Chapter 7 #2
“Lumberjack games,” Caleb offers immediately, because of course that's where his brain goes. “Saturday afternoon. I can rally the crew from Roman's construction team. Make it competitive.”
The planning session that follows is chaotic and loud and exactly like every family dinner I've ever survived—everyone talking over everyone else, ideas bouncing off the walls like ricocheting bullets.
This was us. Before everything fell apart.
The five of us, sprawled across this very room, dreaming up schemes and getting into trouble. Everett at the center of it, the only child who'd inherited three brothers whether he wanted them or not.
I'd almost forgotten what this felt like. All of us together. A unit.
A family.
Don’t.
Don't get attached to something you can't keep.
But the warmth stubbornly spreads anyway. Like light leaking into a darkroom, blurring the image the same way it blurs lines I’d laid down.
By the time the sky starts to lighten outside the great room windows, we have a loose plan. Snow-or-Shine Fest, running all week. Heritage walk, lumberjack games, A “Best of Maine” food crawl through the restaurant.
And yes, fine, Tara Greene and her cameras. But on Everett's terms. Cultural. Respectful.
No manufactured drama.
Famous last words.
“Alright, that's the skeleton,” Roman says. “We can flesh it out over the next couple days.”
“Someone needs to coordinate with Holly and Chance,” Nolan adds. “Get them up to speed.”
“And Nick and Charlie,” Caleb says. “We'll need all hands on deck. This is an all-hands situation. Possibly an all-feet situation too.”
“I'll handle it.” Everett's already pulling out his phone. “Group text. Morning briefing at nine.”
“Make it ten,” Roman groans. “Some of us drove all night and are running on fumes and spite.”
“Fine. Ten.” He types something, then pauses, his thumb hovering over the screen. “Sierra. You're included.”
It's not a question. It's barely even an invitation. But something about the way he says my name makes my heart stutter.
“Obviously,” Caleb says before I can respond. “She's the heritage expert. Can't do this without her. She's basically the whole reason this might work.”
The heritage expert. Right. That's why I'm being included. Professional competence. Nothing else.
I ignore the flutter of disappointment in my chest. It's fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.
“Speaking of which.” Roman turns to me, his expression shifting into that annoyingly perceptive big brother mode. “You staying?”
“What?”
“At the lodge. For the event.” He raises an eyebrow. “We’re going to be here so we’re on site to help out. If you stay, it’ll be just like old times.”
“I have work. Projects. Developing to do—”
And staying here means staying near him. Walking past the window seat every day knowing exactly what almost happened there.
“It’d be like old times,” Nolan points out.
“And by old times,” Caleb adds, “I mean we can bully you into making us look emotionally deep in candids again.”
“Come on, Shutterbug.” Roman's voice softens. “Stay. We haven't all been together in years. And you know this place better than any of us.”
“Better than Everett?” I deflect with sarcasm because vulnerability is for people who haven't built their entire adult life around emotional avoidance.
“Different than Everett,” Nolan corrects. “He knows the business side. You know the bones.”
“The darkroom's still here.”
Everett's voice catches me off guard. I look at him—really look at him—and find something complicated in his expression.
He knows exactly what he's offering. Exactly which strings he's pulling.
Bastard.
“You kept it?”
“My dad closed it up. It hasn’t been touched since… well, it’s been empty for a couple of years.”
Since Grammie Bea died.
He shrugs, but it's not casual. Nothing about this is casual. It’s a direct challenge and we both know it.
“After all this time, seemed wrong to get rid of it. Like throwing away—”
Like throwing away what we had.
“Okay.”
I won’t throw our past away and he can’t run.
Let the goddamn games begin. No way this can go wrong at all.
Caleb blinks. “Okay?”
“I'll stay. For the setup and the event.” I grab my untouched bourbon and drain half of it in one go. The burn helps. Barely. “But when I’m in that darkroom… no interruptions. That’s the deal.”
Caleb fist-pumps like he just won the lottery. “Barrett squad, reunited! This is going to be legendary.”
Everett disappears around the corner, only to return with four sets of keys a minute later. He hands one to each of my brothers and the last to me.
“Third floor, end of the hall,” Everett says. “Same room as always.”
Grammie Bea’s room.
“I remember.”
The words hang between us, loaded with a decade of meaning no one else in this room can hear.
Roman yawns massively, breaking the tension he’s not even picking up on. “Okay, that's it for me. I need at least four hours of sleep before I can function like a human being instead of a caffeinated zombie.”
“Lightweight,” Caleb accuses.
“Says the guy who's going to be unconscious in twenty minutes.”
“Fair. I'm already mostly unconscious. This is autopilot Caleb. He's less charming but equally handsome.”
They gather coats and bags, the tangle of movement filling the space with blessed noise. I use the distraction to slip off my stool and edge toward the stairs.
“Sierra, wait.”
Roman ditches my nickname and catches me before I can escape, pulling me into a hug that now smells like expensive whiskey.
“I'm glad you're here,” he murmurs against my hair. “Really glad.”
“Me too,” I whisper, horrified to realize I mean it.
These three overprotective idiots who drove me crazy my entire childhood and still somehow managed to be the safest thing I've ever known.
It’s the first Christmas we won’t spend with our dad. He’s finally happy after all these years of just... surviving. We don't begrudge him that. We just don't know what we are without being the family that held together after Mom died.
Which is exactly why I can never tell them what happened with Everett, much less have more window seat run-ins.
Because love like this? It doesn't survive betrayal. Not the kind they'd see it as.
They disperse, their voices fading into the early morning quiet. I start up the stairs to the third floor, my legs heavy, my heart heavier.
“Sierra.”
Everett's voice stops me on the landing.
I turn. He looks at me with an expression I can't quite read. Longing, maybe. Or frustration. Or that particular combination of both that seems to define everything between us.
“Thank you,” he says. “For staying. For helping.”
I force a shrug of indifference meant to protect, but only brings sadness. “According to everyone in this room, it's just business.”
“Is it?”
The question lands between us, spitting and sparking with unrestrained energy.
I should say yes. Should reinforce the walls I've spent eleven years building.
“I don't know,” I admit instead. “Maybe that's the problem.”
His jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he's going to push. Going to cross the room and back me into another corner and make me face everything I've been running from.
But he doesn't.
He just nods, once, and says, “Get some sleep. Planning starts at ten.”
Everything in this lodge holds a memory. Every floorboard and window and crack in the plaster.
And now I've agreed to spend a week sleeping under the same roof as the man who stars in most of them.
Smart, Sierra. Really brilliant strategy.
Three days of setup. A festival running through Christmas. A handful of days pretending I don't still love the man who's brought my brothers in as business partners.
I'm so fucked.
But as exhaustion finally drags me under, my last thought isn't about survival.
It's about Everett's voice, soft and rough, saying the darkroom's still here.
Like he's been waiting.
Like maybe I have too.