Hashtag Holidate

Chapter 1

#LUXURYMEETSLEGACY

ADRIAN

I stared out the rental car window at the weathered timber sign.

In other words, too small for a good wine bar. They probably had domestic beer on draft and antlers on the walls of their one roadhouse.

My phone buzzed with another notification. I didn’t bother looking, not only because I was driving, but also because I already knew what it would say. Three thousand followers lost this week. The comment under a recent post had summed it up: Getting boring, Adrian. Same old luxury hotels. Yawn.

Which was exactly why I was here, of course, freezing my ass off in twenty-eight-degree weather instead of lounging poolside in LA.

My latest sponsor, Nordique luxury après-ski wear, wanted “true holiday magic”—the kind of wholesome Christmas content I’d never done.

But if I pulled this off, it could mean a full-time brand ambassador deal.

The kind of eye-popping money that would keep me from crawling back to Connecticut to work for my father’s insurance company.

I’d spent five years building a brand, and Adrian Hayes—the luxury lifestyle personality and digital nomad—wasn’t known for small towns.

I thrived in cosmopolitan cities and exclusive resorts, places where the lighting was perfect and the backdrops were designed to be photographed.

Not… I looked around at the rustic town of Legacy and sighed. Hunter McShotgun’s Wilderness Outpost.

But maybe rustic could work. Maybe the small-town vibe would give me exactly the kind of authenticity and relatability I’d been missing in recent posts. At least I really freaking hoped it did because the project with Nordique had the potential for much more.

When I’d first pulled up the company’s social media tags on my laptop, I’d winced.

“Looks like their target demographic is forty- to fifty-year-olds,” I’d protested to my manager, moving to my phone to scroll through my own posts—rooftop cocktails in Miami, a celebrity chef’s restaurant opening in New York, a carefully curated beach day in Malibu.

I squinted at the monitor to see if there were any visible signs of aging.

“What the hell do they want with me? Do I look fifteen years older than I am?”

“Of course not, babe. But Nordique wants a spokesmodel who’s aspirational, not actually old as shit,” Vic had countered with the brutal honesty that made him both an excellent manager and a terrifying human being.

“Every gay man with a jawline and a ring light would suck Old Man Winter’s you-know-what for this client.

Stop whining and say yes. You’ll make it elegant and unique. You always do.”

Elegant and unique. That phrase had echoed in my head for days after I’d agreed to take the job.

In the influencer world, you had to give people the same but different.

They wanted a consistent personality but not the same old repeated content.

I’d built my following by being aspirational but approachable, luxurious but attainable.

For the women, I was the gay best friend they wished they had, with a life they wished they could afford.

For the gays, I was the man they dreamed of and sent their lurid fantasies (and pics) to.

For the straight men, I was the account they loved to hate and the person who set their wife’s bar hella fucking high.

I was also known for being a little bit different. A little bit unpredictable. Take the time I did a skincare tutorial using glacier runoff in Iceland. Or the time I turned my broken umbrella into a prop on a Scottish Highlands tour and got reposted by Vogue.

Which was why I was low-key panicking now. Unpredictable wasn’t easy to plan on short notice.

After scrambling for a concept that would combine “dressing to impress” with celebrating the holidays, I’d finally landed on “The Twelve Dates of Christmas.” Twelve videos of me experiencing holiday traditions while modeling Nordique’s winter collection.

When I’d hinted at the upcoming series and asked for location recommendations, my followers had suggested too many places to count.

But one had stood out as the perfect choice.

Nordique’s tagline was “Where luxury meets legacy,” which meant Legacy, Montana, with its single ski slope and its small but growing reputation as a hidden gem for LGBTQ+ travelers was a clear winner.

Hopefully, a town this small, maybe with the help of its tourist population, would be able to provide a dozen potential “romances” with small-town guys for my followers to get invested in, too.

All I needed was a videographer since my usual cameraman’s emergency appendectomy had left me hanging.

But first, I needed a small vat of coffee to combat the effects of my early morning flight.

When I parked and stepped out of the car, the cold air immediately bit at my face, and my breath formed little clouds in front of me.

I zipped my jacket higher and said a silent apology to my beautiful Prada winter boots—which had never seen actual snow until today—as I crunched down the icy street.

I had to admit, the place was cute, if you liked this sort of aesthetic. The main street looked like a Christmas card—timber storefronts draped in lights, snow underfoot, the scent of pine and woodsmoke in the air, so different from LA’s perpetual mix of exhaust fumes and distant ocean.

I slowed as I passed the hardware store, its windows filled with an elaborate vintage Christmas display featuring mechanical elves and miniature trains circling through snow-covered villages.

An actual, old-school hardware store, not some hipster interpretation with $500 hammers and artisanal nails.

How refreshingly… authentic. I was starting to feel more positive about this place already.

An art gallery window display caught my eye—large-format photographs of what appeared to be last year’s Starlight Ski Spectacular—the most famous of Legacy’s holiday traditions, according to my research.

Unlike the typical tourist shots I’d seen, though, these images captured something raw and emotional—skiers silhouetted against thousands of twinkling lights, faces illuminated with genuine joy, the sensation of movement so vivid I could almost feel the powder spray.

I stepped closer, intrigued. These weren’t the posed, oversaturated pictures that dominated Instagram.

They were so real I could practically feel the cold air and hear the laughter.

One photo in particular held my attention—two women embracing at the bottom of the slope, rainbow light necklaces glowing against the snow, their faces a perfect balance of exhaustion, affection, and elation.

The placard read simply “Winter Light Series by Maddox Sullivan.”

I pulled out my phone and found the man’s Instagram. He was a Legacy local. Modest follower count, but his feed was compelling—natural landscapes, candid portraits, moments captured rather than created. It was the complete opposite of my carefully curated feed.

Then I hit his self-portrait, and my thumb froze on the screen.

Maddox Sullivan wasn’t the aging hippie or tweedy academic I’d expected.

He was probably close to my thirty-two years, with broad shoulders, tousled dark hair, and rugged features that radiated quiet confidence and made my stomach do a little swoop.

No filters, no angles—just messy, magnetic reality.

The contrast between his realness and my curated content hit me like a slap. But it also sparked an idea.

What if I could combine luxury with real? What if “The Twelve Dates of Christmas” featured someone who embodied everything my brand wasn’t—someone authentic, unpolished, and rooted in this place?

I needed Maddox Sullivan behind my camera.

And maybe, if I was lucky, I could get him in front of it, too.

I pushed open the gallery door, the bell jingling merrily as I entered.

The space was smaller than expected but beautiful, with exposed brick walls and polished hardwood floors that creaked pleasantly underfoot.

Local art filled the walls—not just Maddox Sullivan’s photography but paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces that collectively told the story of the town and its surroundings.

The woman behind the counter looked up with a smile.

She appeared to be in her early thirties, with a messy auburn bun on top of her head and big-framed glasses perched on her freckled nose.

She wore a red turtleneck sweater under a well-worn pair of denim overalls, complete with telltale paint splotches on them.

In a nearby portable crib-thingy slept a baby with cherubic cheeks and perfect red lips.

“Welcome to the Hart Gallery. I’m Avery. Anything I can help you find today?”

I flashed my most charming smile, the one that consistently garnered the most engagement on my selfies. “Actually, yes. I’m looking for information about Maddox Sullivan. The photographer?”

“Oh, Maddox!” Her eyes lit up with recognition. “Those winter shots are something special, aren’t they? He’s not in today, but his studio’s just upstairs. He does commercial work and videography, too, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

I glanced up at the ceiling as if I could see through it to the studio above. “Commercial work,” I murmured, feeling my shoulders relax in relief.

Avery nodded. “He’s very talented. Been capturing Legacy since he was a teenager with his first camera. That’s his hardware store you probably passed on your way in.”

“Oh, right,” I said, remembering the charming Christmas display. I was momentarily surprised she clocked me as a new arrival, but I supposed in a place like this, anything new stuck out. “He’s a photographer, and he runs the hardware store?”

“The Sullivan family’s run the store for four generations. Though I think Maddox himself has more interest in cameras than hammers.” She shrugged.

I smiled politely. “Do you know the best way to get in contact with him? Should I just stop by the store?”