Page 155 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

But the walls weren’t thick enough to drown out the sound of everything coming undone.

Muffled voices turned sharp. Snapping. Then louder.

Then the unmistakable sound of something hitting something else, maybe furniture, maybe flesh, and the thud that followed made my stomach knot so tight I couldn’t breathe.

I pressed my palms to my ears.

I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t not.

All I could think was,this is my fault.

All of it.

I hadn’t meant to ruin things. I’d come up here to disappear, to hide, toheal. Instead, I’d burned their whole world down with me.

A nearby vibration pulled me out of the spiral. My phone, still facedown on the nightstand, blinked with notifications I didn’t want to see.

I stared at it as if it might explode.

Then, slowly, I reached for it.

I shouldn’t have looked. But I did.

The lock screen was chaos. Twitter mentions, Instagram tags, a storm of messages with emojis that twisted my stomach. Fire. Vomit. Snake.

And Ava’s name trending again.

I opened the app with trembling fingers.

There she was, perfect lighting, perfect makeup, perfect poison smile.

“Hey, babes, it’s Ava. So… guess who finally decided to make her little mountain girl fantasypublic? Riley Brooks, everyone’s favorite viral train wreck, is back, and now she’s pregnant by one of thethreeWolfe Logging Company brothers? Beckett, Garrett, and Asher Wolfe. You can’t make this shit up. I mean, props for creativity, but let’s call it what it is: a desperate grab for attention. Girl’s been out of the game too long, and now she’s dragging innocent guys into her mess to get back in the spotlight.”

I stopped the video. I couldn’t watch anymore.

Couldn’t breathe.

I stared at my reflection in the black screen, pale, hollow, nothing like the Riley the world used to know.

And the worst part? It wasn’t justmein the blast zone this time.

Beckett. Garrett. Asher.

She’d named them. Their business.

My vision blurred.

This wasn’t just drama anymore. This was real.

This could ruin them.

I curled in tighter, heart thudding so loud it drowned out everything else. All I could see was the image Ava had used in the thumbnail, the photo from the parade. Back when everything feltwonderful.

It felt like a dagger.

They were collateral damage in my war with the Internet. And worse? I’d dragged Lucy into it, too.

I wiped at my face with the sleeve of Beckett’s flannel, but the tears kept coming. Hot and silent. Useless.

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