Chapter 1
The high summer humidity in Seabrook always made the days drag, but for Shannara and Nathan, July vanished before they even realized it.
Shannara spent her shifts at her aunt’s cluttered seaside bookstore balancing a mix of actual work and scrolling through her phone behind the counter, fully expecting another boring break. Nathan, a junior track athlete staying with his cousins for the season, was stuck in a endless loop of early-morning miles, mandatory recovery stretches, and killing time by sketching on his iPad near the pier.
Their paths crossed on a chaotic Tuesday when a sudden downpour caught Nathan three miles into a run. Drenched, out of breath, and holding a squeaky pair of wet sneakers, he ducked into the bookstore just to get out of the rain. Shannara took one look at him, handed him a stack of paper towels, and offered him a mug of convenience-store tea.
That single storm turned into an unwritten routine. Pretty soon, Nathan was stopping by every afternoon after his workouts, commandeering a worn-out beanbag chair near the fiction section. Shannara would duck out between ringing up customers to swap Spotify playlists, complain about summer reading lists, and talk about the looming stress of junior year. As July turned to August, they moved from the shop to the beach, eating cheap gas-station ice cream, competing in messy sprints down the shoreline, and making fun of the aggressive local seagulls—a running joke that led Nathan to nickname them "the two love birds."
For weeks, it was just effortless fun. But as the last week of August rolled in, the impending drive back home started hanging over everything. On their final night, sitting on the boardwalk with their feet dangling over the edge, the usual jokes fell quiet. Nathan pulled up a drawing on his screen: a detailed sketch of two seagulls resting on a wooden pier post, looking out at the water.
He handed her his phone, rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't really want to go back to regular life if you're not in it," he admitted, looking directly at her.
Shannara looked at the drawing, then at him, feeling the exact same pull she had been trying to ignore all week. She reached out, sliding her hand into his. "Then don't leave it behind," she said softly. Resting her head on his shoulder under the twilight sky, they both realized they had completely fallen for each other—and that a few hours of distance wasn't going to change that.
