Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Sierra
My phone buzzes with a text and despite my survival instincts telling me to pretend I’m dead, I know it won’t work.
HOLLY
Where are you?? Caleb's trying to add a 'midnight heritage experience' to the schedule and someone needs to stop him before Everett commits actual murder.
ME
On my way. Got distracted.
Distracted. That's one word for it.
Another text comes in, this time from Charlie:
CHARLIE
Roman's telling everyone about the Shred Shack's 'romantic history.' There are stick figures involved as visual aids. Nick’s crying laughing.
I stop walking.
The Shred Shack's romantic history.
A laugh escapes before I can stop it.
The kind of laugh you make when the universe delivers a punchline so perfectly cruel you have no choice but to acknowledge it.
Stick figures. Roman drew stick figures of the Shred Shack's “romantic history.”
I wonder if he gave them little stick figure blankets. Little stick figure nervous laughter. Little stick figure hearts breaking in slow motion while they promised each other things they couldn't keep.
The laugh clogs in my throat.
My eyes sting.
Don't. Don't you dare cry over stick figures, Sierra Barrett.
But it's not the stick figures.
It's the fact that my brothers have been joking about this place all night—making up stories, inventing scandals, turning sacred ground into content—and they have no idea.
No idea that the “romantic encounters” they're laughing about include me.
No idea that the cabin they're using as a punchline is the place where I fell so completely in love that I've never fully recovered.
They'd stop laughing if they knew.
They'd stop laughing and start shouting and nothing would ever be the same.
I press my fingers to my mouth, to my swollen lips and the ghost of his kiss and the weight of a secret that gets heavier every single day.
Some things never changed. Not for me.
I believe him.
That's the terrifying part.
When he said it, I believed every word.
Because some things haven't changed for me either.
Eleven years. Three brothers. One impossible secret.
And I just made everything so much worse.
I take a breath. Square my shoulders. Arrange my face into something that doesn't scream 'I just made out with the forbidden man in a historically significant love shack.'
Then I walk back into the chaos.
The lodge still buzzes with #MountainDaddyTour energy.
People compare plaque photos.
Jake signs autographs. Someone starts a petition to make “Mount Me Everett” the official festival slogan.
I spot Everett across the room, carefully not looking at me.
He's got a drink in his hand and a thousand-yard stare that suggests he's reconsidering every life choice that led him to this moment.
Roman claps him on the shoulder, says something that makes Everett's eye twitch, and moves on to terrorize someone else.
Across the crowded room, through the noise and the chaos and the complete absurdity of this entire night, Everett's eyes finally find mine.
One look.
One second.
Everything we can't say thrums between us.
Then Holly grabs my arm and drags me toward the bar, and the moment breaks.
“There you are! Okay, you have to see this. Someone edited the 'Mount Me Everett' footage into a music video. It already has fifty thousand views.”
“Fantastic,” I manage. “Just... fantastic.”
“Are you okay? You look flushed.”
“Cold air.” I grab someone's abandoned drink and take a long swallow. “It's freezing out there.”
Holly’s eyebrows shoot up under her bangs and she gives me a look that says she doesn't entirely believe me, but she's too excited about the viral chaos to push.
I let her pull me into the crowd, into the noise, into the safety of being just another body in the celebration.
But I can still feel Everett's eyes on me.
I can still taste him on my lips.
And I know, with the certainty of someone who's been here before, that this is only the beginning.
We're going to crash and burn.
We're going to take everyone we love down with us.
And I'm starting to wonder if maybe—just maybe—it might be worth it.