Two years ago, JJ Maybank broke your heart to save your future. He told you to leave the Cut, play the perfect Kook, and forget he ever existed. You did exactly what he asked. Now, you’re back on Figure Eight for the summer—Ivy League-educated, practically engaged to a Kook prince, and living a flawless, suffocatingly perfect life. But the island is too small to keep the past buried forever. When a sweltering North Carolina summer forces your manicured world to collide with the reckless, adrenaline-fueled orbit of the Pogues, the lies you’ve both been telling yourselves start to unravel. JJ is still drowning his demons in cheap beer and danger, and you’re still hiding a frayed Pogue fishing line under your expensive jewelry. You’re living in completely different worlds now, but every stolen glance across a bonfire and every lingering scent of saltwater and smoke proves one terrifying truth: moving on isn't the same as letting go. A story of heavy angst, unspoken truths, and the boy from the wrong side of the island who never really left your head.