“I will not.” She snorts. “Anyway, she helps him. She doesn’t know who he is, just thinks he’s a little clueless but in a charming way. She gives him a tour of the island. Takes him hiking up Diamond Head.” I gesture at the ridge in the distance. “By the time he has to leave, he’s torn. Return to his royal duties… or give it all up for the girl who still has no idea who he really is.”
Alana kicks her feet in approval. “This is peak storytelling.”
We both look back at him. He’s trying to keep up now, ducks swarming his fries like it’s a competition. I still don’t support feeding wildlife, for the record—but when he laughs—loud, easy, completely unconcerned—it carries all theway to us.
It’s unexpectedly disarming.
Just as I resign myself to letting the fake prince narrative die and start digging through my bag for a book, he stands and answers a call. His voice is low, a little amused, and while I can’t make out the words, there’s something oddly familiar in the sound of it—just enough to pull my attention back.
Then he turns, and it clicks instantly. The teasing edge, the rhythm of his speech—it’sTheo.
He’s standing fully now, laughing at something on the other end of the line, clearly unaware that he’s just dismantled an entire imaginary life I built for him. Which is fine. What’slessfine is the fact that I now need to look away—immediately. Because if he glances in our direction, I can’t be caught mid-stare.
I’m notogling, exactly. But I’m also just a girl, and Theo looks like he wandered off the set of a Baywatch reboot—shirt open, red swim trunks, a hint of tattoos curling just under his ribs.
Seriously. What is this university feeding its marine science TAs?
“Woowee, now that’s a man,” Alana whistles, full of unapologetic appreciation. I’d love to bury her in the sand just for the fact that the sound makes Theo look up in our direction.
His eyes flick wide in recognition, then settle into a boyish grin. He says something into the phone and hangs up before jogging toward us. Great.
I stand, mostly because the kind of humiliation that’s coming deserves an upright witness.
“Coralie!” he calls out just before reaching us, and then—because apparently he does that now—hugs me. Full body. Abs and all. I blink, twice, resisting the urge to dissolve into the sand.
“You’re outside school grounds,” he says, like I’ve been caught where I don’t belong. Yeah? Well,he’sin a whole other country than the one he’s supposed to be governing.
“I have a life beyond academia,” I say, arms crossing on instinct. Both he and Alana raise a brow. Right. I guess it’s debatable.
“Who’s your friend?” he asks, turning toward her. Alana, tall and composed, brushes sand from her legs and extends a hand.
“Alana,” she says with a calm smile, and I swear I see his grin widen.
“Alana,” he repeats, clearly enjoying the taste of the name on his tongue, then looks back at me. “What are y’all up to?”
“Watching you feed ducks,” she answers before I can come up with something that doesn’t make me want to walk into the ocean. I whip my head toward her with what I intend to be a withering glare, but her giggle says I’ve missed the mark.
“Oh,” Theo laughs, glancing back at the water. “Yeah, these are my guys. I know I’m not supposed to—fend for themselves, ecological impact, etcetera.” He shoots me a look. “Holden already told me. But they’re cute. I caved.”
Holden told him not to feed the ducks.
I glance at Theo, waiting for some sign that he’s joking.
There isn’t one.
Which means Holden, apparently, has opinions about bread and waterfowl. Strong enough opinions, in fact, that Theo has absorbed them as law. I should find this ridiculous. I do find it ridiculous. But underneath that, annoyingly, is something harder to dismiss.
Because every time I try to keep Holden where I’ve placed him—cold, entitled, all sharp edges and inherited authority—some small, inconvenient detail slips through and ruins thearchitecture.
Apparently, I don’t know him half as well as I thought I did.
A few short minutes later, the three of us are walking along the beach, headed toward a café Theo swears is the best on this side of the island. I tried to argue, pointing out that we’d barely been on the sand for twenty minutes, but Alana shut me down with a single glance and a remark about my UV limit.
“If you don’t want people calling you Freckles by next week,” she said, “you need to pace the exposure.”
She’s not wrong. Since arriving in Hawai?i, the freckles have multiplied with alarming enthusiasm. Theo just laughed and promised the café would be worth it—freckles and all.
We pass through an alley lined with surfboards—row after row, each one taller than seems reasonable for a single human to handle on open water. Some are wrapped in thick canvas bags, others exposed to the elements, but all of them are chained in place with heavy-duty padlocks. The sheer height and number is… impressive. A kind of orderly chaos that could only belong to a surf town.
