Page 158 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies

From being small. From being invisible. From the kind of silence I was standing in now.

But maybe this kind of silence wasn’t a punishment.

Maybe it was the only place the noise couldn’t follow.

I closed my eyes. Let the wind press cold kisses to my cheeks. Let the trees listen without judgment.

I didn’t know how to fix what I’d broken.

Didn’t know if Lucy would ever forgive me. Or if Beckett, Garrett, and Asher would still want anything to do with me after all this.

But I knew one thing.

I couldn’t go back.

Not to the internet. Not to the brand. Not to being what everyone else wanted me to be.

I had to figure out who I was when no one was watching.

Even if that person was standing alone in the snow.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Asher

Fuck this.

Fuck all of it.

What thehellwere we going to do?

We’d always fought. We were brothers. But this was different.

The guilt hit me somewhere between the edge of the clearing and the tree line. Sharp and hot and ugly. She’d heard us. Shehadto have.

Ugh, this was a disaster.

The snow muffled everything, soft and soundless beneath my boots. My breath steamed the air. The wind whistled between branches, but it was the silence beneath that made my chest tighten.

That, and the shape in the distance.

At first, I thought it was only a shadow.

But then it moved.

Shoulders hunched. Arms wrapped around herself. Hair wild in the wind.

“Riley?”

She turned slowly, like she didn’t even recognize my voice.

Her eyes were puffy, red. Her cheeks raw from the cold. The coat around her shoulders looked too big, trying to protect something already shattered.

My gut twisted.

“Shit,” I breathed, moving toward her. “Riley, what are you doing out here?”

She didn’t speak. Didn’t cry, either.

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