale till it blinks," Kit said. "Hold it a sec. Then breathe out slow." His voice was gentle, patient, smoothing down the little ridges of her nerves.
Such simple instructions. But the way he watched her: eyes dark, unreadable, tracking every shift of her shoulders and tilt of her chin. It made Delorah feel like she was stepping off a cliff, the drop invisible, the ground a long way off.
She raised the pen to her lips, heart thumping loud enough to drown out the gulls and the distant hum of the pier. She drew.
The end of the pen glowed blue, a tiny star pulsing in her peripheral vision. She held.
Breathed out.
And—
Coughed, hard, throat tight, eyes blinking as the sharp tang of vapor raced down and tangled with her lungs. She doubled over, one hand pressed instinctively to her chest, spluttering half a curse.
Kit laughed—low and surprised and real, the sound bursting out of him without any of the usual armor. It crashed against the walls of the car and filled it up, pushing out some of the tension. It made Delorah's frustration break up and scatter, leaving something lighter behind.
"Fuck," she rasped, voice ragged, wiping at the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. "That's not like a joint."
"Nope," Kit grinned, all teeth and mischief, the old spark back in his eyes. "That's precision warfare."
She shot him a glare, but her own smile was already crowding it away. There was laughter behind her look now, her cheeks hot. Maybe it was from the hit, maybe from how intently he was watching her, making her feel seen and bold and a little new.
She passed the vape back, her fingers brushing his again. A little less tentative than before. Kit took it without a word, eyes on her as he hit it once, flicking his wrist just so. He held, shoulders rising slow, and then let the smoke ribbon from his lips in a lazy twist, like it was a language he barely remembered but never quite forgot.
He slumped lower in the seat, sinking into the old upholstery, one leg sprawling so his knee brushed hers. The contact was gentle, almost accidental, but he didn't move away.
"We don't have to go in yet," he said, voice soft at the frayed edge of a laugh. "We can just sit. Let it hit."
Delorah nodded, her head tipping back against the seat, hair falling loose down her shoulders. She wasn't quite ready to move either: not back into the sunlight, or crowds, or the rules that waited beyond the car's dusty privacy.
The air between them softened. Something eased, stretching from the dash to the place their knees touched and filled up the space with the promise of quiet. In the distance, the ferris wheel groaned to life, the rhythm slow and steady, and the scent of kettle corn twisted through the open crack of the window on a briny breeze.
But inside the car, time thickened. Gold light spilled across their bodies, dust motes spinning slow in the hush. The silence wasn't empty now. It was waiting. Warming. Stretching out its legs.
And she let it.
The world had a pulse. Not the kind you felt in your wrist, but the kind that lived in neon and carousel bulbs, that shimmered off the sun-baked sheen of asphalt, creeping under your skin and into your joints until your whole body was tuned to the same secret rhythm. Even the shadows seemed to dance in time, tightening and stretching with each labored breath of the pier.
By the time they reached the edge, Kit was grinning again. Not because anything was funny, but because the light on the water set everything adrift, like a film just slightly out of focus, rippling with old magic.
Delorah's hair caught the breeze and floated behind her, a slow-motion halo. The sky arched above, wide and ridiculous, blue enough to drown in and shot through with endless possibility. Kit's grin was messier, softer at the edges, like the world was turning them inside out just for fun.
The worn boards of the pier creaked beneath every step, sun-bleached and softened where a thousand feet had worried the grain smooth. Nails flashed and glinted in the bright. Some boards flexed under their weight, and Delorah felt each give and sway like a little heartbeat beneath her shoes. Around them, the smells stacked tall and dizzying: cotton candy sugar, hot oil, salt water, something caramelized and sticky nearest the food stands, every sweetness tinged under with low-tide funk.
Somewhere, a speaker popped and fizzed to life and started spilling old surf rock—thin and warbly, like some other decade was leaking through. The music bounced off the wire cages of the closed game booths and vanished in the wind.
Delorah glanced at Kit, her eyes narrowing, maybe out of worry, maybe just to catch any cracks beneath his new shine. She couldn't read him—his face a mask then a blur, always moving. Before she could puzzle it out, he spun away, reckless as driftwood in the tide. Loose-limbed, collar slipping off one shoulder, boots striking hollow and purposeful against the boards, he veered off path in a wide arc, vaulting toward a fluorescent row of claw machines that blinked, empty and expectant, in midday sun.
"This place is fucked," he declared, arms sweeping wide, a showman on a forgotten stage, voice carrying into space. "Look at this—" He stopped at a gumball machine, eyes wide with mock wonder, tapping the glass with a knuckle like it might hold something supernatural. "Cursed candy. Probably older than me. Probably haunted. Perfect with espresso."
Delorah stifled a laugh, the sound riding up her throat before she could bite it down. "You're high."
He whipped his head around, making a face like she'd thrown a challenge. "I," he pronounced, hand pressed like a solemn oath over his heart, "am experiencing the full majesty of the American pier system. You should try it."
She rolled her eyes, but the amusement curled at the edges of her mouth. "You're so weird."
"You're just jealous 'cause I'm vibing with the architecture." He spun once, arms out, hair trailing wild in the salt air, laughter hiding in the small lines around his mouth. Even the pier seemed to tilt with his orbit.
He turned and walked backward for a few paces, arms still out, head tipped to the sky, balance perfect despite the odd slope of the boards. His pupils were huge, their midnight swallowing the gray-blue ring of his iris, almost comical against the luminous day—like his eyes were drinking in every watt of sunlight, every slice of color.
And for that second, he was unrecognizable: not a boy, not even a person, just motion and nerve endings, grin and gravity, spinning wild against the geometry of a Monday no one would remember.
Delorah caught up to him finally, not running but not lagging, shoulder brushing his as they passed a shuttered churro stand drooping in the heat. The wind snatched at a pile of old napkins and flung them across their shoes like confetti, bits of blue and white spinning away into the cracks. The world felt slightly larger and stranger, simple and unrehearsed.
Kit pointed at the napkin flutter, deadpan, with fake solemnity.
"That's the universe celebrating us," he said.
She played along, voice dry. "What'd we do, win the lottery?"
He leaned in, lowering his voice to the hush of secrets, but his mouth was close enough to make her smile a little nervous. "Escaped," Kit said. Not as a boast, not as a promise. Just a fact. The word slipped into the gap between their feet and sat there, humming a little with truth.
Before either of them could decide what kind of silence to let it become, Kit hopped forward. He kicked himself up onto a low bench, both feet planted just wide enough, arms thrown out for balance. For a heartbeat he wobbled, grinned down at her—mischief, challenge, delight, all swirling in his eyes.
"Del," he said, her name coming out bright and edged with dare. "Tell me you've never ridden the Tilt-A-Whirl on a school day."
She gave him a look, somewhere between baffled and plotting. "I've never ridden the Tilt-A-Whirl. Ever."
He gasped, both hands to his chest. "Blasphemy! This will not stand. You must be cleansed, child. You must be made new by the spin cycle!"
Before she could protest, he hopped down with a thud. Kit grabbed her hand. Not yanking, not pulling, just curling his fingers around hers like it was the most natural bridge in the world. His grip was warm and sure, all confidence and invitation.
"C'mon," he said, tugging her gently toward the rides and letting his grin widen. "We're gonna fix your sins."
The Tilt-A-Whirl was half rust, half miracle.
It hunched at the far end of the pier, a beast chained to its bolts and condemned to dance, bowed at the neck and battered by the years. Salt streaked along every joint and hinge, and the ocean wind moaned through the gaps, making it shudder like some restless relic waiting for a reason to wake. The cars, bulbous and painted with memories of red and gold, flashed old carnival names in curling script, most of the letters lost beneath layers of chipped enamel and sunlight. Every bolt whispered stories of forgotten screams, of greasy hands and sweaty laughter, of a thousand rotations and one more round.
It wasn't even spinning yet. It rocked slightly with the wind, as if anticipating what was about to be asked of it, creaking in warning or invitation.
Delorah could feel the ghost of last summer in the air—sticky, hopeful, a little ruined.
Kit stood before it with the reverence of someone about to be baptized in chaos. He let his gaze sweep the ride, every twitch of the platform, every hiss of hydraulics, drawing some holy energy from it all.
"No lines," he whispered, awed, voice trembling at the edges. "God's real."
Delorah eyed the ride with suspicion, the metal gleam and shifting shadows. "It looks like it might kill us."
"That's part of the thrill," Kit said, flashing her a crooked smile. He flicked a bill at the bored teenager in the booth with a crisp, practiced wrist, like he was paying the universe its due. "It's called living on the edge, baby."
"More like dying on the edge."
"Die hot, then. Die spinning." His laugh echoed, spinning off the emptiness like a dare.
She snorted but stepped forward, pulled by gravity and him and the unspoken promise in the air. The moment she stepped onto the groaning metal ramp, the sea breeze shifted. It was now colder, sharper, wilder—like it was wrapping around her ankles, daring her to run or leap.
Kit, of course, made a beeline for the most chipped, most battle-worn car on the platform. He launched himself into the seat with a drama queen's flourish, arms splayed, boots skidding on the vinyl. The sun had left its heat across the back, sticky and clinging to bare skin.
"You want inside or out?"
"Inside," she said quickly, no hesitation. She could picture him "accidentally" toppling her over the edge, just for the story.
Kit grinned, devil-mouthed, eyes sparking with mischief. "Coward."
But he shifted, rolling his shoulders, scooching over so she could slide in next to him. The seat was cramped, skin against skin, current curling up between her knee and his. Delorah pressed herself into the curve of the car, feeling the world narrow down to this one spot. The safety bar dropped with a heavy, ribcage-thudding clunk that was more theatrical than reassuring.
For a heartbeat, everything held. The world pausing as if it wanted to see what they'd do next. Outside, the sky wheeled wide, the pier stretched long, the hum of drinks and frying oil and distant cries like the soundtrack to someone else's memory.
Then—
The hum started.
It twitched through the soles of their shoes. A mechanical growl, low and eager. Beneath them, the platform began to turn, slowly, warily, like a beast poking its head from its den. Kit leaned close, his lips just at her ear, his breath warm and bright with anticipation.
"It always starts soft," he whispered, a little recklessly. "Then it eats you."
And then, it lurched.
Their car jerked, catching the first wild current, and Delorah's stomach swept up, weightless, as the world heaved sideways. The motion was sudden, unkind, then delicious. A hard left, then loose spin, every bolt working overtime. Delorah screamed before she meant to, the sound bursting out, carried away by the ocean wind. Kit whooped—raw, exuberant, head thrown back, hair blowing everywhere, laughter rising up like it wanted to challenge the sky itself.
The ride picked up speed, outrageously, irresponsibly fast, spinning them so the ocean and sun and pier all streaked into ribbons and the sky vanished into a blur.
The force pinned them into the seat, the heavy press of Kit's thigh an anchor in the storm. Delorah clung to the bar, her knuckles turning white. Kit didn't bother. He rode it one-handed, other arm thrown high, face split with wild joy, eyes gone wild and sparkling.
"You alive over there?" he called over the music and wind, voice bubbling with laughter.
"I hate you!" she managed to shout, words snatched and scattered by the rush.
"Liar!" He was grinning so hard it looked like it hurt.
She was absolutely lying. The scream chased itself into laughter, tumbling out, breathless and unstoppable. Something inside her unzipped. She didn't mourn it, just watched pieces of herself spin out into the air, trailing behind them like strips of confetti.
Another spin. Sharper and harder. Her shoulder slammed into his, the contact grounding and electric at the same time. Kit didn't move away. He just leaned in, pressing back, letting their bodies find the same rhythm, two thrown stones riding the same surge. They were caught in it now: the ride, the gravity, the wind, and each other.
The car slowed for a desperate breath, as if catching its own, then snapped violently into another spin, faster this time, almost malicious. And in that flash,Delorah turned her face toward Kit, hair whipping, chest pounding—and he was already watching her.
Their eyes locked. His smile, wide and sharp, made her feel exposed and newly made. The wild, aching look was quieter now, softened by the wind and sunlight and something hungry but not desperate. In that moment, it was just the two of them. No contracts, no catalogs of regret, no shadows from home waiting. Only motion, only laughter, only the sky turning inside out above their heads.
She could barely think, much less breathe. But she was here. She was real. He was real. They were spinning together, the world coming apart and reassembling into something that belonged only to them, just for this moment.
Not the contracts. Not the names. Not the boy who waited at home.
Only this.
Only him.
Only the ride.
The Tilt-A-Whirl stuttered to a stop, a final, reluctant groan torn from its bones. For a heartbeat it just… trembled there, metal sighing, platform creaking as it dragged itself inch by inch back into stillness, like some great animal resentful of the calm forced upon it. Underneath Delorah's ribs, her heartbeat worked a double shift—still stumbling, still catching up, as if some superstitious part of her hadn't yet realized the sky was upright and the world wasn't spinning out from under her feet.
Kit didn't speak as the safety bar popped loose, the thunk oddly ceremonial. He moved slow, loose-limbed and barely holding himself together, that dazed grin still pulling at his mouth. He looked at her—eyes dancing with leftover adrenaline, hair wild from the wind and heat—then unfolded his body from the seat like a puppet whose strings had been severed but who hadn't gotten the message.
She followed, clumsy and boneless, legs wobbling, lungs working overtime. Every step off the metal ramp felt like walking on a dock after a boat—her body swayed, equilibrium confused. Sunlight hit their faces, gold and blinding, painting everything too sharp: every fleck of salt on her cheeks, every frayed curl tumbling loose across Kit's forehead. It all felt suspiciously real, like a curtain had been thrown open on some bygone stage.
As she stepped down, she staggered, bumping Kit's shoulder—his body solid and reassuring. Her laughter caught somewhere between a cough and a gasp, while her hair fell like a curtain in her eyes, one hand up to ward off the glare. She felt raw, like every sense was scoured fresh and tender.
"I think I left my soul on turn four," she managed, voice hoarse with aftershock.
"Turn four's a bitch," Kit said, utterly deadpan. "She eats souls and spits out vertigo. If you were anyone else, I'd have written an obituary."
Still a little dream-drunk, he guided her by the elbow—a casual, gentle pressure—toward the nearest bench. The plank wood had faded to a tired gray under years of sun and salt. They collapsed together, sprawling and graceless, letting the bench have their weight. A gull wheeled overhead, crying like a warped clarinet. The air shimmered thick with the distant smell of frying oil and sunscreen, with the thump of footsteps and the drone of games from farther down the boardwalk—everything distant, everything untouchable, everything melting under the brush of a rising breeze.
For a few long moments, neither of them moved. They just breathed—ragged, rhythmic breaths as if each inhale might steady the room still spinning behind their eyelids.
Delorah leaned forward, elbows driving into her knees, trying to piece herself back together. Her lips parted, air dragging in slow as she blinked at some middle distance. Her eyes unfocused, cheeks still sparking pink, her mouth pulled into a half-smile, half-astonished line.
She laughed softly, almost to herself; she still sounded surprised to find herself on solid ground.
Kit slouched into the back of the bench, arms draped loosely along the worn wood, knuckles grazing just behind her shoulders. His head tipped back, baring his throat to the sunlight, lids half-closed, jaw unclenched. There was a gentleness in his posture, or something heartbreakingly adjacent to gentle—a peace earned in the aftermath, when the wildness had burned itself out and left only a slow, grateful ache.
A sudden buzz snapped at the edge of the moment.
Kit blinked, surfacing just enough to dig out his phone. The blue glow washed unevenly over his face, shadow pooling in the hollows of his cheeks, daggers of light slicing through the mess of his hair.
A new message. One line. TYLER:
Where the hell are you, cryptid?
Kit huffed, low and fond, a half-snort that wrinkled the bridge of his nose. He didn't answer right away, just stared at the words, thumb hovering as if the world required a careful touch after so much spinning.
Eventually, slow and deliberate, he thumbed a reply:
Beach day. Don't narc. I'll bring you a seashell.
The phone vibrated again almost before his hand slipped back to his lap.
Your ass better be sunburned for this to be worth it.
Kit grinned without looking up. "Tyler says hi."
Delorah groaned, dragging all ten fingers through her hair until it stood up in wild, rebellious stray curls. "Are we going to get suspended?"
He shot her a sideways look. "No, I am. You're a golden child. You'll get, like, a warning and a tissue box painted with glitter and gold stars."
She laughed, loud and messy, the kind that made passersby glance over. "Please. If my mom finds out, I'll get funeral glitter."
That broke him. Kit finally turned his whole body to face her, sunlight slipping gold on his lashes. He really looked—took her in, the flush on her cheeks, the scuffed knees, her lips still wet from laughing and the ocean spray. There was a curl at the corners of her mouth she couldn't quite hide, hair falling out of its tie in wild strands along her jaw and neck, salt left bright along her collarbone.
She looked ruined in the best way. A person who'd felt everything and not pulled back. Maybe, he thought, someone who'd remember this blur of sunlight and noise even when life got busy burying it in other memories.
"You okay?" Kit asked, lower now, soft enough to hide in the breeze.
Delorah nodded, then half-shrugged, a lopsided smile fighting its way through. "Kinda feel like I got hit by a joy bus."
"Better than a real one."
"Debatable."
Kit tucked one leg up on the bench, turning to face her, one arm still along the backrest, fingers splayed just behind her. He didn't touch—didn't push—but the presence was there, warm and certain, a promise he probably didn't know he was making. He seemed suddenly so solid, a wall against the world, effortless and close.
A sudden wind caught a wild lock of her hair, painting it across her cheek. She reached to sweep it away, fingers caught in a tangle, but Kit beat her to it. His hand was feather-light, fingers sliding the strand behind her ear. He barely brushed her skin—a ghost of a touch, the heat of it lingering long after he let go.
She stilled. The world narrowed.
Kit held there for a breath, thumb grazing the pad of his own finger as if still testing the texture of her hair, then let his hand drop back. Whatever that moment meant, he didn't press. Just let it settle like sugar on the tongue.
As if nothing had passed between them, he straightened and murmured, "Wanna get funnel cake? I feel like my blood sugar's been replaced by glitter and spite."
Delorah snorted, dragging herself upright with an exaggerated groan, hands braced on her knees. "God, yes. But only if you promise not to throw up a cocktail of sugar and vape smoke all over me."
"No promises," Kit said, already swinging to his feet and tossing a wicked smile over his shoulder. "But if I do, I'll try to spell your name in cursive."
"You're disgusting."
"Romantic." He offered a mock-bow as she punched his arm, his laughter ringing against the wood planks.
Side by side, they wandered back toward the boardwalk, sunlight pooling at their feet, their shadows leaning out long and riotous in the late-day gold. Behind them, the Tilt-A-Whirl creaked on its platform, still spinning a little as if searching for their return, the way certain moments in life keep moving even after you think you've stepped away.
The scent hit first.
Salt and sugar, oil and dough—thick enough to taste, gritty on the tongue before anything even passed her lips. It rolled out across the pier in sticky, invisible waves that wrapped around Delorah's skin, promising heat and fried indulgence, and threatened to follow her home, trailing after her like a stray dog that only needed one reason to stay. Kit tilted his head back and inhaled, chest rising in a dramatic arc, letting the smell pour into him as if it might fix something hollow inside.
"Jesus Christ," he murmured, bending the words around a grin. "This is what heaven smells like. If heaven's run by high school dropouts and deep fryers."
Delorah squinted along the stretch of food stands ahead, sun bouncing off chrome and smeared glass, making everything shimmer like a mirage of calories and bad choices. The glare burned trails across her vision. She couldn't help but grin at Kit's delight. "You're high."
"And you're welcome."
They followed the noisy thump of the crowd until they wound up at a battered blue shack, the kind that could only exist by the ocean—its paint peeled and scabbed by sun, the sign reading HOT FOOD in flaking yellow, everything honest, unpretending. The young man in his early 20's behind the counter had the shell-shocked stare of someone halfway between REM sleep and existential surrender, but he slid open the window all the same.
Kit ordered with the enthusiasm of a pilgrim presented with holy relics. "One funnel cake, extra powdered sugar. And a corn dog. Fries. One of those drinks. Yeah, the blue one, the one that looks like windshield wiper fluid, perfect." When Delorah tried to demur, stubbornly insisting, "I'm good, really—not hungry," Kit shot her a look so sharp she gave up with a huff, and soon found herself conscripted into holding half a chili cheese dog, its scent making empty promises in the breeze.
"Don't give me that look," she mumbled, eyeing the loaded paper tray.
Kit widened his own eyes in mock innocence. "You haven't eaten since—actually, I have no idea if you ever eat." He nudged her toward a slanted picnic table, its wood silvered with salt and age, half of it sinking slightly into the warped slats of the pier.
"I do eat," she insisted, sitting gingerly, picking up her fork like a challenge. "Just not when I'm being peer-pressured by a boy who thinks funnel cake is a love language."
"It is," Kit replied without missing a beat, collapsing on the bench with the tragic elegance of someone mortally wounded by snack cravings. "I care about you enough to let you see me covered in powdered sugar like a toddler who lost a fight with a bag of donuts."
And then he delivered: a bite, sugar snowing down the front of his hoodie, dusting the corners of his mouth. His eyes still too wide, the sunlight catching at the tips of his lashes and making him look almost golden, almost otherworldly.
Delorah couldn't help but laugh, the sound coming out sharper and lighter. She took a cautious bite of her hot dog. It was atrocious—greasy, over-the-top, neon with onions and melted cheese—and absolutely miraculous.
"I'm never going back to school," she said around a mouthful, voice muffled by bread and bravado. "This is my life now. Pier food and identity fraud."
Kit wheezed in delight, nearly losing his grip on the funnel cake. "We'll join the seagulls! Live off crumbs and fallen fries, start speaking in riddles. Haunt the boardwalk. Become local cryptids."
Delorah chewed slower. She didn't bother tucking her hair behind her ear when the wind whipped it across her face. The sun felt hotter here, glowing off the ocean, making everything shimmer like it might burst into song.
Kit leaned forward, elbows planted, his drink sweating blue streaks onto the table. "No joke, though. You think we'll get caught?"
"Eventually," she said, tone softening. Not a threat, not a promise—just leftover honesty.
He squinted at her, lips quirking up on one side. "Not very affirming."
"Just honest. We've got enemies." She took a sip out of the drink kit had bought them to cleanse her palate.
He gestured, his mouth full. "Name five."
"My mom."
His eyes lit up in mock alarm. "Fair."
"Sebastian." Her voice was a little unsteady when she listed his brothers name.
That did it. A flicker crossed Kit's face, quick but real. His jaw tightened by a fraction, but he didn't say anything, just took another savage bite of funnel cake.
"Capitalism," she tossed out, and he held both hands up in surrender.
"Terrifying," he agreed, wide-eyed.
"Time."
"Absolute bitch."
"And gravity."
Kit dropped his hands in mock defeat, white with sugar. "Can't argue with that. Gravity's got a vendetta."
Their conversation faded into companionable silence, the kind that needed no qualifying, filled with the clatter of gulls overhead fighting for scraps, and the warped song of a violin drifting down the boards. A street musician bleeding out something old and blue into the spaces between their words. The breeze picked up, tangling sugar and sea salt in Delorah's hair, and for once she didn't bother to tame the chaos.
She stared at her tray, lost in thought. "Y'know… for a fugitive breakfast, this is kind of perfect."
Kit didn't answer right away. She felt his gaze—steady and searching—not quite smiling, not quite sad, like he wanted to memorize her in this sunlight, keep a piece of her between the folds of this golden afternoon.
"I was hoping you'd say that," he murmured, softer than before. Like a confession, or a request.
And then, just as the quiet swelled and time loosened its grip, Kit's phone buzzed again: shrill, insistent, dragging reality back to the table. He drew it out, thumb skimming the cracked screen.
Tyler: you have 60 seconds to explain why I just saw your car on Instagram with the caption 'Hawthorne's local cryptid skips school for the pier 🧍♂️🍩'.
Kit angled the phone toward Delorah, face split with disbelief. She choked on her drink, eyes wide.
"Who the hell posted that?!"
Kit pinched and zoomed. There it was—his car, just as they'd left it, crooked as sin. And him leaning on the hood, arms out, a fuzzy specter caught in mid-gesture. Hoodie, boots, the works.
"Someone with taste," he deadpanned. "Look at that. Iconic."
"You're so cooked," she groaned, but she was already laughing.
He gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Cooked and caramelized. Like a funnel cake. Like fate."
And she couldn't hold back: the laugh exploded out, loud and unashamed, shaking the sugared air between them. It was the kind of laugh that echoed down the pier, that broke things open inside, the kind that made the day feel like it belonged only to them.
For a second, with the world coated in salt and sun and noise, she almost believed it: that they really could be invincible, just for today.
Sebastian hadn't meant to come. Not really.
Not in the way anyone meant anything when they were thinking clearly.
And yet there he was, parked half a block from Hawthorne, the afternoon sun slanting gold and sharp against the windshield, engine ticking as it cooled. The car was an extension of his will—clean, silent, expensive—but now it felt like a waiting room. The air still carried the bite of the coast, brine and eucalyptus drifting in from somewhere beyond the parking lot's muted hum.
He watched the school from the safety of shadow, eyes narrowed as if the squat brick walls, all bells and battered banners, might lean forward and divulge a secret just for him. If he waited long enough, maybe the glass would cloud with the shape of her name, or the fluorescent lights would flicker their confession:
Where is Delorah?
His jaw ticked, a muscle pulsing tight beneath the skin. Her name had become a sore in his mouth—a spell, too raw and too alive.
The contract was signed. Her parents had smiled the polite, brittle smiles of people who believed in assurances and plotted futures. Her mother had even clasped his hand, firm and grateful, like she thought he could be a solution to problems she would never say aloud.
And yet—he hadn't seen Delorah since.
No thank you. No excitement. No gentle drift into the easy choreography he'd expected.
No: she'd vanished instead, absented herself from every step of the ritual. She hadn't come to him. She hadn't honored what had been arranged. She didn't act like someone who was going to become his wife.
And worst of all—
Kit was still breathing.
That's what this really was, wasn't it? Not a business visit, not a quick courier errand for a piece of paper or some signature. It was a check-in. A recalibration. That quiet, knife-edged panic he could never name out loud. Not nervousness, no. Sebastian Honey did not do "nervous."
He got interested.
He got involved.
He got results.
He strode across the campus, past the neon safety banners and the huddle of students slouching through the final throes of adolescence. Doorways opened for him—quiet confidence, an easy nod, the practiced flicker of his father's name at the secretary's desk.
Businesslike. Official. She only hesitated a second, then gestured him down the hall with an eager smile, her finger pointing the way to Ms. Bellamy's classroom.
The hallway hummed with institutional energy—half-lit, half-daydream. Students flowed between lockers in tight packs, laughter echoing off walls, oblivious, believing themselves untouchable. None of them even glanced at him as he passed.
Ms. Bellamy's door stood half-open, yellow light spilling out in a thin wedge. He pushed inside, didn't bother to announce himself; he never needed to. The teacher looked up, startled, but he offered her a smile. A careful mask.
He scanned the room with the cold efficiency of someone used to auditing. One pass, absorbing everything.
Two desks. Both empty.
One with a blue sweater, neatly folded, so familiar his hands ached with memory. Her scent hovered faintly above it. A perfume with notes he'd learned to recognize. Sunlight. Peach maybe. The ghost of last night or last year.
The desk beside it had a single blemish: scrawled, half-scrubbed ink. ASH. A crude attempt at erasure, the ghost of Kit clinging even in residue, as if refusing to be washed away. Sebastian's lips curled, almost in a laugh. Old habits die hard, he mused.
Kit never could outrun his name, no matter how much haze or havoc he wrapped himself in.
"Sebastian?" Ms. Bellamy's voice broke in, gentle, tentative. Her glasses caught the sheen from the window.
He turned, polite, composed. A portrait of decorum. "Apologies for the interruption, ma'am. I'm just here for signatures." As if by sleight of hand, a file folder slid from beneath his coat, perfectly creased.
She smiled and nodded, distracted. Already gathering her things, pen at the ready. Her presence faded like background noise.
He turned back to the sweater, the rest of the world blurred around the edges. His hand hovered, fingers trembling imperceptibly. He lifted the fabric, folding it slow and reverent, as if it was part of some private rite. Not rushed, not furtive. Deliberate. Careful.
He pressed it beneath his arm, aligning the collar with unnecessary tenderness. He imagined himself, for a moment, as any responsible fiancé: collecting what belonged to him. Returning what was lost to its proper place.
He lingered, letting his gaze slip to Kits haunted desk where so much mess had been left behind.
You've had your chance.
The contract is signed.
It's time Delorah remembered to whom she belonged.
With one last, silent survey—a final appraisal of ghosts, graffiti, and sun-faded promises—he turned on his heel and left. The door fell shut behind him, more final than any signature.
Outside, Sebastian slid into the driver's seat of his Audi, the supple leather still holding the sun's warmth like a private memory. He closed the door with a soft, precise thud, shutting out the noise of the world beyond. He didn't reach for the ignition right away. He just sat, suspended, the arc of his spine at perfect attention, one hand resting lightly on the wheel, the other settling atop the sealed contract on the passenger seat. Wordless, weighty, waiting.
From this vantage, Hawthorne looked shrunken, insignificant—a squat complex of bricks and good intentions, ringed by battered fences and the hubris of permanence. A cage, really. Kit's cage. A place he'd always been too wild for, too restless—always picking at the bars, always dreaming up better escapes, but never quite slipping free. Not really.
Sebastian exhaled, careful and slow. He'd spent nearly half an hour inside, tracing the hallways at a measured pace that lacked urgency but suggested authority—a prowling orbit, neither hunting nor lost, just mapping the emptiness left behind by two selfish absences. The lack of Delorah, the lack of Kit, pressed itself into each classroom, every seat they should have filled, every glance cast over a shoulder to confirm: no, they hadn't come back. Not today.
He hadn't needed to ask many questions. There was an art to moving through a place. Small nods here, a quiet crossing of distance, the way his gaze made people stand up a little straighter. Ms. Bellamy's posture had gone rigid the instant his shadow crossed her threshold; a junior in the hallway had stopped mid-sentence, voice trailing off to a whisper as he passed. And when he stopped—so precise, so polite—to ask, "Has anyone seen Delorah LaRoche?" the answers tumbled out, more eager than he deserved.
People always answered him. They always had.
No specifics. Never the things he truly wanted. Only evasions, watery uncertainties, and the sticky hush of a secret that everyone seemed to have touched but him.
Not yet.
Sebastian's lips curled into a smile—delicate, predatory, just a ghost of teeth. The kind of smile you wear when you know your patience is running thin, and soon something will break.
He picked up his phone. Unlocked it with a practiced tap. There was no tremor in his hand—only precision, efficiency, calculation.
He composed the message in measured, stripped lines:
Sebastian: Kit didn't show up today. Neither did the girl.
No color. No drama. No need for it. The simple truth was enough; it would land where it needed to, sharp as a pebble in a shoe.
He hit send. Watched the message flicker away, bound for his father's inbox, cold and official and unanswerable. With it, the first tug of the leash around Kit's throat. No shout, no threat, just the slow tightening you feel in your dreams, and wake up already choking.
A pulse rolled through the speakers, low and relentless—a song with no melody, only rhythm, the heartbeat of something plotting its move. Sebastian tapped the wheel in time, gaze steady as headlights blinked and students spilled out and the whole school seemed to tilt slightly, as if sensing a change in the air.
At last, he started the engine. The machine caught with a deep, cultivated purr, every detail engineered for comfort but filled now with something predatory. He pulled out of the lot with careful smoothness, not fast, not slow, letting the car slip into traffic like a rumor—a threat, coiled and invisible, moving inexorably toward whatever came next.