Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Sierra
The darkroom is the only place in this lodge where I can disappear.
No cameras. No brothers. No Tara Greene lurking around corners with her predatory smile.
Just red light, chemical trays, and the steady rhythm of creation.
I've been in here for... I don't know how long. Long enough that my eyes have fully adjusted to the safelight glow. Long enough that the familiar smell of developer and fixer has seeped into my skin.
Not long enough to stop hearing his voice.
You'd never approve that renovation, would you?
I press my palms flat against the counter. Breathe through it.
Gotta preserve history.
My mother's camera sits beside me. The one piece of her I've carried everywhere. The reason I do what I do—freeze moments, protect legacies, save the things that matter before they slip away.
And he turned that into a weapon.
Your safe little distance from anything that actually matters.
My fingers curl around the metal edge.
The soft knock doesn’t surprise me. Three raps. Followed by a heavy silence where all I can hear is the heavy pumping of my broken heart.
“Sierra. It’s me.” The door muffling his low voice can’t hide the pain beneath it.
I want nothing more than to go to that door. Because the last time we were here, he left for close to a decade.
And everyday left a mark. An unseen tally only I knew about.
“I know you’re in there. The occupied sign is up.”
Of course it is. Because opening this door at the wrong moment could destroy hours of work.
Because I’ve been hiding in here specifically so I don’t have to look at him.
“I’m not coming in without permission.” His voice roughens. “But I’m not leaving either.”
My hands shake where they grip the counter.
Go away. Please just go away.
“Holly told me to give you space. But I can’t—” He breaks off. Exhales. “I can’t leave you alone with what I said.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Sierra.” My name catches. Cracks. “I’m not above begging.”
Something in that word—begging—cuts through everything else.
Everett Morgan doesn’t beg. He charms. He deflects. He grins his way through every uncomfortable moment.
He does not beg.
“You can come in. It’s safe.” I hear myself say despite never consciously making the decision to say it.
The door creaks open. A sliver of hallway light, quickly blocked by his body as he slips inside and pulls it shut behind him.
The red glow paints him in shades of blood and shadow.
This isn’t the polished, easy Everett the cameras see. This version is gutted—eyes hollow, jaw tight, shoulders carrying a weight I recognize because I'm carrying it too.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
“Hey.”
The silence stretches between us full of ghosts and if onlys.
The safelight hums. The chemical trays sit waiting.
“What you said—” I start.
“Was unforgivable.” He cuts me off. “I know. I know what I did, Sierra. I've been standing in that hallway for twenty minutes trying to figure out how to walk in here and make it right, and the answer is I can’t.”
I turn back to the enlarger. Adjust a dial that doesn't need adjusting.
“You laid there across my bar, looking up at that log.” His voice grows thick with emotion he never shies away from showing. “Telling me a story about Jedediah and Eleanor that I didn't even know… a story my grandmother trusted you with—not me. You.”
My throat burns.
“You gave me that. And I used it. I had no right.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
“I made you the construction mistake, Sierra. The wall. The reason we can't work.” He exhales, ragged. “I didn’t mean it. And I don't know how to come back from that.”
Locking my knees, I fight to keep upright. Just hearing their names after—I thought I hurt as much as I could possibly hurt.
I was wrong.
His voice drops to barely more than a whisper. “I saw you with Justin, and I was right back there. Watching you walk away. Watching you choose anyone but me.”
“The choice was never between him or you.”
A sound escapes him—something between a laugh and a sob. “I'm a fucking idiot. Sierra—”
“Do you know what that felt like?”
“No,” he says quietly. “And I wish I’d never said it.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I'm terrified.” The admission breaks something open in him. “I'm terrified that I'll never be worth the risk to you. That you'll always choose safe over me. That I'll spend the rest of my life loving someone who's too scared to love me back.”
“I'm not scared to love you.” The words rip out of me. “I'm scared of what it costs. I'm scared of losing my brothers. I'm scared of blowing up the only family I have left. I'm scared that if I choose you and it falls apart, I'll have nothing.”
The sob that comes out of me is ugly and raw and eleven years in the making.
“I want to tear down the walls between us, Sierra. Put the initials back together. Do what Eleanor never got to do.”
My breath catches.
“But I can't do it alone,” he continues. “I need you to stop keeping that camera between us. And I need you to choose.”
I don't turn around. I can't.
He steps in close. Close enough that his chest brushes my back, his breath stirs the hair at the crown of my head. “Choose me, Sierra.”
My eyes sink shut as my heart pounds through my chest.
“Choose us.” It’s a whispered plea that breaks my heart clean through.
And when my heart is breaking, I do the only thing that makes sense. The only thing I know to do to keep me safe.
I gesture to the enlarger. To the equipment waiting in the red-tinted dark.
“Do you remember how to do this?”
He stills behind me.
I don't explain. Don't elaborate. Just wait, my heart pounding against my ribs, wondering if he'll understand what I'm really asking.
He steps in behind me. Close. So close that his chest brushes my back and his breath stirs the hair at my temple.
“I remember everything,” he murmurs.
Strong, warm hands envelope mine over the enlarger controls.
My breath hitches.
“First…,” he says, a breath shuddering from his lungs. “You check the focus.”
His fingers guide mine to the dial I was pretending to adjust.
“Make sure the negative is sharp. Crisp. You taught me that details matter. Getting it right at the start saves you pain at the end.”
I didn't get it right at the start. I was seventeen and terrified and I didn’t know how to fight for what I wanted.
His body heat seeps through my clothes. His heartbeat pulses against my spine—slow, steady, certain.
“Then you set the exposure time.” He moves my hand to the timer. His thumb traces over my knuckles. “Long enough to capture the image. Short enough not to burn it. It's about balance.”
Too long. We nearly burned it all.
I can barely breathe.
“The aperture matters too.” His other hand joins in, adjusting the f-stop while his fingers remain laced with mine. “Too open and you lose depth. Too closed and you lose light. You have to find the sweet spot.”
I stayed too closed. Protected myself so well I forgot how to let the light in.
His lips brush my ear. Sending a bone-wracking shiver through me.
“You ready?”
I nod, unable to trust my voice.
“Expose.”
Lay it all bare. Every wall still standing wrecked with one word.
He helps me slide the photo paper into position the way I helped him all those years ago.
Click the timer on.
In the red glow, I watch the seconds count down while his body brackets mine, solid and warm and there.
The timer beeps.
“Now the developer.”
He walks me toward the trays, his hands still covering mine, his chest still pressed to my back.
“This is where the magic happens. You said that once. Watching something invisible become real.”
That's what we've been. Invisible. A secret nobody could see. And now—
He guides my hands into the first tray. The chemical is cool against my skin, his fingers warm between mine.
“Agitate gently.” His voice is a rumble against my hair. “Not too rough. Not too soft. Just enough to keep things moving.”
We were never gentle with each other. Too scared. Too desperate. Maybe this time we can learn.
The image starts to appear. Gray smudges become shapes. Shadows sharpen to contrast.
“You’re doing so well,” he murmurs, and the words land somewhere deep in my chest, in a place that hasn’t been touched since before everything broke apart.
The picture clarifies. Sharpens.
It's him.
The shot I took at the damaged window—Everett in golden hour light, eyes catching fire, profile sharp against the soft blur of the great room behind him. Fifth-generation owner, every line of his body carrying the weight of his legacy.
Maybe I didn’t know I was going to develop this one. Maybe I always did.
“Stop bath,” he says softly, lifting our joined hands from the developer. “Halt the reaction. Lock in what you’ve got.”
Stop running. Stop hiding. Stop letting fear dictate the ending.
We transfer the print together. His thumb strokes the inside of my wrist.
“Fixer.” His nose traces the curve of my ear. “Make it permanent. Make sure it lasts.”
Make sure we last.
The print goes into the third tray. His hands cover mine, holding me steady while the image sets.
“And then?”
“Then you rinse.” He guides me to the final wash. “Get rid of anything that doesn't belong. Anything that might damage it later.”
The old hurts. The resentments and fear. The walls I built to keep him out. The walls he built when I pushed him away.
The water runs over our joined hands, over the paper, over the image of his face staring up at us through the chemical sheen.
“And then you hang it.” His voice has dropped to something barely audible. “Let it dry. Let it become what it was always meant to be.”
Us.
Finally, irreversibly, us.
We clip the print to the line together. It drips above us, while his hands linger on mine.
His heartbeat is still thrumming against my back.
“A-plus,” I whisper.
“I told you.” His lips brush the shell of my ear. “I remember everything.”
I glance over my shoulder and really look at him for the first time since he walked in.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs. In this light, at this distance, with this much want sparking between us, he’s almost more than my nervous system can process.
Impossibly dark eyes under the safelight. Jaw clenched. Chest heaving like every breath hurts.
“Sierra.” My name is a prayer. A warning. A question.
“Yes,” I answer, before he can ask.
His hand slides into my hair.
The grip isn't gentle. His fingers fist at my roots, pulling my head back until my throat is exposed, until I'm looking up at him from below, vulnerable and wanting and completely at his mercy.
“I need you to be sure.” His voice is gravel and smoke. “Because once I start, I'm not stopping. Not until you're quivering and wrecked, not until your body understands what your fear never let you admit—how much I've missed you, Sierra. Every single day for eleven goddamn years.”