Page 23 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

“I just,” I gestured vaguely, staring into my half-empty glass. “I don’t think people get howhardit is to live your life under a microscope. Everyone thinks influencing is, like, oat milk lattes and cute outfits and pretending to journal in golden hour lighting.”

“You don’t actually journal?” Asher teased, mock-scandalized.

I rolled my eyes. “Well, I mean sometimes. But not seriously. Not like when I was in middle school, and I wrote an entire entry about wanting a Juicy Couture velour tracksuit.”

Asher snorted. “Bet you made that thing look dangerous.”

I smirked. “Damn right I did.”

That earned a laugh from him, and for a second, I forgot everything. The scandals. The headlines. The way I’d woken up one day and realized the empire I’d built was made of glass, and it had shattered overnight.

“I builtme,” I said more quietly, swirling the amber liquid in my glass. “From nothing. Just me and my phone and the belief that I could actuallymatterif I worked hard enough. I didn’t have connections or handouts. Every collab, every follower, every stupid caption. I earned it. People commented that my ex, Jasper, helped, but the truth is I helped him. I taught him what to do online.”

Beckett, who had been leaning against the wall like some kind of silent lumberjack ghost, finally spoke. His voice was gravel and steel.

“All that for what? Likes?”

I blinked. My head tilted slowly as I processed the jab. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged, arms crossed over his broad chest. “It seems hollow. All that effort to look perfect for strangers.”

The whiskey flared in my chest like fire. “It wasn’t only about looking perfect. It was about building something. A brand. A business.”

He didn’t flinch. “Still sounds silly.”

My laugh was sharp. “Sounds silly? Well, I guess you wouldn’t understand it, here in the middle of nowhere. But in LA, it’severything.”

Beckett’s eyes flashed, his jaw clenching. “I’m glad I’m not in LA. It sounds horrible. The Medford mountains are far more real.”

“And at least I don’t hide behind a beard and call it ‘depth,’” I snapped back, unsure of why I was being so nasty. I didn’t like being judged. “LAisreal. If you’ve never been there, you wouldn’t know it.”

Why am I defending LA? After what it did to me?

I didn’t even know anymore.

Asher coughed into his drink, caught somewhere between trying to defuse us and clearly enjoying the show.

“Okay,” he said, raising his hands. “Let’s all take a breath. Or another shot. Or both.”

But I wasn’t done. The burn in my chest wasn’t just whiskey, it was everything. The failure. The shame. The weeks of pretending I was okay when everything I built had collapsed beneath me.

These guys weren’t even the target of my stress, but I had no one else to take it out on.

The booze wasn’t helping me think straight.

“You don’t get it,” I said to Beckett, quieter this time. “You don’t know what it’s like to be picked apart. To have thousands of people watch you fall, just waiting to pounce. You think it’s fake because you’ve never had to prove yourself to a hollow world that only values you if you’re shiny and smiling.”

Beckett’s jaw ticked. He didn’t say anything right away. He looked at me for a long beat, confusion behind those pine-colored eyes.

Fake. Hollow.

I shouldn’t care what a surly lumberjack thought about me. And yet, I did. Which only pissed me off more.

“I’m going to bed,” I muttered, standing too quickly and swaying for half a second.

“Whoa,” Asher reached out to steady me, all charm and good intentions. “Easy, killer. This altitude sneaks up on you.”

“Thanks for the scientific update, Bill Nye.” I waved him off, trying to keep some shred of dignity.

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