Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sierra
By the time we end up in the hot tub that night, I’ve almost convinced myself that everything is fine.
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Everett kept his distance—professionally civil, carefully neutral. Exactly the way we're supposed to be. If Roman, Caleb, or Nolan noticed anything weird about the axe throwing confrontation, they haven't mentioned it.
Crisis averted.
Disaster dodged.
I am a master of denial and I will die on this hill.
“You're coming, right?” Holly appears at my elbow, already wrapped in a fluffy robe. “Hot tub. Girls only. Dixie smuggled champagne.”
“I don't know...” I glance toward the back deck, where steam curls into the cold night air. “I'm pretty tired.”
“You're pretty avoidant.” Holly links her arm through mine. “And you're coming anyway. Charlie's already out there threatening to tell pregnancy horror stories if we don't provide adequate distraction.”
“That's blackmail.”
“That's motherhood.” She tugs me toward the stairs. “Get your suit.”
Ten minutes later, I sink into the hot tub and let the jets assault every clenched muscle.
Holly's already soaking, champagne in hand.
Eve slides in beside her with a groan that borders on indecent.
Dixie makes a noise that's fully indecent as the heat hits her shoulders.
“Oh my God.” Dixie tips her head back against the edge. “I needed this.”
Charlie watches us from her blanket throne—a patio lounger she's transformed into a pregnancy fortress with approximately nine layers of fleece. A thermos of something steaming is clutched in her mittened hands.
Where have I seen this before.
“I got it, you look like the Bernie meme.” The minute the words leave my mouth, Charlie aims a death stare at me.
“I hate all of you,” she announces.
“Bernie looked like he hated everyone too. You’re in character.”
Charlie’s mouth opens only to have whatever retort burning on the tip of her tongue thwarted by Eve.
“You could dangle your feet?” Eve offers.
“Nick would have a coronary.” Charlie burrows deeper into her cocoon. “He's already convinced the baby's going to fall out if I breathe wrong. Hot tub would send him straight to the ER with a heart attack.”
“Speaking of men having cardiac events.” Holly's eyes slide to me over the rim of her champagne glass. “Sierra. Babe.”
I know that look. That's the spill everything or I'll waterboard you with this bottle of Veuve Clicquot look.
“What?” I try for casual. Fail spectacularly.
“What was that today?” Eve leans forward, water sloshing. “After the axe throwing? You and Everett disappeared behind the equipment shed and came back looking like you got hip whipped straight into traffic.”
“I’ve seen people dug out of avalanches that looked better,” Dixie adds.
“We just talked.”
Four sets of eyes level at me with varying degrees of bitch, please.
“Talked.” Eve's eyebrows hit her hairline. “Girl.”
“We did! We talked and it was—” I stop. Blow out a breath. “Intense. It was intense. He's pushing and I'm—”
“Running?” Holly offers, too sweetly.
“Strategically retreating.”
“That's just the name-brand version of running. Don’t hate on us generic girlies.” Charlie says.
Holly watches me with that patient, knowing expression. She's not asking the questions everyone else is. She's just... waiting. Letting me get there.
Because she already knows. The photos. The history. Everything I've hidden behind that faulty panel for over a decade.
“He said I've been making all the calls for eleven years,” I finally admit. “That nobody's had to choose anything. Including me.”
The silence that follows is pointed.
“Well.” Eve takes a long sip of champagne. “He's not wrong.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always yours.” She shrugs. “But I can be on your side and still acknowledge when a man has a point.”
“These men,” Holly says, shaking her head but smiling. “I swear, it's like emotional intensity is their love language. Who can be the most overwhelming, the most—”
“Unhinged?” Dixie offers.
“I was going to say devoted, but sure. Unhinged works.”
Charlie shifts in her blanket cocoon, one hand resting on the swell of her belly. “Nick literally cannot walk past me without touching me somewhere. Like he has to verify every thirty seconds that I'm real and still carrying his spawn.”
“Chance does this thing where he just... looks at me.” Holly waves her hand vaguely. “Like he's running tactical assessments on my emotional state. It should be exhausting. It's annoyingly hot.”
“It's the military training,” Eve says. “He's checking for threats. You're the asset.”
“I'm the asset?” Holly snorts. “That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said about my marriage.”
“You're welcome.”
Dixie laughs, but there's an edge to it. “Must be nice. Having someone that tuned in.”
The shift in her tone makes us all pause.
“Unlike some people,” she mutters into her champagne, “who show up once a year, decide they're experts on everything, and spend the whole week telling you how to do the job you've been doing just fine without them.”
Holly's eyes narrow. “And which 'some people' are we talking about?”
“No one.” Dixie takes a long sip. Too long. “Forget I said anything.”
“Wait.” Eve sits up straighter. “Is this about Roman? Sierra's brother Roman?”
Oh no.
“It's not about Roman. Roman is just—” Dixie's grip tightens on her glass. “He's been a partner for five minutes and suddenly he has opinions about how I run the ski school. Like building fancy log cabins in another state somehow makes him qualified to critique my teaching methods.”
I drop my head into my hands. “What did he do?”
“You say that like you already know it's bad.”
“I've been his sister for twenty-eight years.” I peer at her through my fingers. “I know it's bad. Spill.”
“He told me my beginner slope rotation was ‘inefficient.’” Dixie's air quotes are so aggressive they nearly splash water. “Inefficient. I’ve been running that program for four years. He’s been a partner for ten months, doesn’t even live here, and there’s not even snow on the damn ground yet.
But please, Roman—tell me more about how to do my job based on your limited experience playing with your specialty log. ”
Charlie goes human sprinkler and spits hot chocolate across her blanket.
“You know what I meant!” Dixie snaps, cheeks flushed hotter than the tub. “His craft. His woodworking. His—” She sees the faces around her and groans. “Oh, shut up. All of you.”
“I didn't say anything,” Eve manages, shoulders shaking.
“Yeah, because you also have a boner for wood. Well, professionally speaking.”
Eve’s face shifts—lips pinched, one eyebrow cocked like a loaded crossbow. Her drink hovers mid-air, steaming slightly in the winter air. She’s clearly calculating whether to let that slide or drown Dixie where she sits.
“Wait. That didn’t sound right.”
“You think?” Eve says, finally sipping, voice so dry it could sand down a two-by-four.
I make a mental note to give Roman absolute hell about this later. My brother, Mr. Smooth Operator, getting under someone's skin this badly? After barely knowing her a year?
And yet somehow not charming his way out of it?
Interesting.
“Can we go back to interrogating Sierra?” Dixie demands. “I was enjoying that.”
“Fine.” Holly turns that laser focus back to me. “You were saying. Everett's pushing. You're 'strategically retreating.' And?”
“And nothing.” I drain my champagne. “We're going to survive this week, the festival will end, and everything will go back to normal.”
“Normal being...?”
“Him in his life. Me in mine. Pretending we never happened.”
The silence that follows is even more pointed than before.
“That sounds healthy,” Charlie says finally. “And not at all like a recipe for dying alone surrounded by cats and regret.”
“I like cats.”
“Everyone likes cats,” Charlie says. “That's not the point.”
“What is the point?” The words come out sharper than I intend.
“What am I supposed to do? Walk up to my three overprotective brothers and say, 'Hey, remember your best friend?
The one you've known since you were kids?
I've been secretly in love with him for eleven years and oh, by the way, we were together before he left. Really together. Looking for my virginity? Check his pockets. And yeah, there’s that little matter of lying to your faces ever since. ' That'll go over great.”
Holly sets down her champagne glass. “Sierra.”
“They'll never forgive me. Either of us. They had a deal—”
“Sierra.”
“—and Roman will lose his mind, Nolan will do that quiet disappointed thing that's somehow worse, and Caleb will probably try to fight Everett which is just embarrassing for everyone because Everett would destroy him—”
“Sierra.”
I stop. Breathe. Realize my hands are shaking.
Holly's expression softens. “You've been carrying this alone for a really long time, haven't you?”
The question cracks something open in my chest.
“I’ve loved him since I was fourteen. Half my life.
” My voice comes out smaller than I want.
“Eleven years of pretending. But I guess it’s not all bad, he was gone for nine of them.
Now I watch him across rooms and act like it doesn’t gut me to lie to the people I love most because the truth is a bomb I can’t figure out how to diffuse. ”
The words scrape out of me before I can stop them.
“I miss my mom.” A pathetic sob bubbles up and I swallow it down like I’ve done thousands of times before.
The hot tub goes quiet. Even the jets seem to soften.
“She would've known what to do. She always knew.” I swipe at my cheek, annoyed at the tears that have no business showing up right now.
“My brothers—I love them, but they're not exactly equipped for conversations about feelings. And Dad tried, but...” I shrug.
“He was drowning too. So I just... handled things. On my own. Because that's what I do.”
“Oh, honey.” Charlie's voice is thick.
“It's fine. I'm fine. I've been fine for—”