Page 100 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

“It was.” My voice cracked, and I swallowed hard. “It was my whole life. Everything I built. Gone. That’s why I’m here. Visiting Lucy. Hiding out.”

“Well,” Lila said with a soft smile, “Medford is a good place to hide out. I mean, I had alotto escape when I came back here. A bad breakup, a fraud situation… ugh, I was at my lowest. And now? I do freelance work while raising a baby with three firefighters who treat me like I hung the moon.”

Aurora nodded. “I was literally passing through. My uncle left me Page Turners, and I wanted to sell it… until I met the Grady brothers and started writing books.”

“Same for me.” Sadie chuckled. “I was only back for a minute.I hadno plans.Now I organize galas and plan fundraisers and help kids who’ve got no one else. And I have a baby who thinks I’m hilarious, and three guys who do, too.”

Wow. They made the harem life in Medford sound so nice. More appealing than anything I’d ever seen online.

They made it sound easy, too, but I could see the grit underneath their stories. The hard-won joy. The faith it took to start over.

I looked down at my coffee. The whipped cream had started to melt.

“What if I don’t know what I’m good at?” I asked quietly.

“You don’t have to know right away,” Aurora said. “You only have to try.”

Lila leaned forward. “What do you love? Not what you used to be paid for. Not what looked good online. What makes you feel alive?”

I didn’t have an answer. Not yet.

But I wanted one.

As we sipped our coffee and listened to the babies babble nonsense, something inside me shifted. Just a little. A door cracking open after a long winter.

Maybe I wasn’t washed up.

Maybe I was only getting started.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Asher

There wasa time when a Thursday night at Lucky’s was exactly my speed.

Cold beer. Easy smiles. Familiar bodies brushing up against mine with no expectations and no strings.

Exactly how I preferred it.

But tonight, everything felt flat.

Someone turned the volume down and forgot to tell me.

Life had kinda been that way since Riley went to the doctor’s and then just kinda disappeared. I knew she was okay and was still with Lucy, but I didn’t know what was wrong, and that killed me.

I sat at the far end of the bar, nursing a beer I didn’t really want, while the jukebox warbled some twangy country ballad about bad luck and worse women.

Normally, I’d be deep in a game of darts, making someone blush, maybe lining up something to distract me for the night. But I couldn’t even be bothered to flirt.

Todd wiped down the counter in front of me and raised a brow. “Another round, Ash?”

He was already reaching for the lime, like it was muscle memory.

“Nah, just this one,” I said, swirling what was left in my glass. “Pacing myself.”

He gave me a look. The kind you earn after enough years and too many hangovers. The kind that didn’t need words to call you out.

“You good?”

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