Page 134 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

We’ve missed you, girl!

It kept going.

People weren’t just reacting, they were responding.

They wereseeingme.

Not everyone, of course. There were still a few snide remarks buried in the thread. People who needed a villain. But they didn’t drown out the good.

The good was louder.

I sat back on the edge of the bed, scrolling through the comments, and something inside me shifted.

Maybe the girl I used to be, the girl who loved creating, who wanted to share light and not chase it, wasn’t lost forever.

Maybe she’d just been buried for a while.

There was a knock at the door, shaking me from the words.

“Hey, you decent?” Lucy called, amusement in her voice. “Can I come in?”

I laughed, wiping at the corner of my eye even though no tears had actually fallen. “You can come in. I’m good.”

The door cracked open, and she poked her head in, then immediately let out a low whistle. “Damn, look at you. Giving festive forest nymph.”

I snorted. “That’s not a real aesthetic.”

“It is now. Trademark it.” She walked in and held up a pair of boots. “You ready to face the chaos? Oh, wait, were you on your phone?”

I looked down at the phone still in my hand, the screen lit up with a dozen more notifications. My thumb instinctively hovered again, but I locked it and set it back down on the nightstand.

“Yeah,” I admitted softly. “I posted something.”

Lucy blinked. “Youposted something? On your account?”

I nodded, pulling in a breath that didn’t feel tight for once. “I needed to. Not for them. For me.”

She walked over, curious but patient, and sat beside me on the edge of the bed. “What’d you say?”

I hesitated, then handed her the phone. “You can read it.”

She scrolled slowly, her face softening with each line. When she reached the end, she glanced up at me with something that looked suspiciously like pride.

“Riley, this issodamn good.”

My lips twitched into a small, reluctant smile. “It felt like pulling a splinter I didn’t know had been buried under my skin for months. Doesn’t fix everything. But I feel better.”

“You sound better,” she said, nudging her shoulder into mine. “This is your voice. Not PR Riley. Not fit-check-and-filter Riley. You.”

I looked down at my hands, flexing my fingers slowly. “Do you think maybe there’s a way back? Not to what it was before. But to something better? Something moreme?”

Lucy didn’t hesitate. “I know there is. And I think this?” She held up the phone. “This is you cracking the door open again. Not for them. Foryou.”

That was the plan, after all. To hide out for a while. To be still and disappear and let the noise fade.

But now, that plan felt unfinished.

I had more to say. More to live. More tobe.

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