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This is different.
Everything is closer here. Mountains, sea, cliffs, old stone, houses clinging to hillsides. Like someone shoved a thousand years of history against water so clear I can see the rocks beneath it from the road.
Nora taps my stomach. “Beautiful, right?”
“Yeah.”
I feel her shift behind me.
“Told you.”
Smug little brat.
I smile just as her arms tighten around me again when we take the next curve, keeping my eyes firmly on the island.
Football.
Fucking football.
***
We hire a pedal boat big enough for all five of us. It even has a slide attached to the back, which Dex gets way too fucking excited about.
But the second we enter the cave, we all go quiet.
“Oh, wow,” Lexy breathes.
Blue light fills the entire place.
Not just the water. Everything.
It bounces off the pale rock walls and ripples across the ceiling, making the whole cave glow from underneath. The water is so clear I can see straight through it, all the way down to the rocks below us, where little silver fish dart beneath the boat.
“I remembered it was blue,” Chiara says, trailing her fingers through the fluorescent water. “But I think I forgot just how blue.”
Our voices echo against the rock.
I look over at Nora. She’s staring down into the water, but she’s not really looking at it anymore.
I know that look.
She’s somewhere else.
With him, probably.
I dip my hand into the water and flick it at her. She jerks back when the drops hit her face, her eyes snapping to mine.
“You didn’t.”
I don’t do shit like this often. Dex does. I’m usually the asshole watching him do it, but I don’t want that look on her face.
I want her smile back.
And then it comes.
There she is.
“I did.” I wiggle my eyebrows.