Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Sierra
I haven't slept.
Every time I close my eyes, I feel the scratch of that ridiculous sash against my bare thighs. The press of his lips along my skin until they rested over my heart.
This is the secret place. The place you've never shown any of us completely. This is the part of you I want to see.
Damn him.
I drag myself out of bed at seven, shower until the hot water runs cold, and spend an unreasonable amount of time staring at the beard burn on my neck in the mirror. It's faint—barely visible unless you know what you're looking for.
Nolan knows what he's looking for.
I saw the way he studied us when he found Everett at the bar. The way his eyes tracked from my flushed cheeks to my swollen lips to the very spot on my neck I'm now covering with approximately six layers of concealer.
He didn't say anything. Just looked. Filed it away in that terrifying mental database he's been building since childhood.
Nolan Barrett: part brother, part FBI profiler, part reason I'll never be able to relax again.
I pull on jeans and a flannel—my brothers' flannel, technically, stolen from Roman's closet approximately eight years ago and never returned—and head downstairs.
The lodge already buzzes with activity. Today's event? Lumberjack Thunder, which apparently involves competitive wood chopping, log rolling, and grown men finding increasingly ridiculous excuses to remove their shirts in December.
“Hey, Shutterbug!” Caleb waves at me from across the great room, already dressed in flannel and suspenders like he's auditioning for a maple syrup commercial. “You coming to watch us dominate?”
“Wouldn't miss it.” I grab a muffin from the breakfast spread, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “Someone has to document your humiliation.”
“That's the spirit.” He slings an arm around my shoulders, and for a moment, everything feels normal. Just my idiot brother and me, giving each other grief the way we've done since I was old enough to talk back.
Then Everett walks into the room, and muffin crumbs choose that moment to betray me.
Faded denim hug muscular thighs—thighs I straddled only a few hours ago.
The gray henley pulls across his chest, sleeves shoved to his elbows, hair still damp from a shower.
Gray is officially my new favorite color.
Those Magic Morgan men, damn them.
But he looks… tired.
Dark circles shadowing his eyes, jaw locked tight like he’s holding the whole mountain in his teeth.
Our eyes meet across the room. One heartbeat. Two. Everything we did last night passes between us in a look that feels obscene to have in front of my brother.
“Morgan!” Caleb releases me to grab Everett in one of those aggressive bro-hugs that's part greeting, part wrestling move. “Ready to lose?”
“I've been chopping wood since I could hold an axe.” Everett's voice is steady, easy. Like he didn't have his mouth on my heart six hours ago. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Confident. I like it.” Caleb grins. “Makes it sweeter when I knock you on your ass.”
I slip away while they're posturing, camera in hand, and head for the event area.
The setup for Lumberjack Thunder is actually impressive.
Someone—probably Roman, who has an unholy talent for event planning—transformed the clearing behind the lodge into a proper competition zone.
Hay bales for seating. A row of chopping blocks with fresh logs.
An axe-throwing range marked off with bright orange tape.
Tara's crew catches the angles from pretty much everywhere. You can’t move without tripping over one of her cameramen. Literally.
She's positioned herself near the registration table, clipboard in hand, looking like a general surveying her troops.
“Sierra!” Holly waves me over to where she's sitting with Charlie, Eve, and Dixie, bundled in blankets with thermoses of something that smells suspiciously spiked. “Come freeze your ass off with us.”
“It’s barely thirty degrees. Please tell me we’re freezing our asses off for a good reason.”
“Shirtless Lumberjacks Generate Content,” Charlie says, doing air quotes. “Tara's words. Apparently the social media metrics for 'attractive men doing manual labor in cold weather' are through the roof.”
“Of course they are.” I raise my camera and snap a shot of Roman adjusting his suspenders with entirely too much swagger. “Humanity is doomed.”
The competition starts with wood chopping, and it's exactly as ridiculous as expected. My brothers strip down to undershirts within the first ten minutes—because exertion.
I roll my eyes so hard they ache, but the crowd cheers and Tara's cameras eat it up.
Everett stays fully clothed, which shouldn't disappoint me as much as it does.
“He's good,” Holly observes, watching Everett split a log with economical precision. “Very... competent.”
“Holly.”
“I'm just saying. The man knows how to handle his wood.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me.” She bumps my shoulder. “Speaking of wood-handling, you look like you didn't sleep.”
“Couldn't get comfortable.”
“Uh huh.” Her eyes cut to Everett, then back to me. “Anything you want to share with the class?”
“Nope.”
“Sierra.”
“Holly.”
We stare at each other. She doesn't blink. I don't either.
“Fine,” I mutter. “Later. When there aren't cameras everywhere.”
“I'll hold you to that.”
The morning drags on through log rolling. Roman falls in three times, Nolan wins, Caleb claims the logs were rigged. They follow up with something called “timber tossing” that's basically just throwing heavy things while grunting.
By early afternoon, the crowd has swelled. Word spread about the #MountainDaddyTour phenomenon, and now there are approximately five hundred people crammed into a space meant for fifty, all of them documenting every flex, every grunt, every suspender snap on their phones.
It's chaos. Tara is thriving.
I station myself near the axe-throwing range, getting shots of the setup, when I overhear them.
Two of Tara's camera crew, positioned just behind the hay bales where they think nobody's listening. The taller one—Kyle, I think, based on the name embroidered on his jacket—nudges his buddy and gestures toward the crowd.
“Look at all these Lift Line Lulus,” he snickers. “Showing up in their cute little snow bunny outfits, pretending they give a shit about lumberjack sports.”
The other guy—shorter, beard, equally punchable face—laughs. “They're not here for the logs, dude. They're here for the wood.”
“Yeah, well, at least they're easy on the eyes.” Kyle adjusts his camera, panning across the female spectators like he's shooting a nature documentary about prey animals. “Too bad none of them could actually throw an axe. Twenty feet might as well be twenty miles for these chicks.”
My spine snaps straight and it takes everything in me to not strangle my camera.
“Nah, man.” The bearded one shakes his head. “Women can't throw. Upper body strength, spatial awareness—it's just not in the biology. That's why this is a men's event.”
No one said it was just a men’s event. Fucker.
I don't know who taught me to throw first—Roman, with his patient explanations of balance and follow-through, or Nolan, who just handed me an axe and said “aim for the center and don't let go too early.” All I know is I've been hitting targets since I was twelve, learned by brothers who never once treated me like I was incapable.
“Shutterbug.” Nolan materializes at my elbow, because of course he does. His eyes track from me to the camera crew and back. “You gonna take that?”
I don't answer. I'm already moving.
The axe-throwing range is technically closed between heats, but notices as I slip past the orange tape. Nobody stops me as I grab one of the competition axes from the rack—good weight, clean edge, perfect balance.
Kyle notices me first. “Hey, sweetheart, that area's not—”
I throw.
The axe rotates twice in the air and buries itself dead center in the target. The thunk of metal hitting wood echoes across the suddenly silent clearing.
Kyle blinks. “Lucky shot.”
Without taking my eyes off him, I pick up another axe.
This time I don't even aim properly. I just turn, extend my arm, and release in one fluid motion—the kind of muscle memory you only get from years of practice.
Dead center. Half an inch from the first axe.
The crowd erupts. Someone wolf-whistles. I hear Roman's unmistakable “THAT'S MY SISTER” bellow from somewhere to my left.
Kyle's face has gone an interesting shade of red. His buddy films it all, which is going to be a problem for him later, but right now all I can see is the way his lip curls when he looks at me.
“Okay, so you can throw,” he says, loud enough for the cameras to pick up. “Bet you're good at handling wood too, huh? All three of your brothers teach you that, or just one at a time?”
The world goes very, very quiet.
So very fucking quiet.
For the first time in my life, I discover a degree past rage.
I'm vaguely aware of Holly shouting something, of Roman starting to move, of Tara's cameras swiveling toward the confrontation, their every instinct telling them there’s about to be a story. National news worthy. They sure as hell don’t plan to interfere.
Because ratings gold.
But mostly I'm aware of the axe in my hand. And the distance between me and Kyle's smug, smirking face.
Twenty feet. Maybe less.
I've never missed at twenty feet.
Every emotion I’ve been riding in the past week funnels into this one moment, this hot ball of viciousness growing in my gut.
Expectations.
Want.
The fear of disappointing everyone I love.
The fear of leaping into the unknown.
The bone-deep terror that if I screw this up, I’ll lose everything.
I let it all meld with this moment—because it’s easier to put something away when you’ve nailed it to a different target.
Starting toward him, axe loose in my grip, the crowd parts like I'm Moses and they're the Red Sea.
Kyle's face shifts from smug to uncertain to genuinely afraid in about three seconds flat.
“Hey—hey, wait, I was just—”
“Sierra.”
Everett's voice cuts through the haze of fury.
He steps directly into my path, close enough that I have to stop or run into him. His hand wraps around my wrist—not hard, not forceful, just... there. Grounding.
“Give me the axe,” he says quietly. Just to me. Just between us.
“Did you hear what he just said?”
“Yes.” His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, a tiny, secret touch. “And he deserves it. But let's skip dismemberment. Family show.”
I stare at him. At the steadiness in his eyes. At the way he's positioned himself between me and the cameras, shielding me from the worst of the spectacle.
Protecting me in what might be the first moment instinct didn’t have me protecting myself.
I relax my fingers, the axe slipping from my grip into Everett’s hand.
In one smooth motion, tucks the handle into the back pocket of his jeans. The blade rests against his lower back like it belongs there—casual, competent, a little dangerous.
Then he turns to Kyle.
“Apologize.”
“What?” Kyle sputters. “Look, man, I was just joking around—”
“I didn't ask if you were joking.” Everett's doesn’t rise. It’s oddly quiet. More dangerous. “I said apologize. To her. Now.”
Kyle's eyes dart to Tara, who's watching the whole thing with the hungry expression of someone who just struck content gold. “Look, I don't—this is—Tara, tell him—”
“He's off my mountain.”
Everett doesn't raise his voice. Doesn't need to. Every person in that clearing hears him perfectly.
Tara steps forward, clipboard clutched to her chest like a shield. “Everett, let's not be hasty. Kyle is an integral part of my crew. I'm sure we can work this out—”
“You can work it out somewhere else.” Everett's gaze doesn't waver from Kyle. “He goes, or I pull the plug on your access. Your choice.”
“You need this show,” Tara says. There's an edge to her voice now, the velvet glove slipping to reveal the steel underneath. “Your bookings, your reputation, everything we've built this week—you'd throw that away over one comment?”
“It's just a mountain.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. My breath catches. My heart stutters.
It's just a mountain.
“It's your legacy,” Tara presses. “Everything your family built—”
“I'll lose my mountain before I let the cost come at Sierra's expense.”
The world stops.
I feel my brothers' eyes on me. Feel the weight of every camera in that clearing. Feel the impossible, terrifying, devastating truth of what Everett just said—out loud, in public, in front of everyone.
He would give up everything. His lodge. His legacy. Everything that’s made him who he is.
For me.
Tara's expression flickers—calculation replacing frustration. Her eyes move from Everett to me and back, cataloging, connecting, filing away.
“Fine.” She snaps her fingers at Kyle. “You're done. Get your gear and go.”
Kyle's face goes purple. “You can't be serious—”
“I said go.”
He goes. Spitting curses under his breath, throwing me a look that promises this isn't over, but he goes.
The crowd slowly resumes chatting and moving about. Conversations resume. The competition prep continues like nothing happened.
But something happened. Something huge.
Roman materializes at my side, his big-brother radar clearly pinging at maximum alert. “You okay, Shutterbug?”
“Fine.” My voice sounds distant, even to me. “I'm fine.”
“That was one hell of a throw.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Dad would've been proud.”
“Thanks.”
He hesitates, studying me with that look he's had since we were kids—the one that says he knows something's wrong but doesn't know how to ask. Then his eyes move to Everett, who's extracting the axes from the target with careful precision.
“That was decent of him,” Roman says slowly. “Stepping in like that.”
“Yeah.”
“The thing he said, though.” Roman's brow furrows. “About the mountain. About... you.”
My heart pounds. “He was just being dramatic. You know how he gets.”
“Do I?”
We stare at each other. For one horrible moment, I think he's going to push. Going to ask the question that's been hovering at the edges of every conversation for years.
Then Caleb crashes into both of us, throwing his arms around our shoulders. “That was AMAZING! Did you see that guy's face? He looked like he was about to piss himself! Sierra, I didn't know you had that much murder in you!”
The moment snaps.
Roman laughs, shakes his head, lets Caleb’s excitement sweep him away.
But when I look across the clearing, Nolan is watching me.
Not Everett. Me.
And his expression says he knows exactly what that declaration meant.