Page 147 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

I pointed one shaking hand toward the phone on the floor. I couldn’t even look at it again. Couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

Beckett moved first. He crouched, picked it up, unlocked it, and then his jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle ticking.

Asher took it from him and swore under his breath.

Garrett stared at me, his chest rising and falling fast. “Who the hell…?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. My voice was thready, broken. “I didn’t tell anyone. I haven’t… I didn’t post anything. I haven’t eventalkedto anyone outside this town.”

Asher handed the phone to Garrett, then came to me, wrapping his arms around my shaking body. “Okay. It’s okay. We’ve got you.”

But it wasn’t okay.

Because that was when the worst thought hit me… colder than the tile, sharper than the panic.

“Lucy,” I whispered, pulling back just enough to look up at them.

Garrett’s face blanched.

“She’s going to see this." I clutched Asher’s shirt. “She’s going to find outthis way.Through gossip blogs. Through headlines calling me a disgrace.”

Beckett cursed, dragging a hand down his face. “Shit. Shit. We should’ve told her about us.”

“I didn’t think it would go public like this,” Garrett snapped, pacing now. “We couldn’t have predictedthis.”

“Well, it’s happened,” I said, the words thin and shaking. “We’re out of time.”

The silence that followed was brutal.

Because we all knew what Lucy meant to each of us. And we all knew this would hurt her.

I had no idea how to fix it.

The cabin was suddenly alive with motion.

Garrett grabbed his phone and stepped into the hallway, already dialing. Asher sat beside me on the closed toilet lid, rubbing circles on my back while Beckett crouched near the sink, scrolling through my notifications like he was looking for someone to fight.

“She’s not answering,” Garrett growled from the hallway. “Straight to voicemail.”

“Try again,” I said, louder than I meant to. My voice cracked. “Just keep trying.”

I imagined Lucy waking up, bleary-eyed, checking her phone over coffee, only to seethis. A headline that reduced everything I felt, everything I was trying to protect, to a sordid little drama for public consumption.

Beckett handed me back my phone, jaw tight. “There’s no tag, no credit. This came from a gossip account. An anonymous one.”

“What?” My fingers closed around the phone like it might burn me. “You mean, not Ava?”

“I checked,” he said. “Her name’s not on it. She hasn’t posted anything.”

“But that doesn’t mean she didn’t send the photo to someone else,” Garrett muttered, reentering the room. “Someone more vicious. Maybe they sold it.”

I wanted to believe it wasn’t her. I really did. But the truth was, I’d underestimated her once already. She was the one who found me here and claimed I was sleeping with all three of them—livestreamed it, too. At the time, it seemed ridiculous to accuse four people walking out of a car. But the photo… We were too close to look like just friends.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter. I mean, Ava is in town, and now this happens.” I sighed. “I just need to figure out how to stop it.”

My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Mentions on Twitter. Comments on my Instagram posts. Screenshots sent by old contacts.

Half the messages started with “Are you okay?” and ended with some variation of “Wow, didn’t see that coming.”

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