Page 33 of Knot Your Sugar Rush (Starling Grove #2)

Chapter thirty-three

Theo

T he forest on Tern Hollow is alive in a way that feels different from Starling Grove.

The air is heavier here—thick with damp moss, sun-warmed pine needles, and the faint tang of the ocean carried inland on twisting breezes.

Every sound is amplified: the sharp snap of twigs under our boots, the soft drip-drip of water from somewhere unseen, the faint rustle of unseen creatures darting away through the undergrowth.

But it isn’t just the island making my senses flare.

It’s her.

Cam walks just ahead of me, her hair catching the stray shafts of light that filter through the high canopy.

Every now and then, the wind shifts, carrying her scent back toward me, and I have to lock my jaw to keep from reacting.

It’s still her—warm sugar and something faintly citrus—but there’s…

more. A richness that wasn’t there this morning.

Not overpowering. Yet. But enough to send a prickle of heat down my spine.

I glance at Dane, who’s in the lead with the map. His posture is steady, but I catch the slight twitch of his nose, the way his shoulders go taut for a second before he deliberately relaxes them. Yeah. He’s caught it, too.

Jamie brings up the rear, his usual easy smile dimmed a fraction. He’s paying more attention to her than the trail, eyes flicking to the small of her back whenever she stumbles over a root.

She’s flushed, but it could be the walk. Could be the heat. Or it could be—

“Beautiful here,” she says suddenly, turning toward me.

It takes me a heartbeat too long to answer. “Yeah,” I say finally, clearing my throat. “It is.”

And it is. The sunlight here is like gold dust, sifting through a canopy so dense you’d think no light could penetrate.

The trees are massive, ancient, their trunks webbed with climbing vines.

Here and there, wildflowers spill in bright clusters—reds and yellows so vivid they almost look unreal.

I catch Cam pausing to trail her fingers over a fern’s delicate fronds, the tiny leaves curling under her touch.

“You ever been here before?” she asks.

“No,” I admit. “But my gran used to tell stories about this place. About the family who lived here back when the mansion was still standing. She swore the gardens were so lush you could smell the flowers from the shoreline.”

Cam’s eyes brighten. “Did she ever see them herself?”

I shrug. “Before my time. But she made it sound like something out of a fairy tale.”

Dane slows at a fork in the faint trail, pulling the folded map from his pack. Cam steps up beside him, leaning close to study it, and the faint breeze shifts again. Her scent drifts right into my lungs, stronger this time, making my pulse thump in my ears.

She doesn’t notice. She’s pointing at a spot on the map, talking about where the mansion might be, her voice lilting with excitement. My gaze snags on the curve of her cheek, the way her lashes cast shadows in the afternoon light.

We keep moving, the ground climbing gently. The forest thins in places, opening to small meadows where sunlight pools in warm patches. Cam stops once to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and for no good reason, I have to look away.

Jamie catches my eye, his expression unreadable for half a second before he smirks—just enough to let me know he’s noticed.

We reach a clearing rimmed with tall grass, the air thick with the scent of blooming wildflowers. Cam turns slowly in a circle, taking it in, and her cheeks are pink now, her breathing just a little quick.

Dane says something about stopping here to check the map again, but my attention’s caught on how she presses her hands to her hips, stretching just enough that her shirt shifts and I catch a bare inch of skin.

The heat crawling up the back of my neck is not from the sun.

Jamie moves up beside me, voice pitched low. “You catching it too?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have to.

He sighs, but it’s not unhappy. “Thought so.”

The thing is, I’m not just reacting because she smells like she might be closer to her heat than any of us expected.

It’s the way she laughs with us, the way she’s slid into our rhythms like she’s always been part of them.

It’s the way she looks at this place like she’s already imagining it in candy form—turning flowers into sugar, moss into spun sweetness.

And yeah, maybe it’s also the way she feels like something we’ve all been missing without realizing it.

“Alright,” Dane says, folding the map. “We push on toward the old mansion site. Shouldn’t be far now.”

Cam flashes him a grin, and then we’re moving again, deeper into the island’s green heart.

The air gets thicker, the scents sharper, and every step feels like we’re heading toward something—something big, though I can’t tell if it’s the island’s secrets or the shift in her that has my pulse running this fast.

Either way, I’m not sure I want to find the end of this trail too soon.

***

The hollow feels like a place out of time.

The air is damp, cooler, carrying the scent of moss and something faintly metallic, like rain that hasn’t yet fallen.

Our boots sink slightly into soft soil, dark and rich, veined with roots.

Overhead, the branches knit tighter, the leaves filtering sunlight into shifting emerald patterns that ripple over Cam’s hair when she steps forward.

Dane scans the space like he’s checking for tripwires, while Jamie’s gaze is glued to the vines spilling down one sloped wall of the hollow, small cream-colored blossoms nodding in the faint breeze.

Cam drifts toward them, fingers hovering just shy of touching. “Not it,” she murmurs, almost to herself. She moves on, eyes sweeping the ground for any sign of the elusive flower from Zae’s notes.

A drip of water catches my ear, and I follow the sound to a trickle running down the side of a mossy rockface. The water disappears into a narrow channel lined with stones—too straight, too deliberate to be natural.

“Hey,” I call softly. “Come look at this.”

Cam joins me, crouching beside the little stream. She traces one of the stones with her fingertips, brows knitting. “These were cut.”

“Part of the mansion’s gardens, maybe,” I suggest. “Could’ve been a decorative channel, leading water to fountains.”

Dane steps over. “If that’s true, then the house can’t be far.”

Jamie grins. “Haunted mansion treasure hunt and rare botanical search? We’re really covering all the bases.”

Cam’s smile flickers, then steadies. “Zae would’ve loved this,” she says quietly. There’s a note in her voice—something tender but aching—that makes me want to step closer, but I don’t.

We follow the channel deeper into the hollow, where the plant life changes subtly—ferns with fronds the size of our torsos, clusters of jewel-bright berries, the sharp scent of wild mint crushed underfoot.

A fallen archway appears ahead, half-buried under ivy and lichen, its stone carved with curling patterns worn soft by time.

Jamie whistles low. “If that’s part of the estate, this place must’ve been incredible.”

I imagine it—the grand staircase, the ballroom echoing with music, candlelight glinting off crystal. And then, silence. The forest swallowing it whole.

“Any chance the flower could’ve been cultivated here?” Dane asks.

Cam tilts her head, scanning the perimeter. “If the records are right, it would’ve thrived in a place like this. Humid, sheltered, and—” She stops mid-sentence, crouching suddenly.

“What is it?” I move closer.

She brushes aside a mat of creeping vines to reveal a cluster of pale green leaves, their edges serrated, the stems tipped with buds not yet in bloom. “It’s not the same as in the sketches,” she admits, “but… it’s close. Might be a relative species.”

Her voice carries that spark again—the same one I heard on the boat, in the library. It hits me square in the chest.

“We keep looking,” Dane says firmly.

Cam nods and rises, brushing dirt from her knees.

She glances toward the darker stretch of hollow beyond the archway.

“If the mansion is there, maybe the flower is too. The family was said to cultivate it in their indoor gardens, and I think outdoors, too, though I don’t see it.

Maybe we’ll have better luck in the mansion? ”

That’s all it takes. We move forward as a unit, through the ivy-framed arch and into deeper shadow, our boots whispering over the moss.

Somewhere ahead, the forest holds its secrets close.

And I’ve got the sudden, unshakable sense that we’re about to step right into one of them.