Prologue
LATE AUGUST / AMBER’S POV
The whistle cut across the beach.
I dropped the cleaning cloth and stepped closer to the stand window. All along the shoreline, people were standing on their towels and pulling their children nearer to the sand. Kira appeared beside me, one hand braced against the counter as she looked toward the water.
“What happened?” she asked.
I couldn’t answer.
Augustus was already far beyond the break, one arm locked around a man who was fighting him hard enough to drag them both beneath the surface. The man kept trying to pull away, but Gus held on and kicked toward shore through the waves.
“Is he drowning?” Kira asked, her voice thinner now.
A wave rose between them and swallowed Augustus from view.
My hand tightened around the window frame.
Then he came back up.
He dragged the man through the break and onto the wet sand, where another lifeguard was already running toward them with a rescue tube. I couldn’t tell whether it was Theo or Oscar from that far away. Gus dropped beside the man and checked his breathing while the crowd gathered along the shoreline.
I lifted my camera.
At first, someone behind us started clapping. A few other people joined in, and the sound spread quickly across the beach.
“Thank God,” a woman near the stand said.
The man shoved Augustus away.
“Get the hell away from me,” he snapped.
The clapping stopped so suddenly that the silence felt louder.
Augustus sat back on his heels, keeping his voice controlled. “Sir, stay where you are. You swallowed water.”
The man coughed hard, then pushed himself onto one elbow. His face was red, and water ran down his neck as he stared directly at Gus.
“You think I don’t know who you are?” he said.
Augustus went still.
Kira turned toward me. “What the fuck?” she whispered.
The man looked past Gus toward the crowd, then back at him.
“I saw you with her.”
My finger slipped from the camera button. Augustus didn’t answer.
By then, the other lifeguard had reached them, but he stayed a few steps away, looking from the man to Gus as if he was trying to understand what had changed. Near the waterline, a woman lifted her phone.
The man stared at Augustus for another second.
“Or maybe it was your brother,” he said. “You two look the same from behind.”
Whispers started moving through the crowd and Kira stepped closer until her shoulder brushed mine, but I barely noticed.
Everyone was looking at Augustus.
And Augustus was looking straight at me.
