Saltwater Girl

𝒮𝒶𝓁𝓉𝓌𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒢𝒾𝓇𝓁
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Kashlyn Cole has never touched a lake without her heart trying to escape her chest. She's spent eighteen years on solid ground - safe, choreographed, predictable. Then Camp Solara happens, and so does Teddy Park.

Teddy doesn't fall for anyone. That's the rule.

She's smooth and she knows it - every girl at camp knows it too. She's also the only counselor who catches Kashlyn frozen at the edge of the dock, barefoot and shaking, refusing to get in.

What starts as a deal - "I'll teach you to swim, you stop looking at me like that" - turns into something neither of them planned for.

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Kashlyn is sandy-haired and soft-hearted, autistic and unapologetically herself. She likes being held. She cries at sunsets. She has five safe foods and will not compromise on any of them. She has never kissed a girl and has no idea what to do with the way Teddy looks at her.

Teddy has a reputation, two little sisters she'd die for, and a smile that should come with a warning label. She also, against every rule she's ever written for herself, keeps showing up for one curly-haired dancer who's terrified of the water.

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This is a story about learning to breathe underwater.
About first love, and the kind of fear that doesn't go away - it just gets easier to swim through.

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