The silence in the lodge’s great room was a hollow, breathing thing. The fire in the grand stone hearth had been allowed to die hours ago, leaving behind a bed of gray ash that seemed to absorb all warmth from the air.
It was here that Maya found him, standing by the vast windows overlooking the lake, his silhouette a dark, unfamiliar shape against the fading twilight. For a moment, she saw him not as Cal, the kind, competent handyman who had patched her life back together, but as a stranger.
An intruder.
She didn’t make a sound, but he sensed her presence, turning with a smile that died on his lips the instant he saw her face. The warmth in his eyes, the look she had come to crave, flickered and went out, replaced by a dawning, sickening dread.
“Maya?” he asked, his voice laced with the concern she now knew was a lie. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Her feet felt leaden as she crossed the polished floorboards, each step an echo in the cavernous quiet. She didn’t stop until she was standing directly in front of him, close enough to see the flicker of panic in his blue eyes.
She held up her phone, the screen glowing with the press release, with the corporate headshots. With his face.
She didn’t need to point. His gaze followed hers, falling on the image of a handsome, clean-shaven man in a tailored suit, smiling a confident, corporate smile.
The caption was brutally clear: Cole Sterling, CEO.
His breath hitched. The blood drained from his face, leaving the rugged, sun-kissed handyman looking pale and fragile, a ghost in work clothes.
“Maya, I…” he began, the words catching in his throat.
Her voice, when it came, was terrifyingly calm. It was a sliver of ice.
“Cole Sterling.”
The name hung in the air between them, an indictment and a verdict all in one. It stripped away every shared moment, every quiet conversation, every touch.
It re-contextualized everything, twisting kindness into strategy and vulnerability into manipulation.
“I was going to tell you,” he said, his voice a frantic whisper. He reached for her, his hands hovering in the space between them.
“After we caught Jed. I swear.”
Maya flinched back as if his touch would burn her. “You were going to tell me?” A bitter, humorless laugh escaped her lips.
“When, exactly? Right before or right after your company’s ridiculously low offer came in? After you had successfully run my business into the ground?”
“No! That’s not it. That’s not what this is.”
The dam of her composure finally broke. The icy calm shattered, and a torrent of pain and white-hot fury poured out.
“Isn’t it? Let’s review, shall we, Cole? A new handyman shows up out of nowhere, sent by a corporate office that’s never cared before. Then the problems start. A broken water heater. A severed power line. A bear sighting that costs me my biggest client. Contaminated firewood. And then the well—the final nail in the coffin.”
She was pacing now, her movements sharp and agitated, her hands gesturing wildly as she connected the dots of his betrayal.
“And through it all, there you are. ‘Cal,’ the hero. Always there to fix things, to offer a shoulder to cry on, to make me trust you. To make me… God, how could I have been so stupid?”
She stopped, whirling to face him. Tears of rage and humiliation streamed down her face, but her eyes were hard as diamonds.
“Jed isn’t the main saboteur, is he? He’s just a pawn. The real villain has been living in my guest cabin all along. You were playing a long game, weren’t you? Devaluing the property, making me desperate, so the great Sterling Corporation could swoop in and pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar.”
Every word was a physical blow. Cole staggered back, shaking his head, his face a mask of desperation.
“No, Maya, listen to me. Please. Jed works for a rival developer. He’s the one behind it. We were right about him! My family’s company—we acquire struggling businesses, yes, but we build them up, we don’t tear them down!”
“You tear them down first!” she screamed, her voice cracking with the full force of her heartbreak.
“It’s a classic hostile takeover strategy! Weaken the target from the inside! And you were the perfect weapon. No one would ever suspect the charming, hardworking handyman.”
“It started that way,” he admitted, his voice raw with a pain that mirrored her own.
“It was supposed to be an assessment. A simple look at the property. But then I met you. I saw what this place means to you, to Ben, to the whole community. Everything changed.”
“Changed?” she scoffed, wiping angrily at her tears.
“The only thing that changed is that your plan worked better than you could have ever imagined. You didn’t just get access to the lodge’s weaknesses; you got access to mine.”
The accusation hung there, brutal and true. He had seen her at her most vulnerable.
He had held her when she broke down over the contaminated well. He had kissed her, promising a future he knew was built on a foundation of deceit.
“The kiss… our hike… that dinner…” Her voice dropped to a whisper, trembling with the weight of the memories. “Was any of it real? Or was it just part of the job description for the undercover billionaire?”
That broke him. The last of his defenses crumbled.
He closed the distance between them, ignoring her rigid posture, his eyes pleading with an intensity that would have once melted her resolve.
“It was all real, Maya,” he choked out.
“Everything I felt. Everything we shared. Coming here, being Cal… it was the first time in my life I felt like myself. I didn’t want to be Cole Sterling anymore. I just wanted to be the man who fixed your water heater and made you laugh.”
He finally reached for her, and this time she didn’t pull away, frozen by the agonizing sincerity in his voice. His hands gently cupped her face, his thumbs brushing away her tears.
“I love you, Maya,” he confessed, his voice thick with emotion.
“I am so, so in love with you. That’s the one thing, the only thing, that has been completely true from the very beginning.”
For a fleeting second, her heart dared to hope. His touch was familiar, his words the ones she had secretly longed to hear.
But then the image of his smiling corporate photo flashed in her mind. The lies, the scale of the deception, crashed down on her again.
His love was just another variable in his twisted equation. A tool to ensure her compliance.
She wrenched herself from his grasp, the warmth of his touch turning to ash on her skin.
“Love?” she spat the word like poison.
“You don’t get to use that word. Not you. Love isn’t a lie you tell for a month while you systematically destroy a person’s life. It isn’t a weapon you use to close a deal. Whatever you feel, it isn’t love. It’s possession. You wanted the lodge, and I was just a part of the property you were trying to acquire.”
“That’s not true!” he cried, his voice breaking completely.
“I would give it all up for you. The company, the money, everything.”
“It’s too late,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of all emotion. Her heart had shattered, and there was nothing left but the empty, aching space where her trust used to be.
Their partnership, their friendship, their fragile, budding love—all of it was gone, incinerated by the truth of his identity.
She walked to the heavy oak door of the great room, her back straight and rigid. She didn’t look at him when she spoke the final words.
“I want you gone. Pack your things and get off my property.”
“Maya, please…”
“Now,” she commanded, her voice ringing with an authority born of absolute devastation.
“I want you out of here by morning. If I see you again, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She walked out of the great room, leaving Cole Sterling standing alone in the cold, gathering darkness, the ruins of his deception collapsing all around him.
He had come to Whispering Pines to assess a property and had ended up losing his soul. And as Maya retreated to her office, locking the door behind her, she finally let out a single, ragged sob, mourning the man she had loved, the man who had never really existed at all.