I step inside and let the memories wash over me.
The worn wooden floor hasn’t changed a bit.
The moonlight spills through dirty windows turning the little room into something soft and forgiving before landing on the very spot that fifth generation Morgan laid me down on a stockpile of soft blankets and changed everything.
Lies. All of it.
I knew exactly where I was going the second I slipped away from the torch-lit circus my brothers created.
It’s smaller than the makeshift castle I remember. Asecret kingdom where the rules of the outside world couldn't touch us.
Now it looks just like what it is. Little more than a shed with a sink. The twin bed still pushed against the wall. The hooks where we hung our wet gloves.
And memories I should've buried years ago.
We thought we were invincible.
Really, we were just young enough to believe that love could survive anything.
The door creaks behind me.
I don't turn around. I don't have to. I'd know the weight of his footsteps anywhere—the particular rhythm of Everett Morgan entering a room like he owns it, because he usually does.
“Following me now?” I ask the shadows.
“You're the one in my Shred Shack.”
“I needed air.”
“There's air everywhere.” His voice is closer now, rough with something I don't want to name. “And still, you picked this spot.”
When I turn, he's a silhouette in the doorway, backlit by moonlight, and for a dizzy second I'm seventeen again. Heart pounding. Palms sweating. Looking at the boy I loved in secret, wondering if this was the night everything would change.
It was.
It did.
And I've spent eleven years trying to undo it.
“Are you okay?” The question comes out before I can stop it.
He steps inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. Even in the dim light, I make out his face—the exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the particular brand of shell-shocked that comes from watching your family legacy get hashtagged into oblivion.
“No,” he admits. “My family legacy just turned into a thirst trap. Jake has more followers than the lodge's official Instagram now. Someone asked me to sign their chest. And my ancestors are definitely haunting me.”
“But it worked.”
“Yeah.” He drags a hand through his hair—that gesture I've photographed a thousand times, the one that still makes my chest tight. “It worked. Which almost makes it worse.”
I understand that.
I understand it down to my bones.
“My heritage tour had seven people,” I hear myself say. “One was asleep.”
“Sierra—”
“Your shirtless lumberjack circus had three hundred. Maybe four.” I laugh, but it comes out cracked and bitter. “My whole career is about preservation. About honoring what came before. And I couldn't even get people to stay awake.”
