Page 31 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter thirty-one

Dane

T he wheel thrums beneath my palms, a steady vibration through the wood and steel, as if the whole boat has its own slow heartbeat.

The wind comes at just the right angle to fill the sails, carrying the faint tang of salt and something greener—seaweed, maybe, or the sharp bite of cedar drifting from the shoreline we’ve left behind.

Behind me, Jamie’s voice cuts through the steady rush of the breeze.

“I’m telling you, it was smiling.”

Theo makes a sound halfway between disbelief and a groan. “Seals don’t smile. That was a warning. You were about to lose a finger, mate.”

Cam’s laugh slips between them, light and bright, the kind that makes you want to hear the next one. I don’t turn. I don’t need to—I can see it in my head: her leaning against the rail, hair caught in the breeze, eyes squinting against the sun.

Every so often, the wind shifts just enough to carry her scent forward—sweet and warm, but today there’s a thread of something new.

Richer. Headier. Like cinnamon warming in a pan just before the sugar hits.

It snakes its way under my skin before I can stop it, coiling low and making it hard to keep my focus fixed on the compass.

This trip should be straightforward: half a day out, bit of island exploring, back before we’ve even got to worry about the tide changing.

But my mind keeps drifting back inland, to the thick stack of contracts on my desk.

A big-city expansion deal, neat and clean, the kind of offer that shifts everything.

If I take it, I’m set.

If I take it, I leave this.

And “this” isn’t just the sea and the breeze and the satisfaction of knowing exactly how the wind’s going to treat you.

It’s the sound of Theo telling Jamie he coils rope like “an uncultured barbarian.” It’s Jamie firing back with something so crude Theo chokes on his tea.

It’s Cam’s laugh weaving through it all, like she’s been here the whole time.

It’s dangerous, how easily she’s slipped into the rhythm of us.

I shift my weight, the wheel steady in my grip, and the motion sends me back to another day on the water years ago.

Just me, Jamie, and Theo in a battered old fishing boat we’d rented from one of Theo’s “old mates” who swore it was “seaworthy as they come.” The thing leaked like a sieve at the stern and smelled like someone had been using it to store bait since the seventies.

Jamie brought beer, jerky, and one sad sandwich he called “emergency rations.” Theo turned up with a neat crate—spare rope, first-aid kit, flare gun, like we were about to sail around the globe. I’d brought the cooler because I knew neither of them would think to pack actual food.

By noon, Jamie had “accidentally” tossed the sandwich to a gull, Theo had gone sliding across the wet deck swearing so loud a fisherman on another boat yelled “language” at him, and I’d landed a yellowfin big enough to impress the harbor crowd— only for Jamie to nearly fall overboard trying to hold it up for a photo.

We laughed until my ribs ached for days.

That’s what I’d be giving up.

Her footsteps come light over the deck, each one a little faster as she climbs to the helm. I catch her in my periphery before she’s beside me, one hand resting on the rail, the other shading her eyes from the glare.

“How’s the captain doing?” she asks.

I glance over. The wind’s caught a few strands of hair, curling them against her cheek. The sun’s caught in her eyes, warm as late summer.

“Can’t complain,” I tell her, adjusting the wheel a fraction. “Weather’s perfect, wind’s on our side.”

She looks out toward the bow slicing clean through the water. “It’s beautiful out here.”

“Yeah,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I meant. “It is.”

She leans in a little to see the compass, and her arm brushes mine. Just a shift in balance, nothing more—but it’s enough. Heat moves up my spine like a spark running wire. And with it, that same faint spice note in her scent, just a hint stronger this close. I force myself to breathe slow.

“You’ve done this before,” she says, glancing up at me.

“A few times,” I admit. “Mostly with those two idiots.” I nod toward Theo and Jamie, now in a heated argument about whether Jamie’s seal story counts as “wildlife expertise.” “We’ve been talking about trips like this since college.”

She smiles. “You guys must be close.”

“They’re my brothers in everything but blood,” I say without even thinking. “We’ve seen each other through a lot. Good years, rough years.”

She tilts her head, curious. “So why the big-city talk?”

My fingers tighten just slightly on the wheel. “Opportunities don’t always wait around. Sometimes you take the leap, see where you land.”

Her hand shifts on the railing, brushing mine for the briefest second. Warmth. Skin on skin. A beat where the world narrows down to the hum of the deck underfoot, the cry of gulls overhead, and the whisper of her scent curling deep in my lungs.

Then she pulls back, eyes scanning the horizon. “Leaps are good,” she says softly. “Sometimes they take you exactly where you need to be.”

The wheel vibrates against my palm, the boat answering the wind’s pull. Behind us, Theo laughs at something Jamie’s said, and the sound is so familiar it’s almost a compass in itself. My brothers. My life. And her, standing right here, smelling like something I could get lost in.

I can make lists until the ink runs dry. But right now, with the sun on her skin, the sea stretching endless ahead, and the faintest shift in her scent promising something I have no business thinking about, I’m not sure I want the answer.