Chapter 24
CASSIAN
Captain Hook’s Revenge Mini Golf looks like hell threw up a carnival—fiberglass skulls, fake cannons, a waterfall wheezing like a smoker. Perfect.
“Classy,” I mutter, shutting the car door. “Exactly how I pictured a pirate’s retirement home.”
Jess lets out a belly-deep laugh, and it punches straight through me. She’s in cutoff shorts and a knot-tied tee that says Seas the Day.
Rowan eyes the animatronic parrot by the ticket booth. “That thing looks like it’s part zombie.”
“Yeah, genius, that’s the point. Pirates don’t do spa days.”
Eli’s already at the counter, talking the kid into giving us four putters and the neon balls nobody wants. Of course, he picks the pink one and acts like it’s a strategy.
I grab the orange ball, twirl the club like a baton. “All right, crew. Let’s plunder some fake turf.”
Jess arches a brow. “Crew?”
“You’re the captain. I’m muscle. He’s brains.” I jerk my chin toward Rowan. “And Eli’s the guy who eats all the rations.”
“Good to know the hierarchy and that you’re not sexist against a woman pirate captain.”
I bow my head, and her grin is worth the trip to this little place. Couldn’t surf today, the beach is closed because of strong riptides.
Wind catches her hair, tangles it across her mouth. I look too long, long enough to feel the pull in my gut. Then I clear my throat and move first, stepping up to the first tee. Safer this way, or I’d want to throw her over my shoulder and find the nearest hotel.
Kids two holes over are screaming over by the kraken loop.
I line up, swing, and miss by half an inch. Whatever. I toe the ball forward when nobody’s looking.
Jess: “Cassian.”
I don’t flinch. “Yeah?”
“You just cheated.”
“Pirates cheat.” I nudge it again. “Tradition.”
Eli laughs under his breath, and Rowan’s pencil stops moving.
“She sees right through you,” he says flatly, but I hear the tension underneath. He’s watching her more than the ball, same as me.
I feel that tone slide under my skin and stay there. “Add a penalty stroke if it makes you feel better.”
Jess bends for her shot, focused. The ball goes straight in, and she grins like she just won a war.
“Beginner’s luck,” I say.
“Skill,” she shoots back.
I tell myself to focus on the ball. It’s safer than the way Jess’s shorts hug her when she bends over the next tee.
Hole Three’s some plastic pirate treasure chest with dry-ice fog leaking out the top. The whole course smells like sugar and bleach.
Rowan crouches to read the angle like it’s a crime scene. “If you hit at forty-five degrees—”
“Rowan,” I cut in, “no one’s writing a dissertation on putt-putt.”
He straightens, gives me that patient look that makes me want to shove him into the lagoon. “You could improve your average if—”
“My averages fine.” I smack the ball. It ricochets off the pirate chest, bounces twice, and still drops.
I tip him a grin. “See? Flawless technique.”
Jess claps, mock serious. “Pure skill and zero physics. Impressive.”
Eli snorts. “Pirate magic.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Science can sit this one out.”
Rowan mutters something I don’t catch, but the tone’s pure restraint.
Jess lines up, tongue caught between her teeth. When she sinks another clean shot, her laugh hits like the first drag of oxygen after being under too long.
Eli whoops.
Rowan’s jaw ticks. I catch it, the tell. He wants to celebrate her, claim her, but he’s choking on it because she hasn’t given him permission yet, and he’s a second from losing it anyway.
Can’t blame him. We’re all orbiting the same sun, pretending we’re not burning.
By the fifth hole, I’m halfway through my bottle of water and twice as restless. The place is crawling with families, strollers, and shrieking kids. Normal life. Feels like a world we don’t get to keep.
Jess elbows me as we step onto the plank bridge to the next green. “You look like you’re planning a heist.”
“Just calculating wind resistance,” I say, even though I want to drag her behind the waterfall and make her forget her own name, but I don’t. Not here.
Rowan’s staring again, eyes too sharp, tracking every shift in her body. I meet his gaze and hold it.
Neither of us looks away. It’s not hostile—just acknowledgment. We both see her, want her, and we’re both trying not to make it harder on the other.
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. Almost an apology.
I shrug one shoulder. Yeah. I know.
Eli breaks it with a low whistle. “Boys, is this a contest or a pissing match?”
“Same thing,” I mutter.
Rowan actually smirks. “At least I can aim.”
I bark a laugh, a real one this time. “Touché, Doc.”
Rowan’s smirk softens into something almost genuine, and for a second, we’re just two guys who’ve known each other long enough to throw shit and take it.
He tips his chin at me—a brief acknowledgment of the truce we’re both holding onto. Yeah, we both want her. Yeah, it’s complicated as hell, but we’re not enemies.
Jess rolls her eyes and tees off. Ball shoots up a ramp, loops a fake cannon, and drops straight in.
She throws both arms up. “That’s right, gentlemen. Bow to your captain.”
Eli claps, and Rowan gives a stiff nod, mouth too tight. His hand twitches at his side like he wants to touch her shoulder and can’t decide if he’s allowed.
I see it. Hell, I feel it.
I want to punch something just to bleed the tension out of the air.
Instead, I grin. “Captain’s on a hot streak. Might need to handicap her next round.”
She smirks. “Keep talking, muscle. I’ll bury you at Hole Nine.”
“Promise?” slips out before I can stop it.
Her eyes spark. “Careful. I might.”
We move on. Eli narrates like a sports announcer, Rowan tracks every score like the fate of the world depends on it.
Jess keeps winning despite not making another hole in one again. I keep cheating just enough to irritate her. The sun bakes the damp turf, her scent cuts through the plastic air, and somewhere between the fake kraken and one of the pirate ships, I realize I’m smiling for real.
Rowan’s wound tight, quieter than usual. When Jess brushes his arm to hand him the pencil, he goes still, not breathing, then pulls away like the contact burned.
Her scent hits me at the same time—jasmine and citrus, sharp enough to trip my pulse. Instinct flares before I can choke it down, and I look away fast, pretending I didn’t just feel every cell in me react.
His fingers curl into a fist. Yeah. He’s gone for her, too. At least I’m honest about it.
He hasn’t touched her yet. Not really. That has to be eating him alive.
If it were me in his place—watching, waiting, holding the line—I’d lose my damn mind.
Hell, maybe I already am.
I hit my next shot too hard, sending the ball flying off course into the pirate lagoon. A toddler cheers. Jess laughs so hard she almost drops her putter.
“Retrieval mission?” she asks.
I watch the ball float toward the plastic alligator and shrug. “Lost cause. Happens.”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah, but I make you smile.”
Her mouth twitches—caught—and color rises in her throat. Rowan’s grip on the scorecard goes white-knuckled.
Maybe if we all stop pretending this is simple, we’ll finally figure out what the hell we’re doing.
By Hole Fourteen, it’s not even close. Jess is wiping the floor with all of us.
Eli’s having too much fun to care—keeps high-fiving her like they’re teammates. Rowan’s pretending it’s about probability and not pride. I’ve stopped pretending anything.
Rowan double-checks the scorecard at the final hole, pencil neat, movements clipped. “You won,” he says, like it’s an equation he doesn’t trust.
Jess plants a hand on her hip. “You sound disappointed.”
“Not at all. Just surprised.”
I hear the pause he doesn’t mean to leave in the middle. Surprised, maybe, that he enjoyed it. Or that she beat him. Hard to tell with him.
Eli leans in, grin wide. “Rules are rules. Winner gets the prize.”
Jess’s eyes light up when the kid behind the counter hands her a mini pirate flag—black fabric, skull and crossbones painted in white. She spins it once, then aims it at us like she’s calling for surrender.
“Captain Jess,” I say, saluting with my putter. “First of her name, conqueror of fiberglass seas.”
Eli laughs, handing her a mini carton of ice cream he snatched from the vending machine in the corner. “Captain deserves the spoils.”
She tucks the flag into her back pocket, hips cocked, grin like she staked a claim on the whole damn town—and maybe on us too. It hits me—how damn good it feels watching her own the space. She’s not just surviving anymore; she’s steering the ship.
Eli slings an arm around her shoulders. “Captain Jess and her merry men.”
She laughs and leans in. Not much, just enough that it looks easy. Natural. Like she’s done it a hundred times.
Rowan’s jaw tightens. He turns his head, pretends to check the scorecard he’s already tallied twice. I shouldn’t notice. I do anyway.
I could make a joke to cut it, but I don’t. I just watch him fight to keep it together, and for once, I don’t feel like laughing.
He wants her bad enough to strangle in it. And I get it. Because if I didn’t already know how that restraint feels—how close it burns under the skin—I’d think he was calm too.
Jess turns, catching us both watching her. She tilts her head, amused and maybe a little suspicious. “What?”
“Nothing,” I and Rowan say together.
Eli snorts. “Smooth.”
Jess waves the pirate flag between us, shaking her head. “You guys are weird.”
“Occupational hazard,” I tell her.
She grins and heads toward the photo booth near the exit, sunlight catching her hair. Rowan follows a step behind, not quite touching. Eli jogs ahead to hold the curtain open.
I hang back, a few paces behind them, and let myself look for one extra second—just enough to feel it. The sun, her laugh, the stupid little flag she’s already claimed as hers.
The wind shifts and I catch her scent: jasmine and vanilla with that hint of citrus that cuts through everything else. Makes my chest tight and my hands itch to pull her close.
Feels like a memory I’m not ready to lose yet. And I’m counting how many times Jess laughs and pretending it doesn’t matter.
Because it shouldn’t.
And because if I let it matter, Rowan’s not the only one who’d start looking at her like she’s the only real thing left.
Just because I fucked her doesn’t make her mine. Doesn’t make any of this safe. She could change her mind tomorrow. Decide we’re not her pack after all. That she doesn’t want to be claimed by three guys who can barely keep their shit together around her.
And I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to let her walk away. Don’t know if any of us do.
Then I shake it off, roll my shoulders, and follow them in.