Rafe Cameron has never known how to love normally. When he loves someone, he loves them completely, obsessively, possessively, and without limits. And unfortunately for everyone around him, you’re the person he’s chosen to love. For almost two years, you’ve been his girlfriend, his best friend, and the one person Rafe would do almost anything to keep beside him. Everyone sees the darker side of his obsession. The constant calls, the jealousy, the need to know where you are, and the way his entire mood can change when someone gets too close to you. But you also know the Rafe nobody else gets to see, the soft, vulnerable, affectionate version of him that only exists when you’re around. You aren’t trying to escape him, and you’re not secretly waiting for the relationship to end. You love Rafe just as deeply, even if the way he loves you isn’t exactly normal. To Rafe, there has never been a question of whether the two of you will last. You’re his person, and he intends to keep it that way. The problem isn’t that you want to leave. The problem is that Rafe Cameron has never learned where love ends and obsession begins.
You’ve loved JJ Maybank for years. You were friends long before you ever became a couple, and when you were in third grade, you introduced JJ to your twin brother, John B. The three of you grew up together, eventually becoming inseparable. Now, the Chateau is home, the Pogues are family, and your life has always revolved around John B, JJ, Sarah, Pope, Kiara, and Cleo. You couldn’t imagine it any other way and you certainly couldn’t imagine your life without JJ. Until one afternoon, you walk into the Chateau and see JJ kissing Kiara, your best friend. Neither of them notices you, and instead of confronting them, you quietly walk away and keep what you saw to yourself. A week passes, and everyone can tell something has changed. You’re quieter, more distant, and nowhere near yourself. John B notices. Sarah notices. Even Pope, Cleo, and JJ notice. But nobody knows why, and you’re not ready to tell them. Because you don’t know what happened between JJ and Kiara. You don’t know if it was a one-time mistake or if they’ve been hiding something from you for much longer. You don’t know if they’ve done it again. And you’re too afraid to ask. You’re still completely in love with JJ, and the thought of losing him terrifies you more than the betrayal itself. So you keep pretending everything is fine, hoping you can somehow go back to the way things were. But the longer you keep the secret, the harder it becomes to ignore the thought consuming you: maybe you haven’t just discovered that JJ cheated on you. Maybe you’ve already lost the boy you love and you’re only now realizing it.
You and JJ Maybank have spent your entire lives surviving together. Born minutes apart, you’re more than twins, you’re each other’s best friend, safe place, and only constant in a home that was never truly safe. Whenever Luke’s temper turns toward JJ, you step between them, taking the hits meant for your brother because you’re terrified that one day JJ will fight back and Luke won’t stop. JJ hates that you do it, but he can’t stop you from protecting him any more than you can stop him from protecting you. The Pogues have become your second family, but no matter how many people surround you, JJ will always be your person. You’ve spent your whole life taking care of each other. The only question is how long you can keep taking the hits before one of you finally breaks.
You and Rudy Pankow have been in a long-distance relationship for almost three years, with thousands of miles separating you. While he’s busy filming Outer Banks in the States, you’re back home in Australia, making your relationship work through late-night calls, video chats, and counting down the days until you can finally be together again. When the distance becomes too much, you secretly book a flight to the States without telling Rudy. After crossing the world and coordinating with someone from the Outer Banks production, you arrive on set after filming has wrapped for the day. Rudy has absolutely no idea you’re there and when he finally sees you standing in front of him, he realizes that the girlfriend he thought was still thousands of miles away has just crossed an entire ocean to surprise him.
Breaking into the Crain house for the Royal Merchant gold was supposed to be the Pogues’ biggest win yet not a near-death escape involving a blind woman, a shotgun, and one very unfortunate bullet. As everyone celebrates in the back of the Twinkie, you do your best to laugh along with them, hiding the pain burning through your side. JJ is too distracted to notice… until you call his name twice. And when he finally looks down, the gold suddenly becomes the least important thing in the car.
You and Rudy Pankow have known each other since you were kids growing up in Ketchikan, Alaska. Best friends turned first loves, you built your relationship long before either of you knew where life would take you. When Rudy decides to move to Los Angeles to pursue acting, you go with him, standing beside him through the auditions, rejection, financial struggles, and uncertainty. Then Rudy lands the role of JJ Maybank in Outer Banks, and suddenly the whole world knows his name. But fame doesn’t change the one thing that matters most. Through the premieres, red carpets, press tours, and endless attention, Rudy still comes home to the girl who believed in him before anyone else did. Because before he was an actor, before he was JJ Maybank, he was just the boy from Ketchikan who fell in love with his best friend. And no amount of fame could ever change that.
You and JJ Maybank have been best friends for years. Through every reckless adventure, late-night beer, and disaster the Pogues somehow find themselves in, you’ve always been each other’s person. You know him better than anyone, and he knows you just as well. The two of you are inseparable, constantly teasing each other and blindly convinced that the way you care about one another is nothing more than what best friends do. Until a dive to Blackbeard’s shipwreck nearly kills you both. When the Pogues discover that Elizabeth’s necklace is hidden inside the wreck, you and JJ are the ones who go down to retrieve it. But when someone follows you, the dive quickly turns into a fight for your lives. Running out of air and with no choice but to surface early, you and JJ escape the wreck only to develop decompression sickness. Now, trapped together inside a hyperbaric chamber, you’re forced to confront just how close you came to losing each other. As the two of you finally talk about what happened beneath the surface, JJ struggles to explain why he would risk everything to save you. Because neither of you has ever stopped to question why you mean so much to the other. And maybe the truth is that you’ve both been hiding something from yourselves for years.
You never planned on becoming an actress. You were living quietly in Alaska when your twin brother Rudy Pankow, who had moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, somehow convinced you to audition for a new Netflix series called Outer Banks. You had never seriously acted before and only agreed because Rudy wouldn’t stop bothering you. Somehow, you landed the lead role of Charlotte Maybank, JJ Maybank’s twin sister and quickly became one of the show’s biggest fan favourites. Now, three seasons into Outer Banks, Charlotte has spent years hating Rafe Cameron. She’s a Pogue, he’s a Kook, and the two of them have never been able to stand each other. At least, that’s what everyone watching the show believes. In Season 3, the writers finally decide to turn their constant hostility into a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers storyline, completely unaware of how complicated things are behind the scenes. Because for almost two years, you’ve been secretly dating Drew Starkey the actor who plays Rafe Cameron. Almost nobody knows. You and Drew have kept your relationship private from the cast, the crew, and the fans, carefully hiding it for nearly two years. There is, however, one exception: Rudy. Your twin brother somehow figured it out, and while he gives you endless grief about secretly dating one of his closest friends, he also keeps your relationship completely to himself. He’s the only person you trust with the secret. But now the writers are making Charlotte and Rafe fall for each other on screen. Suddenly, you and Drew have to film romantic scenes together while everyone else watches the two of you slowly go from enemies to something more, completely unaware that the two actors have already been together for almost two years. And with Rudy watching from the sidelines, knowing exactly what’s happening between his twin sister and his best friend, keeping your relationship a secret is about to become a lot harder.
