Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sierra
Something's wrong.
I noticed it the second the crowd finished cheering.
The way his smile didn't reach his eyes. The way he scanned the crowd, found me, and then—
Looked away.
Not the slow, deliberate look-away of a man trying to be discreet.
His dismissal came with barbs.
I tell myself it's the morning. The Tara post. His father's words playing on repeat for strangers. The humiliation of riding a mechanical Rudolph while his reputation bleeds out online.
Anyone would be off after that.
But this feels different.
This feels aimed.
And I don’t get a single quiet moment to check on him.
So I do what I do best even as my stomach hollows out with gnawing worry.
Click.
Roman adjusting his tie for the auction preview.
Click.
Caleb hamming it up for a group of women who look ready to drain their savings accounts.
Click.
Nolan standing in the corner, arms crossed, looking like he'd rather be literally anywhere else.
Click. Click. Click.
I document everything. The staging area. The decorations. The growing crowd of women clutching numbered paddles like weapons.
Everything except Everett.
Because every time I aim my lens in his direction, he moves. Turns.
Finds somewhere else to be.
And I don't understand why.
An hour ago, we were walking side by side. My hand brushed his. I made a joke about polishing his knob and he looked at me like he wanted to finish that sentence for me.
Now he won't even meet my eyes.
What the hell happened?
The auction prep swirls around me—Holly directing traffic, Charlie waddling past with a clipboard, someone testing the microphone with increasingly aggressive “check check checks”—and I move through on some sort grief-soaked autopilot.
Smiling when expected.
Photographing when needed.
Dying to know what I did wrong.
“Hey.” Holly appears at my elbow, frowning. “You okay? You've got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you're spiraling internally but pretending everything's fine.” She tilts her head. “Spill.”
“It's nothing.”
“It's clearly not nothing.”
I glance toward the staging area where Everett is adjusting his collar, jaw tight, shoulders rigid. He laughs at something Roman says, but it sounds hollow even from here.
“He's been weird since the reindeer ride,” I admit quietly. “Won't look at me. Won't talk to me. I don't know what I did.”
Holly's gaze follows mine. “Maybe it's not about you. He's had a hell of a day.”
“Maybe.”
But it doesn't feel like maybe—it feels personal.
Every single second of the next hour is pure torture.
I take approximately nine hundred photos I don't need. I rearrange equipment that doesn't need rearranging. I help Charlie fold napkins into shapes that absolutely no one will appreciate.
And I watch Everett move through the room like I'm not even there.
Finally—finally—I catch him alone.
He's in the hallway behind the staging area, checking his phone, and for one blissful second there's no one else around. No cameras. No brothers. No Tara lurking with her predatory smile.
Just us.
I slip through the door and let it close behind me.
“Hey.”
His shoulders tense. He doesn't look up. “Hey.”
One syllable. Flat. Empty.
The distance between us is bigger than the nine years he was gone.
“Everett.” I step closer, keeping my voice low. “What's going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” The word comes out sharper than I intend. And why not? He’s the one who’s freezing me out. It’s only fair I call him on his shit. He’s really damn good at calling me on mine. “You've been avoiding me for the past hour. You won't look at me. You're acting like I—”
“Like you what, Sierra?” He finally looks up, and the expression on his face stops me cold.
He's not angry.
He's in pain.
“Like I did something wrong,” I finish quietly. “What happened? Talk to me.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “You know what's wrong.”
“I really don't.”
“Justin.”
My skin burns, searing straight up my spine until goosebumps rise on my neck. “What?”
“I saw you.” His voice is low, rough, scraped raw. “Right after the ride. Standing there with him. Laughing. Like nothing—like last night didn't—”
He stops. Swallows hard.
And suddenly I understand.
Oh.
Oh no.
“Everett, that wasn't—he just came up to say hi. I didn't—”
“It doesn't matter.”
“It clearly does.”
“Okay, so maybe it does.” He steps closer, and I can see it now—the fear underneath the anger. The wound that never healed. “Because I've seen this movie before, Sierra. I know how it ends.”
“That's not fair.”
“Fair?” A sound escapes him, something between a laugh and a sob. “You want to talk about fair? I told you I was done pretending. I told you everything. I put everything on the line. And the first chance you get, you're standing there with him—”
“I was being polite.”
“You were hiding.”
The accusation hits too close to home. “That's not—”
“It is.” His eyes are blazing now, but not with anger. With something worse. Something that looks a lot like grief. “You've been hiding since the day you decided I wasn't worth the fight. And I keep thinking—I keep hoping—that this time will be different. That you'll finally choose us.”
My throat closes. “Everett—”
“But you won't, will you?” His voice cracks. “You'll find another Justin. Another excuse. Another reason why we can't work. Because it's easier than actually trying.”
“That's not what I'm doing.”
“Then what are you doing?” He spreads his arms. “Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly the same. It looks like eleven years ago all over again.”
The words slice through me.
And the worst part?
I don't have a defense.
Because he's not entirely wrong.
I have been hiding. Behind my camera. Behind my brothers. Behind every excuse I can find to avoid saying out loud what we both already know.
And now I have to hide again because with everything happening with his reputation on the line, we can't do this here. Not now. Not with Tara's cameras fifty feet away, waiting for exactly this kind of moment.
“I'm not doing this.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Not here. Not with cameras everywhere.”
“Of course not.”
The bitterness in his voice makes me flinch.
“Can't risk anyone finding out.”
“That's not—”
“You know, Eleanor spent all those years trying to figure out how to put those initials back together.” His voice goes cold. Distant. “But you? You'd never approve that renovation, would you? Gotta preserve history. Keep everything exactly as it is. Frozen. Safe.”
He turns away, his shoulders rigid. “Go back to your pictures, Sierra. Your documentation. Your safe little distance from anything that actually matters.”
The quiet words streak in with a scream before they detonate.
Because he knows. He knows what that story means to me. What it means to us.
My lungs seize. Something behind my ribs splinters—a crack so deep I swear I can hear it.
This is what it feels like.
This is what it feels like to hand someone the map to your most tender places only to have them use it to gut you.
It’s what I did to him.
I can't defend myself. Can’t utter a word. If I open my mouth right now, I'm either going to scream or cry.
The one thing I won’t do. I won’t collapse here on the spot no matter how much I want to.
I let the numbness fill me, settle in all the broken pieces and hold them together while I choke it all down.
And I leave.
The door swings shut behind me, and I walk—not run, walk—back toward the main room. Spine straight. Face neutral. Camera clutched in my icy fingers.
Holly's waiting at the end of the hallway.
One look at her face tells me she heard enough.
“Sierra—”
“Don't.” I keep walking.
She falls into step beside me. “What the hell was that?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“He can't just—”
“Holly.” I stop. Turn. Force my voice to stay even. “He saw me talking to Justin. He thinks—” I shake my head. “It doesn't matter what he thinks. We don't have time for this right now. The lodge is more important. I’ll deal with the rest later.”
Or never.
She searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her jaw tighten.
“Okay.” She squeezes my arm once, letting it go. “I’ll walk you out.”
When we make out, I find the nearest corner, press my back against the wall, and focus on breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Somewhere in the other room, the auction is about to start.
Somewhere down that hallway, the man I love just accused me of being too scared to choose him.
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—I'm pretty sure I was about to choose us.
Until this.
Until what he said.
I've spent eleven years carrying the weight of what I did to him. Eleven years knowing I was the one who broke us first.
Who chose fear over faith.
Who sent him away because I couldn't stand the thought of losing my brothers if they ever found out.
I've owned that. Every single day.
But this?
He took the story he told me at 2am—the one about Eleanor and Jedediah, the initials carved into the same log, the love that survived even when it was separated by a construction mistake—and he turned it into a knife.
He made me the mistake.
The thing that couldn't be fixed.
The reason we'll never be whole.
And maybe a part of him is right. I have kept us apart.
Maybe I've been so busy preserving everyone else's history that I forgot I'm allowed to have one of my own.
But I can't think about that right now.
I can't think about anything except the way his voice went cold when he said you'd never approve that renovation, would you?
Like I'm the wall. The obstacle. The thing standing between him and happiness.
I've lost people before. I know what it feels like to love someone and have them disappear—my mother's face fading from memory no matter how many photographs I take, no matter how hard I try to hold on.
But this is different.
This is someone choosing to leave. Choosing to see the worst in me. Choosing to believe I'm the villain when all I've ever done is try to protect us both.
So maybe it's a good thing I didn't break my heart open for him after all.
At least this way, I'm the only one who knows how badly I wanted to.