“She asked about us.”
He goes still. “What did you tell her?”
“That my relationship with you is professional.” I finally lower the camera and meet his eyes. The setting sun catches in them, turning the brown to amber. “Which is true.”
“Is it?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with everything we haven't said. Everything we keep almost saying and then pulling back from.
“It has to be,” I whisper. “My brothers are here. The cameras are here. We can't?—”
“I know.” His voice is rough. “But when this is over…”
But neither of us moves.
We hover in the fading light—want tugging us closer, common sense yanking us apart—staring at the ruins of a window seat that holds all our secrets.
“The wall goes up tomorrow,” he says finally. “I told John no work until you're done.”
“Thank you.” It comes out softer than I intended.
He nods once. “Get some sleep tonight, Barrett. Tomorrow’s a dumpster fire dressed as a schedule.”
“Story of my life.”
A hint of a smile crosses his face—there and gone so fast I might have imagined it. Then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone with the snowmen and the shadows and the ache in my chest that never quite goes away.
I raise the camera one last time, stealing a shot I have no business taking.
Not of the damage or the architecture or anything a preservation specialist should care about.
I take one of the fifth generation owner and wonder what his history will be when it’s written into the lodge like the four generations before him.
His wife, kids, the legacy continuing on.
By the time I climb the stairs, the photo’s burned into me already—sharp edges and all.
Because some things, you can't preserve.
You can only survive them.
Chapter Ten
Everett
There’sa camera in my face before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee.
“Just getting some establishing shots,” the guy behind it says. “Pretend I’m not here.”
Right. Sure. Totally normal to ignore a lens six inches from my cornea while my lodge is being gutted on camera, my father thinks I'm destroying the family legacy, and the woman I've spent eleven years trying to forget is sleeping three floors above me disrupting the chemical balance of my entire nervous system.
The cameraman lifts the angle, adjusting the focus. “Coffee looks great. Very authentic.”
I give him my customer-service smile—the one polished over thousands of bar shifts, warm enough to settle a crowd but firm enough to sayback off, man.
He backs up.
The great room hums with early-morning prep—coffee brewing, boots thudding across old floorboards, Nolan quietly redirecting a camera away from the familyhallway. Good. At least someone remembers boundaries.
