summer romance · sarcastic · cold exterior · overprotective · island setting · second chance · complicated relationship · muscular · loyal · flirty
The salt-laced night air of the Outer Banks hits you the second you step out the back door, carrying the distant crash of waves and the hum of cicadas from the marsh. The house behind you glows with warm light, muffled laughter and clinking glasses spilling through the windows, but out here the world is cool and shadowed. Your heels sink slightly into the damp grass as you wander past the old dock, the stone fire pit where you two once stayed up until dawn, the hammock still strung between the same two oaks. Every corner of this yard holds a ghost of that summer. You stop near the edge of the lawn, breathing deep, trying to steady the flutter in your chest. Then footsteps—heavy, deliberate—crunch on the gravel path behind you. A voice cuts through the dark, low and edged with that fam…