Chapter 11 #2
“You don't know that. And she deserved better. You deserved to say goodbye to your grandmother without…” I trail off, not sure how to finish.
“Without what?”
“Without me complicating everything. The way I always do.”
Everett is quiet for a long moment. His hands rest on the bar between us, close enough that I could reach out and touch them if I wanted to. I don't.
“I looked for you,” he finally says. “At the church. I kept thinking you'd walk in late, slide into a back pew. I kept turning around to check.”
The image hits me harder than I expected. Him in a dark suit, scanning the crowd. Hoping. Disappointed.
“I'm sorry,” I whisper.
“I'm not looking for an apology.” His voice is gentle in a way that makes my chest ache. “I'm just... I wanted you to know. That I noticed you weren't there.”
My eyes burn. I blink hard, refusing to let the tears fall.
“I was here, actually,” I say. “That day. At the lodge.”
He goes completely still.
“Everyone was at the church,” I continue, the words coming faster now. “The whole town practically. And the lodge was empty. So I drove up. Let myself in. And I came here. To the bar.”
“Why?”
“To say goodbye in my own way.” A watery laugh breaks free. “Imagine my surprise when I found her here. Her ashes, right here on this bar, in that hideous pink box she picked out. Told me if she had to be cremated, she was damn well going to do it in style.”
A sound escapes him—half laugh, half something else.
One hundred percent broken.
“That sounds like her,” he manages.
“She missed her own funeral. God, you know she loves that. So while everyone was at the church, giving speeches and sharing memories...” I press my palm flat against the bar, right where the box sat. “I was here. Just me and her. Talking to her like she could still hear me.”
Everett's knuckles turn white with every tightening of his hands as he clutches the bar.
“I told her I missed her.” My voice cracks on the words.
“I told her I was sorry—for not being strong enough—so many things.
And I told her I loved her. That I'd always love her.” I swipe my damp cheeks with the sleeve of my sweater.
“I got to say goodbye, Everett. Just not the way everyone else did.”
“Sierra...”
“I think she would have understood.” The words come out small but steady. “She always understood things that other people didn't. She saw things.” My voice catches. “And she never judged. She just loved.”
He lets go of the counter then and rounds the bar.
My body tenses, every nerve ending springing to life. I should step back. Should maintain the distance. Should protect myself from whatever's about to happen.
But moving’s impossible.
He comes to a stop in front of me, close enough that the heat radiating from his body seeps into mine.
Close enough for me to see unshed tears he's not bothering to hide.
“She did understand,” he says quietly, his voice rough. “She understood everything.”
The air charges between us. It should be a warning, but it only seems to draw us closer to one another.
“She used to tell me—” His voice catches. “Some things take time. That the right things are worth waiting for, even when it hurts.”
“She told me that too.”
We're standing far too close. His breath feathers over my cheek as I study the pulse throbbing in his throat.
My own heart races with our proximity, the beat so devastatingly loud, there’s no way he doesn’t hear it.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“Probably.”
“We just agreed. No more looks. No more almost-touches.”
“I know.”
“My brothers are upstairs.”
“I know that too.”
Neither of us moves.
His hand comes up slowly—so slowly I could stop him if I wanted to—but when he cups the side of my face, I’m lost. Reason disappears with the swipe of his thumb over my cheekbone, as he captures a fresh tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
“Everett...” I mean it as a warning, but fuck if his name didn’t sound like a plea to keep going. To do everything in his power to come at my walls.
To wreck every last one and never let me build them between us again.
“I'm not going to kiss you.” He brushes my tear over my bottom lip, his voice rough in a way that makes my stomach flip. “Not tonight. Not like this.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I don't know.” His forehead drops to mine, and for a moment we’re just two people seeking solitude in the shared breaths between us. “I just... I needed...”
He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to.
I close my eyes and let him wash over me. Warm and solid, he’s as steady as she was. Believing in me—in my ability to find a way to believe in us—as much as he always did.
My body remembers his, settles into the nearness of him, even while my brain screams at me to run.
His hand finds my hip, not pulling me closer, just... resting there. Tethering us to one another in an innocently intimate way.
We stand like that for what feels like hours. Foreheads touching. Breath mingling. His thumb tracing slow circles on my cheek while my fingers curl into the fabric of his t-shirt without my permission.
It's not a kiss. It's something so much worse. It’s rediscovery and the stark realization none of this ever ended. It’s accepting that it will never die, it’ll just lay dormant until we find one another again.
“I don't know how to do this,” I whisper, my voice hitching with the pain lodging my throat. “I don't know how to be around you and not—”
“Not what?”
Not want you. Not remember. Not fall right back into the same impossible situation that almost killed me the first time around.
“Not make it complicated,” I finish instead.
“It's already complicated.” His lips brush my forehead—barely a touch, barely anything—and my whole body shivers. “It's been complicated for eleven years.”
“I know.”
“So maybe we stop pretending it isn't.”
I pull back. Just a little. Just enough to look at him. “What does that mean?”
“I don't know yet.” His hand falls away from my face, and the loss of his heat, his touch, leaves an impossible ache behind.
“But I think we need to figure it out. Don't you?”
Before I can answer, a crash echoes from somewhere in the kitchen. We spring apart like teenagers caught after curfew.
“What the hell was that?”
Roman's voice carries through the darkness, muffled and sleepy. “Everett? You down there?”
My heart pounds so hard it threatens to punch its way out of my chest. My cheeks flame as the blood surges through my veins.
Everett looks exactly like a man who was just interrupted on his way to doing something scandalous on this very bar—adjusting himself with zero subtlety.
Those goddamn sweatpants hide nothing.
“Yeah, give me a minute,” he calls back, his voice impressively steady.
He looks at me.
I look at him.
“I should go,” he whispers.
“Yeah.” But he doesn't move.
“Everett...”
“I know. He takes a step back, running a hand through his already mussed hair. “Go. Before Roman comes looking.”
I grab my camera from the bar and slip toward the stairs, my legs unsteady, my thoughts a tangled mess.
“Sierra.”
I turn back to him from the first step.
He stands by the bar, haloed by moonlight, looking at me with an expression I can't quite read.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For telling me. About the funeral. About Grammie Bea.”
My throat tightens to the point I can only nod before climbing the stairs without looking back.
My hands shake and my lips tingle from a kiss that never actually happened.
I don't know what any of it means.
I don't know where we go from here.
All I know is that something shifted tonight. A wall cracked. Some door opened that I'd spent eleven years trying to keep closed.
And I have no idea if that's a good thing or a disaster waiting to happen.
Probably both.
With us, it's always both.