Page 150 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

Tense. Heavy. Broken only by the distant buzz of a drone camera hovering overhead.

Asher swore under his breath and threw the truck into reverse.

“What are you doing?” I asked, voice cracking.

“Getting us the hell out of here.”

Garrett didn’t argue. Beckett nodded once, jaw tight. And just like that, we were gone.

Asher peeled out of the parking lot, tires skidding enough to draw the attention of a few nearby reporters.

One of them pointed. Another raised a camera. But we were already turning down the alley behind the hardware store, backtracking down the side roads as if we were fugitives.

And maybe we were.

Not from the law, but from the past. From the truth. From the damage that came when you let people get too close, and they decided to sell the story instead of protecting it.

We didn’t speak until we were halfway up the mountain again, trees swallowing the road behind us, snow falling slow and quiet like a shroud.

Then Garrett broke the silence.

“We’ll find Lucy some other way. When it’s safer.”

I turned to look out the window, hot tears slipping down my cheeks before I could stop them. “What if she hates me?”

“She won’t,” Beckett said softly. “She might be hurt. Angry, yeah. But she won’t hate you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said, and when I looked at him, there was no flinch in his eyes. Just calm certainty. “Because she loves you. She’s loved you since you guys met in college. That kind of love doesn’t disappear overnight.”

I nodded like I believed him. But I wasn’t sure I did.

I mean, I’d done nothing but lie to her.

Whywouldn’tshe hate me for that?

The snow picked up as we climbed. Thick flakes coating the windshield, muffling the world, turning the landscape into something blank and untouched.

I pressed my hand over my belly.

I wasn’t only protecting myself anymore.

I had something bigger to fight for.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Beckett

I’ve always beengood with quiet.

Not the awkward kind, or the kind that drags on too long. The kind that settles in deep after a snowfall, where the world feels blank and still and honest.

Just the crunch of your boots, maybe a buck moving through the trees if you’re lucky. That kind of quiet doesn’t ask anything from you. It lets you be.

But the silence after we got back from Medford?

That wasn’t peace. That was pressure.

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