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 doesnotbeg.
“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 shiesaway 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?”
