Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sierra
Sleep isn't happening.
I've tried everything. Counting sheep. Counting breaths. Counting all the reasons I should not still be replaying the exact pressure of Everett's fingers while my brothers debated sexy Santa calendars five feet away.
None of it works.
My body is still buzzing. Still humming at a frequency that should be illegal. Every time I close my eyes, I'm back in that hot tub—steam curling around us, his hand sliding up my thigh, that look in his eyes that said I dare you to stop me.
I didn't stop him.
I came so hard I forgot the heritage. All of it. Everything that’s been as integral to my survival as the blood pumping through my veins.
Sierra “Just Got Fingered In Front Of Her Family” Barrett.
Thanks for that, Eve.
The group chat has finally gone quiet—probably because it's 3 a.m. and normal humans are asleep—but my phone screen still glows in the dark offering me a distraction from my every replay of Everett’s fingers.
I should put it down.
I should close my eyes and process like a functioning adult with healthy coping mechanisms.
Instead, I open Instagram.
Just to check. Just to see if the festival content is still holing strong. Professional curiosity. Totally normal.
The first thing I see is Tara Greene's verified account.
My thumb hovers.
Don't do it. Don't click. Nothing good happens after midnight on a reality TV producer's social media.
I click.
And my stomach drops straight through the mattress.
She's posted a carousel. No caption—just a simple emoji and the hashtag #MorganLodgeBTS.
The first image is Everett behind the bar, caught mid-conversation with his jaw tight and eyes hard. Out of context, he looks cold. Dismissive.
I swipe.
Everett on the phone, hand dragging through his hair, face twisted with frustration. The angle makes him look furious. Unhinged, almost.
Swipe.
A clip. Just eight seconds. Everett's voice, clipped and exhausted: “—can't keep doing this. Something has to give or we lose everything.”
No context. No setup. Just a man who sounds desperate.
The first slide is a video clip.
I tap it before I can stop myself.
Bruce Morgan's voice fills my ears, sharp enough to cut glass.
“This isn't some frat party. It's a legacy. And your beer buddies shit all over it.”
The footage is grainy—clearly captured from a distance, maybe through the office window—but it's unmistakable. Bruce standing rigid, face red with fury. Everett's back to the camera, shoulders tight.
My brothers visible in the background like witnesses at an execution.
I swipe with trembling fingers.
The second clip is worse.
Bruce again, jabbing a finger toward Everett: “I can't stand that you're making a mockery of everything we built.”
And Everett's voice, raw and defensive: “Thirty percent and your pride? Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Not the lodge. Not the legacy. Your pride. You can't stand that I'm doing things differently than you did.”
Swipe.
The kill shot.
Bruce's voice, cold and clipped: “Congratulations. You saved the lodge and shamed every Morgan who built it.”
A pause. Then the final blow.
“I'm glad someone believes in what you're building. Because I don't recognize it anymore.”
And the comments are already spinning.
wait is the lodge actually broke??
I knew something was off about this whole Mountain Daddy thing
so the viral stuff was just a cash grab? yikes
didn't he abandon his family for like a decade? and now he's back trying to save it? suspicious timing
I scroll faster, heart hammering.
Someone's done a deep dive. Screenshots of old tagged photos, timelines pieced together from public records and social media scraps.
THREAD: The truth about Everett Morgan
So I did some digging and... this guy left home at 20 and didn't come back for NINE YEARS. His grandmother died last year, his father supposedly chooses to retire, and suddenly he's running the family business? Make it make sense.
His dad was running the lodge the whole time. Then grandma dies, suddenly there's a power shift, and now the son who couldn't be bothered to stick around is in charge?
His dad ran the lodge the whole time Everett was off bartending across the country. Now the son who couldn't be bothered to stick around is tearing it apart for TikTok clout??
ALSO the “beer buddies” his dad mentioned?
Those are his childhood best friends! The Barrett brothers are listed as investors.
So he comes home, takes over from his dad, takes his friends' money, and starts this whole “Mountain Daddy” rebrand that's basically turning a historic property into a thirst trap? ?
idk about you but that screams opportunist to me
The replies multiply, scandalous virus mutating, spreading…
omg this makes so much sense now
the hot lumberjack content was giving desperate
his dad must be PISSED
if my dad said he didn't recognize what I built... I'd be in THERAPY
I feel bad for the Barrett brothers honestly, they seem like good guys who got played
My hands shake. My fingertips turn to ice and go numb.
This isn't journalism. This isn't even gossip. This is a narrative being built in real-time, brick by brick, and Tara didn't have to say a single word.
She just provided the raw materials and let the internet do the demolition.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
Every “candid” shot. Every “accidental” audio clip. Every carefully cropped image designed to strip away context and leave only suspicion.
And the worst part?
She's not wrong about the facts. Just the framing.
Everett did leave for nine years. He did come back after Grammie Bea died. He did take investment from my brothers. He is modernizing the lodge in ways that make traditionalists nervous.
But the why of it—the grief, the guilt, the desperate love for a place he couldn't stand to watch crumble—none of that makes it into the thread.
None of that fits the narrative.
I sit up clutching the phone in my hand so tight, my fingers scream in agony.
He left because of me.
The thought slices through everything else.
He left because I broke his heart and he couldn't stay here and watch me pretend we were nothing. Loving me cost him his home.
And now the internet is calling him an opportunist for coming back.
I want to scream.
I want to reply to every comment, explain that they're wrong, that they don't know him, that Everett Morgan is the furthest thing from an opportunist—
But I can't.
Because defending him means explaining why I know him well enough to defend him. And explaining that means admitting what we are. What we've always been.
And how does our history look now in Tara’s frame?
The secret that could still blow up everything.
I scroll through more comments, each one a fresh wound.
his own father probably resents him for swooping in
“Mountain Daddy” more like “Trust Fund Daddy”
can't believe I thought he was hot, this is giving manipulator
the Barrett brothers invested their money and he's out here doing shirtless content?? embarrassing.
My throat burns.
Because here's the thing about Everett Morgan that these strangers will never understand… he didn't leave because he didn't love this place.
He left because he loved too much. Loved me too much. And staying would have meant watching me move on, watching me pretend he was just my brothers' friend, watching his heart bleed out in slow motion while I smiled through family dinners like nothing was wrong.
I did that to him.
I made him choose between his home and his sanity.
And now some reality TV producer is weaponizing Everett's grief for engagement metrics.
You could tell them.
The thought slithers through my brain, unwelcome and insistent.
You could reply to that thread. Explain that he left because of you. That he came back because his grandmother's death reminded him life is too short to run from the things that matter. That he's not cashing in—he's fighting to save the only home he's ever known.
You could defend him.
You could save him.
But at what cost?
My brothers would never forgive me. Not for the relationship—they'd get over that eventually, probably—but for the lying. Eleven years of lying. Eleven years of looking them in the eye and pretending Everett was nothing more than a family friend.
That kind of betrayal doesn't just heal.
And Everett... God, Everett. He's finally in a position to save this lodge. My brothers are invested—literally. If this blows up, if the scandal becomes about us instead of the lodge, it could tank everything they've built together.
I can't be the reason he loses this.
I can't be the reason he loses them.
So I sit in the dark, phone clutched in my trembling hands, and watch the comments multiply.
This is what helpless feels like.
I've spent my whole life behind a camera. Documenting. Preserving. Capturing moments so they can't slip away.
But I can't capture this. Can't frame it or filter it or make it beautiful.
I can only watch.
And hurt for him.
And hate myself for being too much of a coward to do anything about it.
My phone buzzes.
For one stupid, hopeful second, I think it's him. That somehow he's awake too, that he's seen it, that he's reaching out—
HOLLY
You awake?
HOLLY
Please tell me you haven't seen it
HOLLY
Sierra
HOLLY
Don't look at Tara's Instagram
Too late.
I type back with numb fingers.
ME
Already saw it.
HOLLY
Fuck
ME
She didn't even have to say anything. She just posted clips and let the internet do the rest.
HOLLY
That's so much worse
HOLLY
Plausible deniability. “I was just sharing behind the scenes content!”
ME
Exactly.
ME
And now there's a whole thread calling him an opportunist who abandoned his family and came back for the inheritance.
HOLLY
That's bullshit
HOLLY
Everyone who knows him knows that's bullshit
ME
The internet doesn't know him.
ME
They just know the hashtag.
HOLLY
Are you okay?
Am I okay?
I'm watching the man I've loved since I was seventeen get publicly eviscerated, and I can't do a single thing about it because defending him would require admitting I'm in love with him, which would require admitting I've been lying to everyone I love for over a decade.
And he’s probably sleeping with no clue he’s as to what he’s going to wake up to.
So no. No, I'm not okay.
ME
I don't know how to help him.
HOLLY
Oh honey
HOLLY
This isn't your fight to fix
But that's where she's wrong.
This has always been my fight.
I just never had the courage to show up for it.
I set my phone face-down on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling. The same ceiling Everett stared at when he told me about the initials. Jedediah and Eleanor, carved into the same log, separated by a construction mistake.
Two people who loved each other their whole lives, but memorialized like this. Looking across the same room but never quite reaching.
That's us.
That's always been us.
And now some stranger with a camera crew is trying to burn down the very room we've been reaching across.
I close my eyes and let the tears come.
The helpless kind.
Tomorrow, Everett will wake up to this.
Tomorrow, he'll have to face the cameras and the comments and the slow unraveling of his reputation.
Tomorrow, he'll have to smile through that stupid reindeer bachelor auction while strangers on the internet call him a fraud.
And I'll be there. Watching. Documenting.
Hiding behind my lens like I always do.
Because that's what I'm good at.
Preserving other people's stories while my own falls apart.