✸⁎⋆✶⭒✭ 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 ✸⁎⋆✶⭒✭

RULE #1: This is a One-Time Thing

"You're the one who wanted to play by the rulebook."

                 Time for a crash course on the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

The line of islands was a mysterious place for outsiders (or those on the mainland) because everyone in the Outer Banks knew each other. Trust that, at some point in time, your neighbor was friends with your cousin or the elderly woman who checked you out at the local shop babysat your mom when she was little. If you think they can't spot an outsider from a mile away, that would be the touron in you. Easy enough for beginners? Then, there's the split in the Outer Banks. A divide. No one was sure where the names came from or who invented them, but after having been passed down from generation to generation, everyone in the Outer Banks knew their place: either you were a Kook or you were a Pogue.

The Kooks lived lavish out in Figure Eight. The fancy, rich people homes―the homes that any sane person would point at and dream about owning one day. The Pogues were the working class people who cleaned up those fancy, rich people homes. The sane, if you will (save for a few bad eggs, but aren't there always some?)

Nonetheless, the two divides in the OBX were civil...for the most part. Aside from the disrespect and degrading comments every-so-often, and the snobby-uptight princess jokes...they were fine and dandy―and while the crash course may be written in past tense, were was past-past tense. Who were the Kook and the Pogue that ruined the casual dislike for the other? None other than the two most graced of their kind, Rafe Cameron and Leonie Maybank.

A Kook and a Pogue to their birthrights, down to the mansion of Tanneyhill that Rafe lived in and the two (and a half-ish) bedroom house that Leo was quite literally birthed in―but they had their similarities. Deep down, whether either of them wanted to see it or not―but that wasn't how their story started. The ending of them? Well...that you already know...but the beginning and the middle was the most important for Rafe and Leo. Not the end―because, for Rafe, it still hadn't ended.

But enough of a crash course. How did their story truly begin?

A romantic setting actually. Imagine a sunset, the waves crashing in the background, laughter of teenagers...a very tipsy, very angry, very short hot-headed Maybank using every possible way of the word "fuck" in a sentence to a very privileged, very unafraid, very tall rich-boy Cameron.

"Leo? Hey, Leo! Isn't your SUV white with the decals on the back? Blue surfboard on top?"

Leonie Maybank had had a few pre-game shots back in said car with her best friend, Eli Jennings, and was on her third beer at the Boneyard party kicking off the end of finals when Travis―a kid from the Cut―came over to her with that specific question. The odd ask made her pause mid-sip from the red solo cup. The buzz in her chest was enough for her to feel tipsy, but the Maybank's had a habit of taking hard alcohol into their system and keeping their head on straight. Her brows furrowed over the rim of the cup in question. Eli was to her left, their friend Jennifer just a few feet away talking to some touron, neither one of them too tuned into the conversation happening.

"Um, yeah," she answered in confusion, cup falling to her side. "Why?"

Travis' face blanched and he winced, rubbing his chin. "Ah. Well, I just watched a big ass truck hit it back near the lot―"

Travis didn't even get the opportunity to finish his sentence and tell Leo that he'd seen who the driver was. Not that she would have cared if it was the President of the United fucking States in that moment. The blonde standing at a whopping 5'1" was fast on her feet, even if she was barefoot, and Eli wasn't given the chance to grab a hold of her before she got away. The growing crowd at the Boneyard made a quick break to get out of the girl's warpath, forced to move again when Eli sighed and jogged in the opposite direction to grab someone down the beach.

Leo Maybank was an angry teenager. While she didn't mean to be, and she didn't get into nearly as many fights as she used to, that didn't mean she wasn't ready at any moment. Especially when finding out that someone hit the SUV she'd spent the last three years saving up for―which was not easy when you had a drug-addicted-grabby-handed father and two younger siblings with stomachs to feed. So being able to afford the car was a major thing for her, and she would absolutely run someone over with it if they did anything to it. Which was why she'd already prepared for the manslaughter charges she was about to receive, along with aggravated assault and other felonies that Peterkins wouldn't be surprised to see on her record.

She got to the lot where everyone parked their cars to see a huge, black truck backed in directly next to her SUV. The owner of it stood at the front with his back turned to her, laughing with his friends as they hovered over her SUV. If seeing the black scuff marks and dent on her bumper didn't instantly set her into a rage, then it was discovering that Rafe Cameron was the driver behind it.

Topper and Kelce were facing Leo Maybank's incoming direction, so he was confused when his friends' laughter fell silent. Rafe turned around just in time to feel a shove to his chest, sending him staggering a few steps in surprise. The concoction he'd made in his Yeti cup sloshed over his polo, but he quickly recovered with a trigger set off in his mind. On the other end of the assault was a short, blonde girl glaring up at him with murder in her eyes.

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" was the first thing that came out of her mouth as she stepped closer to him. "You think because you shit out your daddy's money that everyone else does, too? Just gonna act like you didn't just fuck up the front of my car because all of your problems are always magically fucking fixed, Cameron?"

By now, the other partygoers making their way to the beach had stopped to see the show. It was a sight, honestly. Rafe's eyebrows raised down at the girl. He knew who she was―everyone knew who Leo Maybank was, whether they were a Kook or a Pogue―but the sight of the girl well over a foot shorter than him cussing in his face made him laugh out loud. That was clearly the wrong response, and the teenage boy bit his lip when blue eyes darkened on him. Topper grabbed a hold of his shoulder from behind to get him to stop, muttering his name in the process.

"There's a lot more fucked up with that car than what I did, baby," he acknowledged, peering thoughtfully over to the piece of junk. "You should be apologizing to my truck―"

Rafe was cut off from his sarcastic remark when the girl made a quick step toward him like she was going to swing, but the sound of boots scuffing on the ground were faster. Suddenly, Leo was being ripped away by the waist and turned around so abruptly from Rafe that she likely got whiplash. The Kook in question raised his eyebrows as Leo struggled in JJ Maybank's iron hold, trying to get her way back to the asshole who fucked up her car. JJ had gotten used to diffusing his older sister's anger, but that didn't mean there weren't a few elbows to the face as he lifted her up off the ground to get her away from the scene.

"JJ, I swear to fucking God, if you don't fucking let me go—if he wants to hit my fucking car, he deserves to get hit in the fucking face!"

The steam may well have been blowing out of Leo's ears, unbothered by the show she was giving to the tourons around them. When JJ finally dropped her to the ground and she felt sand, she launched forward again only for her brother to step in front of her. The parking lot was no longer in sight, and she finally noticed the oddly-formed line of teenage boys trying to stop her from getting through. Eli was there, who probably grabbed JJ, along with her younger brother's best friends, Pope Heyward and John B. Routledge.

The sight made her scoff in amusement, her bright blue eyes glaring back at JJ. "You think I can't get through them?"

Her statement made all of the boys behind JJ shuffle slightly.

"I'm not letting you past me. They're the back-up plan if you knock me unconscious in the process," JJ explained, still keeping an arm out to her shoulder in the event that he had to body-slam her to the ground. "Don't think I won't send your ass to the ground if you go back over there―"

"Are you fucking with me right now, JJ?" she stared at him with wide eyes. "If that was your bike, you'd be knuckle-deep into Cameron's skull by now!"

He raised his brows at her. "And who would be the one pulling me off and giving me shit for it?"

"I'm going to fucking kill him."

"They'll charge you as an adult, Rocky."

She scowled at the nickname. "It'll be worth it."

"Who's the one saying we have to set a good example for Poppy?" he emphasized, pulling their soft spot out of his pocket to try and get her to calm down.

"Waaay fucking past that. She's a Maybank. If she were here, she'd be ripping his gelled-up hair out of his head right now," Leo dismissed instantly, her eyes still focused on the unseeable lot over Eli's big ass head. JJ let out a large exhale and rubbed his eyes with one hand, then he craned his neck to look at the three boys behind him. "JJ. I'm going to kill him one way or another. You can't babysit me the whole night. Eventually I'll get away, and I'll hotwire his ugly ass fucking truck and run him over with it―"

"Okay, alright," JJ stopped her murder plot, taking another step to the side so she was forced to look at him. She glowered into his blue eyes, a mirror image of her own. "Hey, sis. Nice to see you. I like that shirt on you, you know? Brings out the murder in your eyes―"

"Fuck off, JJ."

"―okay, Lulu," he changed plans, his fake smile dropping as he frowned at her. "I was really hoping to get drunk, stoned, and fucked by a touron tonight. I am unable to do any of those three things that bring me happiness if you force me to drag you out of the Boneyard right now. I will literally cry. Do you want to see your baby brother cry? Because I can feel the waterworks coming now―look, there's a tear growing in my eye―"

"I hope you choke on it."

Leo rolled her eyes at her younger brother's dramatics and turned around at the final word, stomping off in the other direction of where her car was probably being towed away and beaten with a golf club by the Kooks. She'd never had a problem with them. They stayed to themselves, mingled at parties, hooked up occasionally, and went on with their different lives. That, however, had significantly changed in a matter of seconds after Leo saw Rafe fucking Cameron laughing about the dent he'd just put in her life.

Over her shoulder, she heard JJ shouting. "Love you!"

"Get fucked!" she replied with a middle finger high in the air for him and anyone else to see.

"I'm trying!"

✸⁎⋆✶⭒✭ 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 ✸⁎⋆✶⭒✭