Chapter 1
Chapter One
Sierra
The lodge bar glows with twinkle lights and too-loud laughter when I drag my ass into the great room after twelve hours buried in century-old records.
Oh, and two more marinating in red light and developer fumes. My spine audibly begs for death, but I'm still upright, so here we are.
My eyes go straight to the window seat out of muscle memory—and then skid to a halt on something catastrophically worse.
I freeze.
I flatline so hard my vision tunnels.
My gaze snags on their fingers clutching those photos—my secret stash, a time capsule of Sierra's Worst Decisions—and the look on their faces says I just became a tragic punchline.
My lungs forget how to lung.
My soul leaves my body.
“Oh my God,” Holly whispers, flipping one over. “Ev—”
I lunge.
“GIVE ME THOSE!” I squeak in a frequency only panicked rodents can hear.
Holly jumps. “Sierra! We weren’t—I mean—we didn’t know—”
Chance lifts a photo. “Is this Everett on the—”
“Oh God—nope nope nope absolutely not—”
I slap it out of his hand so fast the snowmen behind the glass rattle.
Holly softens. I know that look. Pity wrapped in girl-code solidarity. “Sierra, it’s okay. These… they’re honestly beautiful.”
They are not beautiful. They are incriminating.
They are every secret I buried behind this display case like an idiot teenager who thought a faulty panel could hide heartbreak.
Footsteps echo behind us. Heavy, steady, familiar.
Shit.
“Hide them, hide them, hide them—he’s coming—HIDE EVERYTHING!”
Chance doesn't ask a single question—king behavior—he just starts stuffing fistfuls of my history into pockets designed for tools, camping gear, and apparently now, emotional emergencies.
Holly helps, slapping clippings against his thighs like she’s wallpapering him in my emotional trauma.
“He can’t see these.”
My voice cracks.
“I never meant for anyone—”
The last photo vanishes just as Everett steps up behind us.
“Never meant what?”
Holly jumps in. “Snowmen! Just… cleaning the snowmen. Free labor. They need better lighting. Maybe relocation.”
And there goes another new sound I’ve never made before.
“That’s the plan,” Everett says, oblivious as ever.
Because of course. Why notice me imploding when he can bulldoze through the one part of this lodge I still have a pulse in?
“That whole section changes this coming spring as long as I don't hit any roadblocks,” he says, smirking like he hasn’t just dropped a wrecking ball through my last emotional safe house.
Chance’s pocket crinkles earning a love tap from Holly’s elbow. A tap that has him wheezing.
My stomach drops. “What do you mean changes?”
“Fill in the window. Add a second bar.” He tugs on the warped panel where my secrets hid just moments earlier.
“No.” One word. Low, controlled, but edged with something territorial.
“What do you mean, no?”
“That section is historically significant,” I say, with the restraint of someone holding back violence.
It was everything. My sanctuary. My hiding place. My stupid, self-inflicted crucible.
It’s where I learned my first lesson about perfect lighting from my mother. And where Grammie Bea built on that foundation after she died.
It’s where I learned to love him quietly because loving him loudly would’ve cost me everything.
Everett drags a hand through his hair. “It’s a window seat with an outdated display case.” God, that familiar gesture—the same one I photographed too many times, memorizing each angle like it’s all I’d have one day.
“The snowmen can be relocated—”
“Relocated?” I choke.
“You think you can just move more than a decade of—”
I slam my mouth shut before something reckless and pathetic falls out. Definitely not confessing that.
“More than a decade of what, Sierra?”
That look.
Narrowed eyes.
Suspicion sparking.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Everything. I'm not telling you everything.
I'm not telling you I still have the ticket stub from the movie we saw in Portland when everyone thought I was at a photography workshop.
That I know you carry your grandmother's ring—the one she told me was for your future wife while winking at me like she was confident it would be me.
That I can't develop photos in any darkroom anymore without remembering your hands in my hair and your mouth on my—something sharp twists inside me at the visceral images of us living rent free in my head.
“I don’t owe you anything, not since you stopped being…”
The word burns up my throat, but I choke it back.
Mine.
God help me.
He goes stock-still. “Stopped being what?”
Heat rushes through me. “Forget it.”
“Say it, Sierra.” The growl. The dare. The cliff I always seem to balance on the edge of with him.
“I dare you.”
The air between us snaps tight.
We stare, locked and loaded, resentment pulsing heavy underneath. Two idiots clinging to live wires.
His phone buzzes, swiping away whatever dared to form between us. His mask slides into place.
“Your brothers will be here tomorrow. Expansion stuff.”
My pulse spikes. “All of them?”
“That’s what I said.” He doesn’t even look at me.
I grit my teeth. “What expansion?”
Anger. Perfect. Safer than the truth.
“They didn’t tell you?”
His thumb glides across his screen—slow, deliberate, weaponized indifference.
Then he lifts it to his ear and stares straight at me.
“You better not be calling to tell me you can’t make it, Roman.”
That smirk… I could claw it off his face.
He turns, pushes into the office, door swinging shut behind him.
I sag against the wall. My fingers twitch, aching with the urge to grab him by his shirt, haul him close, kiss him until we’re both ruined all over again—or punch him dead in the center of his perfect chest.
Honestly? Toss-up.
My chin trembles. “You can’t tell anyone about the photos,” I whisper… “Besides, it’s over, so there’s no point.”
Oh, but God, it’s not over. Not even close.
Holly’s hand slides into mine. “We won’t say anything.”
Her expression is… pity and horror and girl-coded panic all rolled into one.
“Sierra,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head, tears burning behind my eyelids. “Holly—don’t. Just—don’t.”
But she keeps going, because she’s Holly and she’s powered by emotional espresso shots.
“No seriously. Every time Chance said you were different, I wanted to gut him, and you to be honest. Totally not your fault. He has this way of saying things that just make you want to scoop out his balls and turn his bean bag into sausage casings.”
“Sleeping with one eye open tonight now. Jesus, Squirt.”
She aims a look at him over her shoulder. “I never would have done it. Well, not never. You would have had to do something really really bad. Like tab A in someone else’s slot B bad.”
His lips twitch and for a second, I’m really fucking resentful of how easy it is for them.
“Thanks for the clarification. Still sleeping with one eye open.”
“Look, I’ll deal with you later,” she tells him with a flip of her hair before turning back to me. “Seriously though, you had a thing for Ch—you know what, never mind. I just, I didn’t realize the whole time you were actually in love with Everett.”
Chance leans against the wall like he’s been assigned emotional security detail.
“I’m not in love with him,” I lie like someone who absolutely is.
Holly arches a brow.
Chance snorts.
I throw my hands up. “I’m not in love with him. I’m not. I’m just—historically compromised!”
Holly winces. “That’s… not better.”
“Also,” I hiss, “did you have to stand right there? In front of the display case? With all of—all of that in your hands? What if you hadn’t heard him approaching until it was too late? What if—”
“Relax. We’ve got you.” Chance says, calm as ever. “We got them shoved into my pockets before he got close. Besides, lucky for you, sometimes the dude has the observational instincts of a branch manager at Staples.”
I blink at him. “Thank you?”
His lips twitch and he shrugs. “Happy to help.”
Holly steps closer, voice dropping. “Sierra… those pictures? Those clippings? That wasn’t just a crush. That was—”
I cut her off before she cracks me open like a fortune cookie full of feelings. “I know what it was. I lived it.”
Holly nods, but her eyes narrow, giving me the full girl-bestie lie detector test. “Okay. Fine. But if you need anything… I’m here.”
With one sharp nod, I bolt—away from the case, away from the evidence, away from Everett, away from the version of me who still can’t stop wanting him. Before my heart does something exceptionally stupid.
Again.