I exhale. “It got ugly after homecoming,” I admit. “That kiss didn’t help.”
His jaw tightens.
“The girls came after me,” I continue. “And at states… someone served a ball straight into the back of my head.”
He looks up sharply.
“That wasn’t an accident?”
“No,” I say quietly. “It wasn’t. Granted I was at net, so she had plausible deniability.”
Silence stretches.
The ocean fills it.
“I didn’t know,” he says.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated with something that happened years too late.
“But we’re not there anymore,” he says finally. “We’re not kids.”
I cross my arms.
“Pretty boys don’t stop being pretty boys.”
His gaze locks onto mine.
“You still light me on fire, Stell.”
The words hit like impact.
My body reacts before my brain can armor up. Pulse jumps. Breath catches. My pupils widen—I know they do because I feel exposed in a way I hate.
Five years disappears for half a second.
Electricity. Static. That impossible awareness.
I step back.
Because I cannot afford to believe him.
“You always did say the right thing,” I say, quieter now. “That doesn’t mean I trust it.”
Something flickers across his face—not anger, not ego.
Respect. Maybe.
“I’m not asking you to trust it,” he says. “I’m just telling you it’s still true.”
The honesty is worse than charm. We walk away from the waves through the seagrass to a small beach garden. I stop just past an arbor covered in string lights.
I shake my head.
“Dangerous habit, Vale.”
“Wanting you?”
