Renna Rose Lancaster is the girl people stare at like she belongs in a glass case, a life airbrushed into unattainable perfection.
But Renna knows her life is nothing but a golden prison coated in pretty lies that keep her muted and small.
Her day...
"I would rather sleep on your chest than a hundred pillows."
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The bonfire didn’t just light the beach. It bullied the whole damn sky.
That was the first thought that stuck to my brain the second I stepped out onto the sand with a bottle I had zero intention of opening. Flames clawed up into the dark, sparks popping and twisting, as if they were trying to reach the stars. The smoke smelled of salt and burning wood and summer, and every face around it looked dipped in warm gold.
Mum had gone full pagan priestess with the Midsummer setup.
The shoreline looked like some wild Scandinavian cult gathering—bonfire tall enough to roast a cow, lanterns swinging from driftwood poles, candles in mason jars half-buried in the sand. There were blankets, cushions, barrels for seats, a tub of drinks sweating in ice. Music blared from a speaker that absolutely did not need to be that loud.
The whole scene screamed joy. Tradition. Togetherness.
And somehow I felt like an extra in someone else’s happy memory.
Mum always tried too hard. She believed joy was a virus you could catch if she just crammed enough of it into one place.
Nice theory. Absolute rubbish in practice.
Everyone was already halfway gone. The lads were yelling something about fire spirits, half-drunk already, and the girls were huddled near the flames, faces flushed, hair glowing like halos in the firelight.
And Renna was there too.
She stood near the edge of the firelight, not too close, like she respected it but didn’t quite trust it. The glow made her hair look unreal, all soft gold and honey, like she’d borrowed light straight from the flames. She laughed at something one of the girls said, head tipping back, the soft column of her throat bare.
God. I'd forgotten what her laugh sounded like when it wasn’t tangled up with me.
The dress she was wearing was—well, I don't even know what to call it. It was light, flimsy, almost see-through when the wind caught it. The kind of fabric that looked like it'd rip if you breathed on it too hard.
She looked... untouchable.
Like one of those midsummer spirits they say lures men into the woods just to wreck them.
I tried focusing on literally anything else. The sand on my shoes. The label peeling off the beer bottle in my hand.
