“Probably nothing,” Tara says, pocketing the phone. “But I do love a good background detail. You never know what you'll find when you look closely enough.”
She's gone before I can respond.
I sit in the too-bright glow of the ring light, my coffee gone cold, my pulse hammering against my ribs.
Because Tara Greene isn't filming a festival.
She's hunting a story.
And I just felt the first snap of her teeth.
Chapter Eleven
Sierra
Sleep?What the hell is that?
It’s a bullshit clit tease, that’s what.
Like some smug, shirtless hottie whispering promises he has no intention of delivering.
Cruel and pointless.
Every time I close my eyes, Everett’s there—hands, mouth, that voice, all of it, growling“tell me you don’t feel it”aiming that deliciously gritty love potion number nine voodoo juice directly at my cat.
And yeah, my cat perked right up.
The thirsty little bitch slapped on a baseball glove, channeled the skills of a pro ball player, and caught that shit clean.
She’s been shamelessly meowing in tongues ever since.
Stop it. This is not productive. This is the opposite of productive. This is actively counterproductive.
But my body doesn't care about productivity. My body is running a highlight reel of every momentEverett Morgan has ever touched me, and it's apparently sponsored by my own personal hell.
Now playing: that time behind the ski shed.
Coming up next: the darkroom incident.
Stay tuned for: your complete emotional destruction.
Fuck all of this. I give up.
I slip out of my room into the comforting quiet of the still hall. The kind of stillness that settles deep.
My camera swings gently against my chest, the rhythm soothing a decade’s worth of unresolved sexual tension.
Everyone else is asleep—my brothers, Everett, the ghosts of bad decisions past.
But the lodge doesn’t sleep. Not really.
And if you know where to look, she’ll whisper stories to you.
It’s just me, the dark, and a hundred years of secrets pressed into these walls.
The Heritage Walk needs photos. Real ones. The kind that capture what makes this place irreplaceable—not the polished marketing shots the lodge website already has, but the details. The scratches and gouges and imperfections that tell the real story.
And I know just where to start.
