Everett drags a hand through his hair. “It’s a window seat with an outdated display case.” God, that familiar gesture—the same one I photographed too many times, memorizing each angle like it’s all I’d have one day.
“The snowmen can be relocated?—”
“Relocated?” I choke.
“You think you can just move more than a decade of?—”
I slam my mouth shut before something reckless and pathetic falls out. Definitely not confessing that.
“More than a decade of what, Sierra?”
That look.
Narrowed eyes.
Suspicion sparking.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Everything. I'm not telling you everything.
I'm not telling you I still have the ticket stub from the movie we saw in Portland when everyone thought I was at a photography workshop.
That I know you carry your grandmother's ring—the one she told me was for your future wife while winking at me like she was confident it would be me.
That I can't develop photos in any darkroom anymore without remembering your hands in my hair and your mouth on my—somethingsharp twists inside me at the visceral images of us living rent free in my head.
“I don’t owe you anything, not since you stopped being…”
The word burns up my throat, but I choke it back.
Mine.
God help me.
He goes stock-still. “Stopped being what?”
Heat rushes through me. “Forget it.”
“Say it, Sierra.” The growl. The dare. The cliff I always seem to balance on the edge of with him.
“I dare you.”
The air between us snaps tight.
We stare, locked and loaded, resentment pulsing heavy underneath. Two idiots clinging to live wires.
His phone buzzes, swiping away whatever dared to form between us. His mask slides into place.
“Your brothers will be here tomorrow. Expansion stuff.”
My pulse spikes. “All of them?”
“That’s what I said.” He doesn’t even look at me.
I grit my teeth. “What expansion?”
Anger. Perfect. Safer than the truth.
