Chapter 20 #2
“But here.” My voice turns thick and low. “This is the secret place. The part you've never shown anyone completely. The part you lock away and pretend doesn't exist because it hurts too much to want things you think you’ve convinced yourself you can’t have.”
It’s the most grounded kiss of my life. The one that will devastate me if I gamble and lose.
Silent tears slide down her face. Her hands find my jaw, tilt my head up so she can see my eyes.
“This is the part of you I want to see,” I say quietly.
“Not the photographer. Not the sister. Not the woman who's spent a decade convincing everyone she's fine.” Cupping her damp cheek, I brush my thumb over her bottom lip.
“I want the girl who carved her heart into this lodge and never stopped loving it. Never stopped loving—”
She steals the words from my mouth with a kiss.
Not soft. Not careful.
She kisses me like the whole damn world is sliding out of her grasp and anchoring herself to me is the only way to stop from falling.
I wrap my arms around her and hold on.
The sash tangles between us. Her camera digs into my ribs. Neither of us cares.
She arches into me. The sound she makes when my palm meets her fevered skin ignites my blood.
When her hips roll, mine answer.
The barstool creaks ominously but holds, and I couldn't care less if it collapses as long as she keeps making those sounds.
“Everett.” My name breaks against my mouth. “We can't—someone could—”
“I know.” I kiss her jaw. Her neck. The spot behind her ear that makes her gasp. “I know.”
But I don't stop. And for once, she doesn’t either.
Her fingers rake through my hair. Sending a tremor from my scalp to my toes.
I shamelessly scrape my beard across her collarbone sending full-body shivers rocking through her.
And she rewards by tightening her thighs around me.
“This is insane,” she breathes.
“Probably.”
“We're in the middle of the bar.”
“Technically, we're on a barstool.”
A laugh bubbles out of her—half sob, half joy—and the sound cracks something open in my chest.
There you are, heartbreaker.
I pull back just enough to see her face. Pride swells at the sight of her swollen lips.
Tear-streaked cheeks burn hot and pink. Her wild hair falls around us like a curtain, shrinking the world to something small enough she doesn’t have to fear.
“I meant what I said.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I'm not asking you to choose. Not tonight. I'm just asking you to stop running.”
“And if I can't?”
“Then I'll keep finding you.” I brush my thumb across her bottom lip. “Every time you end up at this bar at two in the morning. Every time you hide behind your camera. Every time you look at me with all the things you want to say but can’t.”
She swallows hard. “That's... that's a lot of finding.”
“I've got time.” I smile. It feels rusty, but real. “I've already spent eleven years waiting. What's a few more decades?”
She laughs again, but this time it catches in her throat.
“I don't deserve—”
“Don't.” I cut her off. Gentle but firm. “Don't do that. You don't get to decide what I think you deserve.”
Her mouth opens. Closes.
And then—footsteps.
We both freeze.
Heavy. Familiar. Getting closer.
Sierra's eyes go wide. “Shit—”
She scrambles off my lap so fast she nearly takes us both down. I catch her elbow, steady her, and she's already yanking the sash over her head, shoving it at me like it's evidence.
“The bar,” she hisses. “Get behind the bar.”
“Sierra, I own the bar—”
“NOW.”
I move. Not because I'm scared of getting caught—I meant what I said about being done with hiding—but because the panic in her eyes is real, and I'm not about to make this harder for her than it already is.
By the time Nolan rounds the corner, I'm behind the bar with a glass in my hand and Sierra's perched on a stool three feet away, camera in her lap, looking for all the world like we've been having a perfectly innocent conversation.
Except for the beard burn blooming red across her neck.
And my empty and dry glass.
Nolan stops in the doorway. His eyes move from me to Sierra to the empty glass in my hand. Then back to Sierra. Specifically, to her neck.
“Can't sleep?” His voice is neutral. Too neutral.
“Nightcap.” I hold up the glass. “You want one?”
“I'm good.” His gaze doesn't leave his sister. “Sierra?”
“Couldn't sleep either.” She reaches up to adjust her hair, and I watch her realize, too late, that the movement draws attention to exactly what she's trying to hide. Her hand freezes. Drops. “You know how it is. Weird hours.”
Nolan looks at her for a long moment.
Then at me.
Something passes between us. A question I don't answer. A suspicion I don't confirm or deny.
He's always been the observant one. The quiet brother who sees more than he says. Who watches and waits and files things away for later.
Right now, he's filing this away.
“Well.” He crosses to the water cooler in the corner, fills a glass. Takes his time drinking it. “Don't stay up too late. Big day tomorrow.”
“Right.” Sierra's voice is too bright. “Big day. Lots of... festival things.”
“Mmm.” Nolan sets down the glass. “Night, Shutterbug. Everett.”
He leaves the same way he came. Slow. Deliberate. Not looking back.
The silence he leaves behind is deafening.
“He knows.” Sierra's voice is barely a whisper. “Oh God, he knows.”
“He suspects.” I set down the empty glass. “There's a difference.”
“Is there?” She presses her palms to her cheeks, still flushed from my beard, from my mouth, from everything we just did on that barstool. “He saw the—” She gestures at her neck. “
“It's a love bite. They happen.”
“From who? You? In the middle of the night? In the bar of the lodge where we're all staying?”
I shrug. “I'm sure he'll construct a perfectly rational alternative explanation.”
She stares at me. “You're not taking this seriously.”
“I am.” I come around the bar, stop in front of her. “I'm taking it very seriously. I'm just done being scared of it.”
She opens her mouth to argue—I can see it coming, the deflection, the retreat—and I stop it with a kiss.
Soft this time. Quick. Just enough to remind her what we were doing before we got interrupted.
“Go to bed,” I tell her. “Get some sleep. We'll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
“There's nothing to figure out—”
“Sierra.” I cup her face. Make her look at me. “Go,” I say gently. “Before I do something else that leaves marks.”
She laughs—watery, overwhelmed, but real—and slides off the stool.
At the doorway, she pauses. Looks back.
“The initials,” she says. “Eleanor and Jedediah. I always wondered if they ever stopped hurting.”
She's gone before I can respond.
I stand in the empty bar, the ridiculous sash still clutched in my hand, and look up at the ceiling.
E.S. and J.M.
Two halves of a whole. Separated by a mistake. Never properly reunited.
Eleanor died before she figured out how to fix it.
But I'm not Eleanor.
And I'm done waiting.
I fold the sash carefully, tuck it into my back pocket, and make a mental note to talk to John in the morning.
About the window seat.
About lift car number forty-seven.
About a renovation that's going to cost me more than money.