Page 66 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

“Someone needs to tell Charlie Dunn to turn the damn volume down,” Garrett muttered beside me, tugging his beanie lower.

Asher chuckled. “That’s the holidays, Gar. Noise and nostalgia.”

I stayed quiet. My hands were shoved into the pockets of my jacket, fingers curled tight around the rough edges of a cedar carving I’d forgotten to take out.

Habit. I made things when I didn’t know what to do with my hands, or my head.

Tonight, my head was a mess.

We hadn’t talked about Riley. Not since she left the cabin weeks ago. It was almost an unspoken agreement between the three of us.

Don’t say her name. Don’t stir up what can’t be fixed.

But she lingered anyway. In the smell of her shampoo on the extra pillow. In the half-empty coffee creamer she had left behind.

In the damn silence that stretched a little too long some nights when we all sat around pretending we were fine.

“Yo, Beck.” The voice of the loudest fireman, Colt, cut through my thoughts as he jogged over from a cider stand, his cheeks pink from the cold and his hands full. “Here. Don’t say I never do anything nice.”

I took the cup without arguing. Warm. Sweet. Smelling of cloves and oranges.

“Where’s Lila?” Garrett asked, eyeing the marshmallow-topped cider like he might steal it.

“With Jaxon and Ryan,” Colt said, grinning. “They’re around here somewhere. You’ll hear them before you see them. Or maybe Jace. He has really got a set of lungs on him now.”

“Parenthood looks good on you,” Asher said with a smirk.

Colt wiggled his brows. “I do love a good swaddle.”

Garrett snorted. “You’re not supposed to look that proud of it.”

Colt grinned and lifted his cider in a toast. “Let a man have his domestic era, Wolfe.”

Asher and Garrett fell into easy conversation with him, but I let my eyes drift back toward the crowd.

To my left, I spotted Aurora and the Grady brothers near Page Turners. She had baby Evie strapped to her chest in one of those cozy wraps, and she was smiling up at Mason, who was clearly telling some ridiculous story as Ethan rolled his eyes.

You could tell, just by looking at them, they’d built something solid. Something that made the cold feel like background noise.

Sadie was a little farther down, sitting on the edge of the fountain with baby James in her lap. Samuel had one hand on the back of the bench, Kai stood nearby with a Thermos in hand, and Adam was down on one knee, making the baby laugh with some ridiculous face.

The four of them radiated warmth. The kind you only get from a fire you built yourself and kept alive through a storm.

It should’ve made me feel happy for them. But it only made me feel hollow.

“Found them,” Colt said, nodding across the square. “See? Told you Jace would be the one screaming.”

Sure enough, Lila was there with her chaotic crew. Ryan holding baby Jace, Jaxon arguing good-naturedly with Lila’s brother, Nate, who looked about two seconds from throwing someone into a snowbank.

Lila, in the middle of it all, with her corgi, Biscuit, on a leash, was laughing like she didn’t have a care in the world.

Their life had never made mefeelanything before. But now…

Now I craved something I would never be able to have.

Which is when I saw her.

Riley.

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