Chapter two:The night we didn’t mean to stay

Layla

The beach looked different at night — quieter, almost like it was holding its breath. Everyone else had gone back to the cabins, but I couldn’t sleep. The air was too soft, the waves too loud, and my thoughts wouldn’t stop replaying every glance Ethan and I shared that day.

I told myself it was nothing. He was just Ryan’s best friend — polite, funny, easy to be around. But the truth was, something about him felt… safe. Safe, and dangerous all at once.

I sat on the sand with my camera in hand, pretending I was here to take photos of the stars reflecting on the water. I didn’t expect him to show up.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Ethan’s voice broke through the sound of the ocean.

I turned, smiling before I could stop myself. “You too, huh?”

He shrugged, walking closer. “Ryan snores like a chainsaw. I came out here to save my sanity.”

I laughed — soft, but it felt good. He sat beside me, a little too close, but not close enough to touch. For a long time, we just listened to the waves.

“I like it like this,” I said after a while. “When it’s quiet.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s like the world finally stops yelling.”

I turned the camera toward him. “Smile.”

He blinked. “What? No way—”

Click.

I caught it anyway — his half-surprised, half-smiling face lit by moonlight. I looked at the photo on my screen and smiled. “Perfect.”

He leaned slightly toward me, voice low. “You say that like you mean it.”

“I do,” I whispered. And for a second, neither of us breathed.

⸻

Ethan

If I’d had any sense, I would’ve walked away the moment I saw her alone by the water. But something about Layla made the world quieter, like the noise in my head finally knew when to stop.

She was sitting cross-legged in the sand, camera in her lap, looking at the ocean like she belonged to it. I’d never seen someone so still and alive at the same time.

I tried not to stare. Tried harder not to care. She was Ryan’s sister, for God’s sake. There were a hundred unspoken rules I’d be breaking just by sitting here.

But then she looked at me and smiled. And suddenly, every rule felt like a suggestion.

We didn’t talk much, but it didn’t feel awkward. It felt… right. She laughed at my jokes, even the bad ones. The kind of laugh that makes you want to hear it again.

When she took that photo, something inside me twisted. The sound of the shutter was small, but it felt huge — like she’d captured something I didn’t mean to show.

She looked at the screen, then at me, and whispered, “Perfect.”

And I swear, for a heartbeat, I thought she was talking about us.

I turned back to the water before I could say something stupid. Before I told her what I was starting to feel — something I had no right to.

“Come on,” I said quietly, standing up. “Let’s get back before Ryan thinks we drowned.”

She smiled, brushing sand off her legs. “Okay.”

But as we walked back together under the dim beach lights, her shoulder brushed mine — once, just barely — and that tiny touch felt like the beginning of something I couldn’t stop even if I tried.

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