Salt in the air. Sun on your skin. Boats rocking gently like nothing bad has ever happened here. But paradise has sides. Lines you're born on. And once you know which side you're on, you don't really get to forget it.
Kook or Pogue.
I was born a Kook.
Elizabeth Thornton. Lizzy, if you're close enough. My last name carried weight—old money, dock-side property, dinner parties with crystal glasses and fake smiles. The kind of family that didn't worry about hurricanes because insurance always paid out. The kind that waved at the Pogues from their boats and called it charity.
And because of that, my life was mapped out before I ever had a say.
Especially once I fell in love with Rafe Cameron.
Rafe and I had been together since high school. Before the drugs. Before the yelling. Before Ward Cameron's shadow stretched so long it swallowed everything in its path. Back when Rafe laughed easy and held my hand like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go.
Back when loving him didn't feel like standing too close to the edge of a cliff.
The Camerons were basically royalty here. Ward Cameron owned half the island, and the rest might as well have been scared of him. That made Rafe a prince. And by default, I became his princess. The perfect Kook couple everyone watched—envied, whispered about, expected things from.
Our friend group was the usual.
Topper—my brother—golden boy with a temper buried under polos and privilege. Sarah Cameron—Rafe's sister—beautiful, sharp, and always halfway out the door even when she pretended she wasn't. She and Topper were together, on and off, like they were trying to prove something to everyone else.
Kelce was always there too. Loud. Reckless. Loyal in the way boys like him were loyal—until things got real.
And Rafe.
God. Rafe.
He was the storm everyone pretended not to see coming.
We did Kook shit. Boat days. Beach parties. Drinking too much, laughing too loud, pretending we were untouchable. Pretending money made us invincible.
But in the last months, everything's cracked.
Rafe started drifting. Disappearing for hours. Coming back with his jaw clenched and his eyes dark like he was carrying something poisonous inside him. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pull him back—not from Ward, not from the expectations, not from himself.
Then there were the Pogues.
John B and his little crew were everything Kooks hated—dirty, broke, loud, always in places they didn't belong. They were chaos wrapped in sunburnt skin and bad decisions. We were raised to look down on them. To blame them for everything wrong with the island.
I never really joined in on that.
Whenever the others started talking trash—calling them rats, thieves, trash—I stayed quiet. I'd learned early that staying silent was safer than disagreeing. Especially around Rafe. Especially around my brother.
But silence doesn't mean agreement.
And sometimes, silence is its own kind of guilt.
Because while the Kooks were busy protecting their image, the Pogues were just trying to survive. And somehow, they were about to collide with us in a way none of us could stop.
So yeah—things are broken now. Shattered, really. And maybe they always were.
But if you're going to understand how it all fell apart...
