I’m the one who hangs back at parties, who leaves early without saying goodbye, who needs too long to speak when I feel something sharp and real. And she’s in the water, glowing like she belongs to it.
I’m so fucking jealous I could scream.
After a while, they come back in. Jonathan ahead of her, pants held in one hand, shirt slung over his shoulder, water dripping down his neck. He’s smirking, breathless.
Annabel walks slower. Her body is soaked, goosebumped, glistening, nipples puckered in the soft moonlight. Her hair is plastered to her back and shoulders, black as the sea. She doesn't cover herself. Just walks barefoot across the sand like she owns it all.
I yank my sweater over my head and step forward, holding it out without a word.
She pauses, surprised. Then a soft smile pulls at her lips.
“Thanks, Calum.”
She slips it over her head. It’s too big, hanging off one shoulder, clinging to the curves of her still-wet body. I reach out, gently brushing a strand of soaked hair away from her cheek. Her skin is cool, damp beneath my fingers.
She looks up at me—eyes storm-silver, soft with something I can’t name—and for a second, I think the world might stop.
But Jonathan’s voice cuts through the quiet like a jagged blade.
“Thought we’d established I’m the impulsive one.” His tone is sharp, lazy on the edges, but his eyes are anything but. They fix on me, then drift to her. “Looks like I’ve got competition.”
He yanks his jeans on with rough hands, muttering something under his breath before stalking up the beach, toward the dark outline of his family’s cottage.
The wind howls around us, but it’s his silence that leaves me raw.
Annabel exhales, watching him go. “He’s always been like that,” she says after a beat. “Stormy. Possessive. Dramatic as hell.”
I glance at her, hesitant. “Are you… together?”
She blinks, then lets out a breath of laughter. “God, no.” She hugs her arms around herself. “We’re childhood friends. He’s just... protective. Moody. A typical artist. You’d think with all the poetry he writes he’d be better at talking like a human being.”
I huff out a laugh, surprised. “I wasn’t sure. He acts like?—”
“I know,” she says. “He always acts like that. But no, Calum. It’s not like that.”
She turns to face the water again. The moon casts a silver highway across the waves, and her wet hair clings to the back of my sweater. My sweater. On her.
“You really don’t like storms, do you?” she asks suddenly.
I glance up at the sky. “Not when they follow me.”
She smiles, just barely. “You’re quiet. But I don’t think it’s because you don’t have things to say.”
I look at her. Really look.
“You make it easier,” I admit. “To breathe. To be in the room.”
She tilts her head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “That’s a really beautiful thing to say.”
I shrug, awkward. “I meant it.”
For a long moment, we just stand there. The sea, wild and loud behind us. The storm gathering somewhere in the dark.
“I don’t sleep much,” she says softly. “Not lately. It’s like I can feel something coming.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice is distant. “A change. A shift.Like the tide’s about to pull everything I know out from under me.”
