Low Tide Lies

Everyone on Figure Eight lies.

They lie about their money, their loyalty, their secrets. They lie to their parents, to their friends, to the people they date. But the worst lies-the ones that haunt the halls of country clubs and echo behind mansion walls-are the ones they tell themselves.

Juliette Hastings knows this better than anyone.

She's the girl with the perfect grades, perfect parties, perfect boyfriend. The one whose mom chairs the Historic Preservation Society and whose dad plays golf with the district attorney. She wears pearls in the day and lip gloss at night. Her world is curated, spotless, predictable. It has been since she was five years old and taught to smile even when everything hurt.

But behind the glass of her curated life, cracks have been forming for years.

And the biggest one?

Rafe Cameron.

They burned out fast and violently the first time around. Love, rage, recklessness-no one expected them to last, and they didn't. The breakup was messy. Public. Brutal in the way only two people who really loved each other can be. They promised it was over. They swore they'd moved on.

But some fires don't die. They smolder.

Now Juliette is with someone safe, someone good. So is Rafe-or at least, that's what he wants people to think. But the second their paths cross again at a late-summer party on Tanneyhill's back lawn, the lies start unraveling. Looks get held too long. Words cut too deep. And that old, dangerous gravity between them begins to pull.

They're not supposed to want each other.

They're not supposed to still care.

But in a town where everyone's pretending to be something they're not, what's one more lie?

This is a story about the love you don't admit to, the mistakes you keep making, and the truth that always finds its way to the surface-especially when the tide goes out.