“NOW.”
I move. Not because I'm scared of getting caught—I meant what I said about being done with hiding—but because the panic in her eyes is real, and I'm not about to make this harder for her than it already is.
By the time Nolan rounds the corner, I'm behind the bar with a glass in my hand and Sierra's perched on a stool three feet away, camera in her lap, looking for all the world like we've been having a perfectly innocent conversation.
Except for the beard burn blooming red across her neck.
And my emptyanddry glass.
Nolan stops in the doorway. His eyes move from me to Sierra to the empty glass in my hand. Then back to Sierra. Specifically, to her neck.
“Can't sleep?” His voice is neutral. Too neutral.
“Nightcap.” I hold up the glass. “You want one?”
“I'm good.” His gaze doesn't leave his sister. “Sierra?”
“Couldn't sleep either.” She reaches up to adjust herhair, and I watch her realize, too late, that the movement draws attention to exactly what she's trying to hide. Her hand freezes. Drops. “You know how it is. Weird hours.”
Nolan looks at her for a long moment.
Then at me.
Something passes between us. A question I don't answer. A suspicion I don't confirm or deny.
He's always been the observant one. The quiet brother who sees more than he says. Who watches and waits and files things away for later.
Right now, he's filing this away.
“Well.” He crosses to the water cooler in the corner, fills a glass. Takes his time drinking it. “Don't stay up too late. Big day tomorrow.”
“Right.” Sierra's voice is too bright. “Big day. Lots of... festival things.”
“Mmm.” Nolan sets down the glass. “Night, Shutterbug. Everett.”
He leaves the same way he came. Slow. Deliberate. Not looking back.
The silence he leaves behind is deafening.
“He knows.” Sierra's voice is barely a whisper. “Oh God, he knows.”
“He suspects.” I set down the empty glass. “There's a difference.”
“Is there?” She presses her palms to her cheeks, still flushed from my beard, from my mouth, from everything we just did on that barstool. “He saw the—” She gestures at her neck. “
“It's a love bite. They happen.”
“From who? You? In the middle of the night? In the bar of the lodge where we're all staying?”
I shrug. “I'm sure he'll construct a perfectly rational alternative explanation.”
She stares at me. “You're not taking this seriously.”
“I am.” I come around the bar, stop in front of her. “I'm taking it very seriously. I'm just done being scared of it.”
She opens her mouth to argue—I can see it coming, the deflection, the retreat—and I stop it with a kiss.
Soft this time. Quick. Just enough to remind her what we were doing before we got interrupted.
