Rider lifted his beer. “Twice.”
“Betrayal from the quiet corner hurts the most.”
Charm glanced at me, then at Easton, before looking back at me with the subtle warning of a best friend who knew I was about to do something dumb and had chosen to respect my right to be a disaster.
“You coming?”
“In a minute.”
Bliss opened her mouth, then closed it when my face told her not to mother me in public.
She pointed two fingers at her eyes, then at mine. “No bodies in lakes. No felonies. No vanishing without texting.”
“Your rules lack romance.”
“Your choices lack survival instinct.”
“I’ll text if I see a camera and three other guys waiting to ambush me.”
“That’s not funny,” she said.
I knew it was below the belt to joke with them about what happened to me in high school, but Charm dragged her toward the food tables before I could apologize.
Briggs hesitated like he might stay and supervise for moral reasons, but Ryan hooked a hand around the back of his neck and steered him away.
“Come on, golden retriever. Let them ruin their own evening.”
“I feel like I should witness.”
“You witness too loudly.”
Rider stood last, brushing sand from his palms. His gaze cut briefly toward Easton and then me, calm and unreadable.
“The second bonfire’s quieter,” he said, his voice low enough that only we could hear. I looked at him, but he didn’t quite smile. “In case you need a place to chill.”
Then he walked away.
Easton watched him go, something thoughtful moving across his face.
“He’s weird,” I said.
“He hears more than people think.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is when you’re trying to hide shit.”
I looked back at him. “Are you trying to hide shit?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
His mouth curved. “Maybe.”
The sun had dropped lower, turning the lake dark blue around the edges. The party shifted with it, bodies moving closer to the fires, wet skin drying beneath towels, and laughter growing louder as the night loosened everyone’s better judgment. Someone started a second speaker near the volleyball net. The smell of smoke mixed with coconut sunscreen, lake water, and the sharp, sugary scent of spilled hard seltzer soaking into the sand.
Easton stepped closer, and this time, I didn’t move back. “You came with a crowd, per usual.”
