Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Sierra
I don't start with Shred Shack intentions.
That's what I tell myself, anyway. That my feet just carry me here while my brain is busy cataloging the seventeen different ways this day has been a catastrophe.
But that's bullshit, and I know it.
I came here on purpose.
Not to wallow. Not to reminisce. Not to torture myself with ghosts I should've exorcised years ago.
I came here to prove I could.
Stand in this room. Breathe this air. Remember what happened here and not shatter into a thousand pathetic pieces.
If I can do that—if I can face the place where I gave him everything and still walk out whole—then maybe I'm finally past it.
Maybe the last eleven years of careful distance actually worked.
Maybe I'm healed.
The door creaks as I open to the lingering scent of wood smoke and the ghost of a cologne he stopped wearing years ago.
Okay, that part might have been my imagination, but fuck, it’s a good memory.
God, I used to love that cologne. I used to bury my face in his neck just to breathe it in.
My lungs squeeze tight.
Okay. Not healed. Noted.
But I'm here now. I'm not running. I'm standing in the exact spot where seventeen-year-old Sierra Barrett made the most reckless decision of her life, and I'm going to breathe through it until it doesn't hurt anymore.
That's the plan.
That's all I've got.
Until it doesn’t hurt anymore… hmmmm.
How long can humans go without food again?
Or water? Water buys us time.
I step inside and let the memories wash over me.
The worn wooden floor hasn’t changed a bit.
The moonlight spills through dirty windows turning the little room into something soft and forgiving before landing on the very spot that fifth generation Morgan laid me down on a stockpile of soft blankets and changed everything.
Lies. All of it.
I knew exactly where I was going the second I slipped away from the torch-lit circus my brothers created.
It’s smaller than the makeshift castle I remember. A secret kingdom where the rules of the outside world couldn't touch us.
Now it looks just like what it is. Little more than a shed with a sink. The twin bed still pushed against the wall. The hooks where we hung our wet gloves.
And memories I should've buried years ago.
We thought we were invincible.
Really, we were just young enough to believe that love could survive anything.
The door creaks behind me.
I don't turn around. I don't have to. I'd know the weight of his footsteps anywhere—the particular rhythm of Everett Morgan entering a room like he owns it, because he usually does.
“Following me now?” I ask the shadows.
“You're the one in my Shred Shack.”
“I needed air.”
“There's air everywhere.” His voice is closer now, rough with something I don't want to name. “And still, you picked this spot.”
When I turn, he's a silhouette in the doorway, backlit by moonlight, and for a dizzy second I'm seventeen again. Heart pounding. Palms sweating. Looking at the boy I loved in secret, wondering if this was the night everything would change.
It was.
It did.
And I've spent eleven years trying to undo it.
“Are you okay?” The question comes out before I can stop it.
He steps inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. Even in the dim light, I make out his face—the exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the particular brand of shell-shocked that comes from watching your family legacy get hashtagged into oblivion.
“No,” he admits. “My family legacy just turned into a thirst trap. Jake has more followers than the lodge's official Instagram now. Someone asked me to sign their chest. And my ancestors are definitely haunting me.”
“But it worked.”
“Yeah.” He drags a hand through his hair—that gesture I've photographed a thousand times, the one that still makes my chest tight. “It worked. Which almost makes it worse.”
I understand that.
I understand it down to my bones.
“My heritage tour had seven people,” I hear myself say. “One was asleep.”
“Sierra—”
“Your shirtless lumberjack circus had three hundred. Maybe four.” I laugh, but it comes out cracked and bitter. “My whole career is about preservation. About honoring what came before. And I couldn't even get people to stay awake.”
“That's not—”
“Don't.” I hold up a hand. “Don't tell me it wasn't my fault. Don't tell me the content was good. I saw the hashtag. I saw the comments.”
Watching paint dry would be more thrilling.
Heritage walks are where fun goes to die.
#SnowFestFail.
I've been carrying those words around all day like stones in my pockets, and I'm so tired of pretending they don't hurt.
Everett moves closer.
I should step back. I should maintain the careful distance we've been pretending is enough to keep us safe. But my feet don't move, and my heart is doing something dangerous in my chest, and I'm so goddamn tired of fighting this.
“Do you remember our first time?”
The question hits me with the force of an angry fist.
“Everett.” It's supposed to be a warning. It comes out like a prayer.
“It was right here.” He's still moving, closing the distance between us with the inevitability of a tide. “You were so nervous you couldn't stop laughing. You said it helped you breathe.”
I remember.
God, I remember everything.
The way my hands shook when I reached for him because I was scared to touch him, but he was who I needed beside me when I was scared.
The way he kissed my forehead first, like he was asking permission.
The way he whispered my name against my skin like it was something sacred.
“We shouldn't—”
“I remember the way you looked at me after.” Another step. He's so close now, his body heat dances over my skin.
“Like you couldn't believe we'd actually done it. Like everything had changed and you weren't sure if you were happy or terrified.”
“Both,” I whisper, the truth claws its way out of me whether I want it to or not. “I was both.”
“Yeah.” His voice drops, goes rough and raw. “Me too.”
He's close enough to touch me now. Close enough that I can see the rapid pulse in his throat, matching the wild rhythm of my own heartbeat.
“We can't do this.” My voice shakes. Everything shakes. “My brothers are out there. The cameras—”
“Aren't here.” His fingers brush my jaw, featherlight, devastating. “It's just us. Like it used to be.”
“Nothing is like it used to be.”
“Some things are.” He tilts my face up, forcing me to meet his eyes. In the moonlight, they're dark and deep and full of something that looks terrifyingly like hope. “Some things never changed. Not for me.”
Tell him to stop.
Tell him you can't.
Tell him your brothers are fifty feet away making dick jokes about his ancestors and if they walk in right now, everything you've spent eleven years protecting will explode.
I make a sound—half protest, half surrender—and then his mouth is on mine.
This isn't like the window seat. That was frantic, desperate, and angry. Two people crashing into each other before they could think better of it.
This is slow.
Deliberate.
Eleven years of wanting poured into one devastating kiss.
He kisses me like he's been starving for it. Like he's memorizing the shape of my mouth, the taste of my tongue, the way I gasp when he pulls me closer.
My stupid stubborn heart wobbles. The minute his fingertips sink into my hair, tangling in the strands with a tug so absolutely sinful, my knees buckle.
I fist the front of his jacket like it's the only thing keeping me upright.
It might be.
I'm not sure my legs work anymore.
He backs me against the wall, one hand braced beside my head, the other sliding down to my hip.
The rough surface of the wood scrapes against my back where his hand disappears under the back of my shirt. Fingers splay over my spine as he pulls me closer.
“Sierra.” My name is a groan against my lips. “God, Sierra.”
Arching into him, I chase the heat, the pressure, everything I've spent eleven years denying myself—
“AND THE FINAL PLAQUE IS JUST PAST THESE TREES, FOLKS!”
Roman's voice. Roman's actual voice. My brother Roman, fifty feet away and closing.
We spring apart so fast I nearly bite my tongue.
“What—” I'm panting, wild-eyed, absolutely not prepared to process this turn of events. “I thought you said the scavenger hunt didn't come this way.”
“It didn't—they must have—” Everett's already grabbing my hand, pulling me toward the back of the cabin. “Move. Now.”
We stumble out the rear door just as torchlight blooms at the front. I flatten myself against the outside wall, Everett pressed close beside me, both of us holding our breath like teenagers hiding from parents.
Which is hilarious, because we're hiding from my brothers who are about to give a tour of the exact spot where I just had my tongue in Everett Morgan's mouth.
The universe has a sick sense of humor.
“And THIS,” Roman announces, his voice carrying through the thin cabin walls, “is the historic Shred Shack. Legend has it, this cabin has seen more romantic encounters than any other spot on the mountain.”
Someone in the crowd whoops.
I press my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.
“The Morgan family has always believed in—” Roman pauses for dramatic effect— “hands-on hospitality.”
More whooping. Laughter. Someone yells “MOUNT ME EVERETT” and the whole group loses their minds.
Everett's forehead drops to my shoulder. I can feel him shaking. I'm not sure if it's suppressed laughter or suppressed horror.
Probably both.
The absurdity hits me in waves.
My brother is twenty feet away, narrating the romantic history of the exact cabin where I lost my virginity to the man currently pressed against me in the dark.
If someone wrote this in a book, I'd throw it across the room for being too ridiculous.
But here I am. Living it. Tasting Everett on my lips while Roman describes “hands-on hospitality” to a crowd of strangers who have no idea they're standing in the scene of the crime.
A hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. I swallow it down so hard my eyes water.
Do not laugh. Do not cry. Do not make a single sound or you will never recover from this moment.
“This is your fault,” I breathe against his ear, barely audible.
“How is this my fault?” His lips brush my neck as he whispers back, and even now—even with my brother twenty feet away describing Morgan family “stamina”—my entire body shivers.
“You followed me.”
“You came here first.”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.” He sinks his teeth into my skin just enough that my knees buckle.
I don't have an answer for that. I don't have an answer for any of this.
I just kissed Everett Morgan in the exact spot where we lost our virginity while my brothers led tours about fertility stones and shirtless lumberjacks, and if Roman had walked in thirty seconds earlier—
I can't think about that.
I absolutely cannot think about that.
Through the window, I spot Roman gesturing expansively while the crowd takes photos. Caleb's there too, adding color commentary about “traditional warming techniques” that would make our ancestors weep.
These are my brothers. My overprotective, overbearing, bro-code-obsessed brothers who would absolutely lose their minds if they knew what just happened against that wall.
The wall I still feel against my spine.
The wall where Everett's hands were—
Stop. Stop it. Focus.
We wait in silence as Roman finishes his spiel and leads the group away. Their laughter fades into the trees, torchlight bobbing through the darkness until it disappears.
Neither of us moves.
“That was insane.” I step away from him, putting distance between us, trying to remember how to breathe without his body pressed against mine. “That can't happen again.”
“Maybe it needs to happen again.”
“I mean it, Everett.” I'm shaking now—adrenaline crash, probably, or the cold, or the weight of what we almost got caught doing. “If they'd walked in—”
“We’d stop feeling like this.” He catches my hand before I can pull away completely. His grip is warm, steady, grounding in a way I desperately need and absolutely can't afford.
“No, we’d be feeling something so much worse. Alone.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But we’d be alone together.” His hand tightens on mine. For a moment, we just stand there in the dark behind the cabin where everything started, breathing the same cold air, caught in the same impossible situation.
Alone together.
The words hit somewhere deep and dangerous.
For a split second, I let myself imagine it. Stepping into the light. Telling my brothers the truth. Watching their faces shift from confusion to betrayal to—what? Acceptance? Rage? The kind of silence that never heals?
But then what?
Everett's hand in mine at family dinners. His name next to mine on Christmas cards. Waking up beside him without the constant terror of discovery.
Alone together.
It sounds like freedom.
It sounds like home.
It sounds like the thing I've wanted for eleven years and have been too scared to reach for.
My heart slams against my ribs, screaming yes, yes, yes—
And then I hear Roman's laughter fading through the trees, and reality crashes back in.
“Separate paths,” I say, pulling away. “You go left, I'll go right. We were never here.”
“Sierra—”
“Goodnight, Everett.”
I don't let myself look back.
Not because I don't want to.
Because if I turn around—if I see him standing there in the dark, watching me leave again—I won't be able to make my feet keep moving.
I'll go back.
I'll say yes, let's be alone together, let's burn it all down, let's stop pretending this is something we can survive without each other.
And then everything I've spent eleven years protecting will be gone in a single, reckless moment.
So I don't look back.
I keep walking.
I slip through the trees on wobbly legs, following trails I could walk blindfolded.