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.
Chapter Eight
Everett
No man wants the words,“Ah yeah… she’s lookin’ a little soft,” to be the first words he hears in the morning.
There are exactly two things that sentence should never apply to, and one of them is load-bearing lumber.
John crouches in the alcove off the great room, flannel bunched at his shoulders, tool belt dragging his jeans south like gravity’s got a personal vendetta. He leans closer to the big picture window and pokes the trim with a screwdriver.
The wood gives.
My stomach does the same.
“See that?” he says. “She’s puffin’ up. Swelling like a tick in July on a Maine coon.”
“Why are your metaphors always a hate crime?” I rub a hand over my face. I’m on my first cup of coffee and already regretting consciousness. “Tell me we’re talking about cosmetic damage.”
John snorts. “Cosmetic my ass. She’staking on water. Been doing it awhile, too. Rains, soaks in, freezes at night, thaws in the day. Over and over.” He wedges the screwdriver deeper. “Inside this frame’s splitting like my cousin’s tux pants at his second wedding.”
“Okay, so what I’m hearing is that I’m fucked. Do I have that right?”
Up close, the frame isn’t just warped, it’s… tired. The top corner bows. There are fine cracks in the paint where moisture’s seeped in, a faint dark stain along the sill.
It’s hard to believe just four hours ago, I kissed the hell out of Sierra in this very spot.
When he shifts the weight of the glass, the header gives a tired little groan. Otherwise known as the sound of my savings being dragged clean out of my bank account.
The caffeine does nothing to soften the consequences of my early-morning whiskey binge and what generously could be called a nap.
My coffee is top notch, but top notch or not, it can’t stand up to either of those things let alone combined.
