Episode 2

By morning, Eden had learned three important things.

First, resort towels were not designed for shame. They were thick, soft, white, and criminally good at making a person feel like a soaking-wet cautionary tale in luxury packaging.

Second, Sophie Lane could keep a secret for approximately eight hours, but only if she was allowed to weaponize her eyebrows over breakfast.

Third, everyone at Cypress Cove Resort had either seen Eden tackle a stranger into the pool or had heard a version of it that involved her screaming, sprinting, and possibly saving a life.

"I did save a life," Eden said, lowering herself into the chair across from Sophie on the breakfast terrace.

Sophie looked up from her fruit bowl. Her blond hair was twisted into a neat knot. Her sunglasses rested on top of her head. She looked fresh, rested, and tragically unsympathetic.

"You saved him from being dry."

"That still counts. Florida is hot."

"He was on a phone call."

Eden reached for the iced water in the center of the table and took a long drink. Her head gave one small, punishing pulse behind her eyes. Not a hangover, exactly. More like her body had issued a written warning about future margaritas.

"I remember the phone call," she said.

"Do you remember calling him tragic?"

Eden froze with the glass halfway to her mouth.

Sophie smiled.

"No," Eden said carefully.

"Do you remember saluting him?"

"No."

"Do you remember telling him to stay alive?"

Eden put the glass down. "I would like to be returned to Oregon now."

Sophie laughed, but it was soft, not mean. That was the danger of Sophie. She could laugh at Eden and still make it feel like being tucked under a blanket.

"It could have been worse," she said.

"How?"

"You could have tried mouth-to-mouth."

Eden stared at her.

Sophie suddenly became very interested in a strawberry.

A cold ripple went down Eden's spine.

"Sophie."

"Hmm?"

"Did I try mouth-to-mouth?"

"No."

"That no had texture."

"You did not try mouth-to-mouth."

"What did I try?"

Sophie lifted one shoulder. "Nothing that counts if you were wet, drunk, and actively being carried away from a pool."

Eden covered her face with both hands.

"I need details."

"You need coffee. Details are for people with stable blood pressure."

"Sophie."

Her best friend sighed. "Fine. He helped Lucas get you out of the pool area because you kept saying you were fine while walking in a diagonal line. At some point, you grabbed his shirt and thanked him for being alive. Your face got close to his face. That is all."

Eden peeked through her fingers. "How close?"

"Close enough that Lucas made a sound like a dying printer."

"I hate this resort."

"You love this resort. You just hate that it has witnesses."

That was painfully accurate.

The breakfast terrace sat above the beach, all pale umbrellas and teak tables, with the ocean glittering hard and blue beyond the railing. Students from the summer program moved between the buffet and the tables in clusters. The donor kids, as Sophie had privately named them, looked as if they had been born knowing how to carry linen napkins and inherited resentment.

Harper Quinn waved from a table near the railing. Beside her, Summer Vale sat quiet and careful, hands folded around a mug. Across from them, Celeste Wynn leaned back in her chair, perfect hair falling over one shoulder while she said something that made the girls around her laugh.

Summer did not laugh.

Eden noticed because she knew that posture. Small shoulders. Chin tucked. A person trying to take up less room than she had been given.

"Do not adopt her," Sophie said without looking.

"I wasn't."

"You were making the face."

"What face?"

"The I can fix this with kindness face."

Before Eden could deny it, the terrace shifted.

Not loudly. No one gasped. No one announced anything. But attention moved the way sunlight moved when a cloud passed. A few girls at the buffet straightened. Two boys from the program glanced toward the steps. Celeste stopped mid-sentence and looked over with a slow, assessing smile.

Eden turned.

The boy from the pool walked onto the terrace.

Hutton Lambert.

He wore a black Fairhaven T-shirt, athletic shorts, and the same kind of cap pulled low over his eyes. His hair was dry now. So were his clothes, which felt personally unfair. He looked less like last night's soaked disaster and more like someone who belonged to the resort's private parts, the ones with locked doors and staff who knew your name before you gave it.

Simon Jonas walked beside him, talking with his hands.

"No," Hutton said.

"I didn't even finish."

"You were about to be stupid."

"That's hurtful. Accurate, but hurtful."

Eden should have looked away.

She did not.

Hutton's head turned before Simon's did. The brim of his cap hid most of his face, but Eden felt the moment his attention landed on her. It was not a glance. It was steadier than that. Quiet. Focused. As if he had walked onto a crowded terrace and found the only thing he had been looking for.

Her stomach did something embarrassing.

"He's watching you," Sophie murmured.

"Maybe he's checking for additional rescue attempts."

"Maybe he remembers you tried to climb him like a lifeguard tower."

"I need you to stop helping."

Simon noticed them then. His gaze flicked from Eden to Sophie, then back to Hutton. A grin spread across his face.

"Oh," Simon said loudly enough that Eden heard it. "So that's her."

Hutton did not answer.

He only kept looking at Eden.

Celeste's table noticed too. Eden felt that attention like a second sunburn.

"Do you know him?" Harper asked when Eden and Sophie carried their plates over a few minutes later.

"No," Eden said.

"She rescued him," Sophie said at the same time.

Eden kicked her under the table.

Harper's eyes widened. "That was you?"

Summer looked up, startled, then smiled for the first time all morning. "That was kind of brave."

"It was kind of concussed," Celeste said from the next chair, her smile sweet enough to rot teeth. "But cute. In a scholarship-girl way."

The table went still.

Eden set her fork down.

She could feel Sophie tense beside her, ready to step in. But Eden had spent too much of her life watching people with money decide whether kindness was fashionable. She knew the trick was not to sound wounded. Wounded gave them dessert.

"Thanks," Eden said brightly. "I was going for lifesaving with a budget-friendly twist."

Harper choked on her orange juice.

Celeste's smile sharpened.

"I didn't mean anything by it."

"Great. Then I won't take anything from it."

Across the terrace, Simon laughed into his coffee.

Hutton did not laugh.

He looked at Celeste, then at Summer's small, folded hands, then back at Eden. Something unreadable shifted in his face.

Summer leaned closer to Eden and whispered, "Thank you."

"For what?" Eden whispered back.

"For making it sound easy."

It had not been easy. Eden's heart was knocking hard, and her face felt hot, but she smiled anyway.

"That's my brand. Publicly breezy, privately spiraling."

Summer's laugh was small but real.

The rest of breakfast passed with Celeste pretending she had never cared and Harper trying too hard to smooth the air. Eden answered when she had to. Mostly she tried not to look toward the table where Hutton sat with Simon.

She failed at least six times.

Once, she caught Hutton with his cap tipped low, his arms folded, his coffee untouched. Watching her.

Not smiling.

Not flirting.

Just watching, as if he was learning something he did not intend to forget.

By the time Eden escaped to the beach path, the sun was high enough to turn the sand white. Sophie had gone to change for a program tour. Harper and the others were still on the terrace. Eden walked alone with her sandals in one hand, letting the warm surf rush over her feet.

"You know," Lucas Ward said behind her, "most people try to make a quieter first impression."

Eden turned and found him walking down the path with two iced coffees, one of which he held out like a peace offering.

"Most people don't look like they're about to walk into the ocean."

"He wasn't."

"So everyone keeps saying."

Lucas studied her over the rim of his cup. His expression was dry, but not unkind.

"You really don't remember all of it, do you?"

Eden's toes curled into the wet sand.

"All of what?"

Lucas looked back toward the terrace, where Hutton's dark cap was just visible through the palms.

Then he smiled, slow and terrible.

"The pool was only the beginning."