The devil of Haven Beach.
“Looks like we have a new contender,” he called out. “Think you can hold your own against a doughy girl instead of me? I’d love to watch that, Jansen.”
Doughy?God, I hate him.
Seb replied, but I couldn’t hear it for all the damned barking. Or maybe I was just too busy being spellbound by the sight of Seb after so long. The way he looked at me, with eyes bigger than the moon, caused a chaotic flurry of emotions.
I wanted to hug him.
To ask him a thousand questions.
Then push his face into the sand.
Make him hurt like he’d hurt me.
But a couple dozen faces were staring and whispering aboutme—“That’s the Malone girl, the family that owned the cherry farm outside of town”—and then I heard someone else in the crowd say my grandmother’s name.
That was my tipping point. Fresh grief welled up, and everything suddenly felt as if it were closing in on me. The fighting ring. The barking dog. The wild faces watching...
I can’t do this.
I turned on my heel and walked away from the bonfire before I did something regrettable like breaking down in front of all these dumb boys. My chest was tight as I trudged across the sand, ignoring whistles and taunts and the dog’s barking, which seemed to follow me, no matter how fast I walked. Then I felt heavy footfalls coming up fast from behind.
“Paige! Hold up!”
I swung around to find both the husky and Seb racing toward me. Seb gripped a T-shirt in one hand. His racing slowed to a jog until he caught up with me. The black dog stopped behind him and continued barking.
“For the love of Christ, shut it, Punkin!” Seb told the ugly husky, breathless. “Nobody’s fighting, okay? No barking!”
Punkin... ?
The dog quit barking and politely sat, panting.
“She’s a retired sled dog from up north. Got her off a musher... it’s a long story. Anyway, she hates fighting,” he explained, almost sheepish but not quite.
“And you hate dogs,” I said, remembering the mystery bag of kibble that I threw away inside the cottage when I was cleaning up. “Since when did that change?”
He chuckled and tugged his T-shirt over his head, one that had the Neely Marina logo on the front. “No,youhate dogs. Ionly went along with that out of solidarity after you had to have a rabies shot, princess.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why? You still have the crown.”
Before my father ruined our family, the Malones owned one of the best cherry orchards in western Michigan. We lived in a stunning turreted Victorian near the harbor on the “good” side of town. Even after we lost the farm, I entered the Little Miss Cherry Princess contest during the town’s annual Cherry Festival when I was seven years old and won a plastic crown.
Seb has never let me forget it.
He exhaled, curious eyes flicking over me. “Bangs, huh?”
Jesus. Never cutting my own hair again, that was for sure.Stupid influencers and their dumb videos...
“I just can’t believe it,” he said. “You look so different. But also, the same... ?”
So did he, now that I wasn’t forced to avoid staring at his bare chest. “You look like a homeless surfer who got clocked by his board.”
He wrinkled his nose and gingerly touched the skin around his black eye. “Clocked by Pretty Paul Vanderburg, but yeah. I’ve been doing a little surfing. What about you? I thought you were going to Europe for the summer. Surprised to see you back home.”
How would he even know about Europe? And he didn’t look all that surprised, frankly. Were he and Jazmine talking again? She hadn’t mentioned him.
