Page 101 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

“Peachy,” I replied, flashing that grin I’d perfected over the years. Easy. Cocky. The kind that usually worked better than truth ever did.

Even I didn’t buy it.

My gaze drifted, out of habit more than interest.

Samantha Barnes was laughing near the pool table, tipping her head back as if someone had just said the funniest thing on earth. Her hand slid across Cameron Brooks’ arm as if she’d practiced it, and hell, maybe she had.

She looked good. Always had.

Hair curled. Lips glossy. Wearing that lipstick I swear was called something stupid. Sinful Peach, perhaps?

A year ago, I’d have been over there already. Said something low in her ear that would’ve had her leaning into me like old times.

Let her make me forget whatever weight I was carrying.

But tonight?

Nothing. Not even a flicker.

And I knew why.

It wasn’t Samantha. It wasn’t any of them.

It was Riley.

Riley Brooks, who’d hit town in a storm I hadn’t seen coming. All sharp edges and don’t-touch-me fire, until she let me see past it.

Until she let all of us in. And I hadn’t been the same since.

Didn’t mean I knew what to do with that. Didn’t mean I was proud of any of it. But it was the truth, whether I said it out loud or not.

I leaned back on my stool, letting the noise of the bar blur around me.

I used to be part of the pulse here. Now I was a guy loitering in a place that didn’t quite fit anymore.

“You know,” Todd said, drying a glass without looking at me, “you used to be more fun.”

I snorted. “Guess I’m slipping.”

“Or growing up.”

Same damn thing, wasn’t it?

He wandered off, leaving me to sit with the drink I wasn’t drinking in a bar that didn’t feel like mine. I was halfway to standing when something outside the window caught my eye.

A flicker of movement.

Dark hair. That beat-up coat.

Shoulders drawn tight. She was trying to hold herself together and losing ground fast.

Riley.

She was walking past the front of Lucky’s, boots crunching through the slush, head down, trying to disappear into the sidewalk.

The world was too loud and she couldn’t take one more second of it.

I didn’t even think. Just moved.

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