Taboo

Chapter 1

JULIET

Coming home felt like admitting I’d failed.

Yet, the second I crossed the county line and saw the lake through the trees, something in my chest loosened instead of tightened.

The water was still glittering between the pines like it always had. Same cracked roads, same old houses half-hidden in the woods… but this place had always felt like safety to me even when everything else was falling apart. It was the one spot where the noise in my head finally quieted.

That’s probably why I said yes to spending the summer here.

It didn’t feel like escaping. It felt like coming back to the only place that had ever really held me together.

I’d caught my boyfriend cheating just two weeks earlier, quit my dead-end job the same day, and driven straight here because the lake house was the only place that had ever felt like safety.

By the time I pulled into the gravel driveway, the sun was starting to dip low in the sky. The familiar two-story house looked exactly the same, weathered wood and wide front porch wrapped in overgrown vines. I grabbed my bags and let myself in.

The second the door shut behind me, I heard them.

In the kitchen, my parents were already going at it. Same old bullshit. Dad forgot half the groceries Mom had asked for, and she was acting like it was the end of civilization. Their voices carried across the floorboards.

I sighed, kicked off my shoes, and headed straight upstairs.

I’d greet them later, when they calmed down.

Once my bedroom door clicked shut behind me, I leaned against it for a second, eyes closed, letting the quiet settle over me.

Then I started unpacking, trying to drown them out with the small, normal sounds of drawers opening and hangers sliding across the rod.

The room still looked exactly the same. Faded blue walls, old books, that big window facing the guest house place half-hidden behind the trees.

I was hanging up shirts when the sound of tires on gravel cut across the room. My stomach did this weird little flip when I saw a truck pull into the guesthouse driveway next door. When the engine cut off, I told myself to move away from the window. I stayed anyway.

The driver’s door opened, and I forgot how to breathe.

Bastian.

Jesus Christ. He looked… different. Older, but in a way that made my brain short-circuit.

Forty years old and built like someone who’d actually lived.

Big shoulders stretching his black T-shirt, tattoos snaking down his arms, stubble on his jaw.

He moved like he didn’t give a shit about anything except grabbing his duffle bag with one hand like it weighed nothing.

He wasn’t like the guys my age. They felt safe. Temporary. Bastian looked like the kind of mistake you don’t recover from.

I should’ve looked away. I didn’t.

Instead, I just stood there, pulse pounding, heat curling low in my stomach.

Because suddenly I wasn’t twenty-two anymore.

I was twelve, running outside after that huge thunderstorm because my parents were screaming inside the house.

I’d run out crying and saw him sitting on the dock, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.

And when I’d sat next to him, he’d wrapped his jacket around me and pulled me against his side, both of us silent as we stared out at the lake and took in the aftereffects of the storm.

We’d watch for flashes of lightning in the distance, and he softly told me to count the seconds between the flash and the thunder.

At that moment, I’d felt safer than I ever had before.

Now, all these years later, here he was again. And my heart reacted like he was the only person who’d ever made me feel that way.

Bastian slammed the truck door and dragged a hand over the back of his neck. Then he looked up. Right at my window. Our eyes met.

I swore I stopped breathing. For a second, we just stared at each other, the air thick and heavy between us even though a whole house separated us. Then the corner of his mouth twitched into this slow, dangerous little smirk.

He slung his bag over his shoulder, eyes still on me, and headed toward his porch like he had all the time in the world.

The only difference was… I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I didn’t see my step-uncle as a protector. I saw him as a man and someone I was never, ever supposed to want.

This summer was already going to destroy me.