Page 29 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter twenty-nine

Cam

T he suitcase yawns open on my bed like a patient, waiting mouth.

One half filled with neat rolls of shirts and soft sweaters; the other half a shallow ocean of nothing, polished zipper teeth glinting in the late-afternoon light.

A faint breeze slips through the cracked window and lifts the edge of the curtain, and with it comes the familiar scent of lilacs from the bush below.

The room smells like laundry soap and dust and the tiniest ghost of vanilla that never quite leaves the fibers of my childhood quilt.

I lay Zae’s notebooks beside the suitcase—stacked like a small, uneven tower.

Their covers are scuffed, corners frayed, pages soft from use.

When I fan them, the air fills with a papery sweetness tinged with cinnamon.

She always ate cinnamon hearts when she wrote.

I used to tease her that her ideas smelled like Valentine’s Day.

“Okay,” I tell the suitcase, because apparently I’m talking to luggage now. “Shirts. Socks. Practical things.”

I pull open the dresser. The top drawer sticks, like it always did, a stubborn little hitch that used to send us both into giggles. Zae would pound the corner with the heel of her hand, triumphant when it slid. I do it now and on the second try, the drawer glides.

Rolling socks into tidy spirals, I tuck them into the far corner.

One pair is a ridiculous pink with tiny sugar candies on them—Zae bought them for me for a birthday I tried to skip.

“For sweet feet,” she’d said, deadpan, then broke into laughter at my groan.

When I press the cotton to my face, I swear I can still hear it.

Next: jeans. I pick the pair with the softened knees, the ones I wore the day we mapped a pretend candy route across town, hopscotching from bakery to bakery with cheap coffees in hand, rating cupcakes with a made-up scoring system. Texture: 7.5. Frosting swirl: chaotic good.

I add a weatherproof jacket—blue like the lake on a moody day—and my fingers pause on the zipper pull.

It’s a tiny brass charm shaped like a star.

Zae brought it home from a summer fair when we were thirteen.

“For luck,” she’d said, tying it on my backpack.

It’s followed me ever since. I press the star flat against my palm until it warms.

The notebooks call to me. I sit on the edge of the bed and open the smallest one, the pocket journal with a smear of raspberry jam across page three. Her handwriting leans brave and impatient across the paper—ink raised just enough that I can feel it with my fingertip.

Try this! she wrote in the upper left corner. Below that, the list that changed everything: sugar, water, citrus zest, salt, “petal sugar.” I mouth the words like they might dissolve on my tongue.

I can almost hear her: You’re overthinking it, Cam. Candy is chemistry, sure, but it’s also guts. You need both. Take the leap.

I close the notebook and nestle it into a zip pouch with a pen and a stack of sticky notes. The pouch smells faintly of lemon oil and something floral—maybe from the time we spilled rose syrup in Mom’s car and swore it would never fade. (It hasn’t.)

Toiletries next. Toothbrush, travel-sized everything, chapstick. I add the small bottle of lavender linen spray Gram gave me when I moved back. “For sleep,” she’d said, kissing my cheek. I mist a tiny cloud over the open suitcase; the scent settles like twilight.

I tuck my camera into the padded sleeve of my backpack.

The strap slides warm under my fingers, smoothed by a thousand pictures that never quite captured what we were trying to hold—sunsets that went redder when we blinked, frosting that shone slicker in person, Zae’s eyes when she laughed.

Still, I want photos of the island. Of the flower, if it’s there. Proof that the story is real.

A scarf. The one Zae knit crooked during a winter storm, rows wobbling like a drunk stitch, proud as anything. I remember how we huddled under it on the porch, counting lightning seconds. I lay it across the clothing like a blessing.

The floorboards creak when I cross to the desk. I gather the maps Theo and I photocopied at the library, the highlighted paragraph from the folklore book about Solara Petalis, and the loose-leaf page where I’ve scribbled questions:

— Petal sugar: infused? dusted? candied? — How to crystallize petals without bitterness? — Temperature curve vs. humidity on island? — Bring extra thermometers to test on site. (Do not drop them overboard, Cam.)

I slide the papers into a folder and weigh them with a smooth skipping stone we won on a “who can throw farther” bet. Zae cheated. She always did it playfully—tucking her hair behind her ear like she wasn’t about to trounce me, then howling with triumph and making me promise to buy her taffy.

The room is so quiet I can hear the clock downstairs and the faint distant hum of a lawn mower. In the stillness, grief comes in a soft tide, not the riptide it used to be. It lifts and lowers me. I let it. My hand drifts to the suitcase handle—soft fabric under my palm—and I breathe.

I think about the grave. It sits on the edge of town under a maple tree that goes orange so bright in October it looks like it’s on fire.

I imagine driving there now, kneeling in the grass, pressing my fingers to carved letters and telling her about the island, the flower, the way the alphas make the house sound like laughter again.

But the thought turns my ribs to glass.

Not yet.

I need to bring her something first. Not flowers for stone, but the candy we dreamed up on flashlight nights. I want to lay a little wrapped square on the earth and tell her: We did it. You and me.

I zip the left half of the suitcase closed—the sound is a clean, satisfying sweep.

The empty half still waits. I add a small first-aid kit (Theo’s voice in my head: Bandages.

Always. ), a coil of thin rope (Jamie’s: What if we need to MacGyver something fun?

), and a compact multitool that Dane left on the kitchen counter once and pretended not to miss.

Thinking of them warms me from the inside, a slow bloom. I never meant to let anyone that close again. Especially so soon after Eric’s betrayal, when I’d vowed to focus on the candy shop.

But they don’t feel like a detour from my life.

They feel like it—like the steady thrum under everything, the part that carries me when the rest of me is tired.

Jamie’s effortless kindness, bright as morning; Theo’s quiet, thoughtful gravity; Dane’s restless focus that somehow makes me feel safe, even when he’s the one pacing the room.

They have this way of taking a task and making it lighter, of taking me and making me braver.

Gram said, Let them carry a little of the load. I’m trying.

I tuck a small thermos between the folded sweaters, imagining steeped tea on a chilly beach. The thermos lid clicks, and the sound is strangely reassuring—like a small promise sealed.

On the nightstand is the photograph I keep turned face-down when the day is too sharp: me and Zae at fifteen, cheeks sticky with powdered sugar, eyes lit with the kind of wild certainty only kids can manage.

I flip it over now. We’re wearing aprons we decorated with fabric markers, our names inside wonky hearts.

Her hair is a halo of curls she hated and I envied. My mouth tips up without permission.

“Help me out, okay?” I whisper to the paper. “If you’ve got any pull in the realm of magical candy flowers, now’s the time.”

There’s a light rap at the doorframe—two knuckles and a pause—Jamie’s signature courtesy knock. “Permission to enter the zone?” he calls.

“Enter,” I say, wiping the corner of one eye with my wrist.

He steps in with two mason jars of lemonade beaded in condensation. “Brought liquid courage.” He hands me one and tilts his head at the bed. “You’re winning against the suitcase. Proud of you.”

“It’s a close match,” I say, taking a long sip. Tart, sweet, cold. It wakes my mouth.

Theo lingers behind him, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe, eyes flicking gently over the organized chaos. “Need an extra pen? I brought redundant pens.”

“Redundancy is sexy,” I deadpan, and Jamie snorts.

Theo smiles, minute and pleased, and sets a sleek black pen on top of my folder like an offering.

Then Dane appears, taller in the small hallway, the smell of sawdust and clean soap trailing in with him. He doesn’t say anything, just scans the room and nods once, approval tucked at the corner of his mouth. “You remembered a headlamp?” he asks.

I hold it up by its strap. “And spare batteries.”

His mouth twitches. “You’re learning.”

They don’t invade the space. They just… join it.

Jamie perches on the window seat, turning the jar in his hands so sunlight makes the lemon slices glow.

Theo finds the edge of the dresser and pages through the photocopied folklore politely, careful not to crease them.

Dane sets my suitcase upright and checks for tears that might give way during our travels.

“You sure about this?” Dane asks, not challenging, just… checking.

“No,” I answer honestly. Then, clearer: “Yes.”

Jamie lifts his jar. “To excellent decisions made with incomplete information.”

“Very on-brand,” Theo says dryly, but he clinks his jar against mine. Dane grabs a clean glass from my desk and joins with water.

The lemonade is sharper now that I’m smiling.

When they trickle back out—promises of meeting me in the morning at the pier, boat logistics, jokes about sea legs—the room feels different. Not emptier. Held.

I slide the last notebook into my backpack—the pocket journal with Try this! sketched at the top. The cover is scuffed in a way that fits my hands now, as if it has been waiting in the back of a drawer for me to be ready to carry it again.

The sun has dropped low enough that the light is honey-thick.

I stand at the window and watch dust motes drift like tiny stars.

My reflection in the glass looks a little older than it did when I left this town, a little more used, but steadier too.

There’s a hum in my ribs that I can’t quite name—part fear, part hope, part the thrill of a story breaking open.

I think of Zae, of the grave I’m not ready to visit. I think of placing a square of candy on the stone someday soon, fingers trembling for a better reason, and telling her, We did it. You led the way.

The suitcase handle is warm in my palm when I haul it off the bed. The wheels thrum a low steady sound across the wooden floor as I tug it to the door. Lilac air slides in through the window. Somewhere a neighbor’s wind chimes tangle a quiet song.

“I’m going, Zae,” I say to the room, to the notebooks, to the girl I was. “I’m really going.”

Downstairs, a car door shuts, and one of the boys laughs, the sound carrying up the stairwell soft and bright. It threads through me like a little strand of courage.

I turn off the light. The room falls into dusk-blue, the suitcase a dark shape at my knees, the lingering scent of lavender and lemon sweet on the air.

Tomorrow: the boat. The island. The flower.

Tonight: I press my palm to the notebooks one more time, and in the quiet, grief is not a rip current. It’s a tide that lifts and lowers and leaves me standing on my own two feet.

My fingers find the loose recipe card, edges soft from handling. I smooth it flat and whisper, like a promise and a prayer, “petal sugar.” For half a breath, the air tastes faintly floral—impossible, delicate—then it’s gone, like a secret keeping itself.

I breathe, and for the first time in a long time, the breath goes all the way down.