Page 97 of Bossy Mountain Daddies
Griff's hand finds mine beneath the blanket. "Different doesn't mean wrong."
"I know that now." I squeeze his hand. "But after hearing about Miranda, I panicked. I didn’t want to be another woman who would eventually hurt you all. I decided I needed to leave before things got too deep."
"And now?" Ford asks quietly.
"Now I realize things were already deep. That running away hurt all of us more than staying and facing my fears ever could." I look at each of them in turn, wanting them to see the truth in my eyes. "I want to give this—us—a real chance. I don't care who knows about it or what they think."
Buck's arm tightens around me. "What if people around here talk?"
"Let them talk." I say it with more conviction than I expected to feel. "What we have is ours. It's not for anyone else to understand or approve of."
"And if you get scared again?" Griff asks, his voice gentle but direct.
"I'll talk to you." I meet his eyes, wanting desperately for him to believe me. "All of you. I promise I won't just take off. I'll tell you what I'm feeling, what I'm afraid of." I pause, swallowing past the lump in my throat. "But I don't want to leave. I want to stay here. With all of you."
The words hang in the air between us, my declaration of intent, my choice made clear. Ford rises from his spot and comes to sit on the coffee table directly in front of me.
"We want that too," he says simply.
"There's something else you should know," Griff says after a moment. "Something we did while you were gone."
I turn to him, curious. "What?"
"We went to see Daniel."
"Wait a minute… what??"
"Drove to Denver," Buck explains. "Went to his office. Had a little chat."
My heart races. "What did you say to him?"
"We told him to leave you alone," Ford says. "To stop posting about you, about us."
I try to imagine the three of them confronting Daniel in his sleek corporate office.
"Was he awful?" I ask, already dreading the answer.
To my surprise, Griff shakes his head. "Not exactly. He was defensive at first, but then... something changed."
"Turns out Alicia dumped him," Buck adds. "For some rich guy."
"Oh." I'm not sure how to feel about that. Despite everything, a small part of me flinches at the thought of Daniel being hurt.
"He said it gave him perspective," Griff continues. "Made him understand better how you felt when he cheated."
"Really?" I'm skeptical. The Daniel I knew wasn't big on introspection.
Ford nods. "He promised not to post anything else about you or about us. Said he was sorry for how he treated you."
"And you believe him?" I ask.
"Strangely, yes," Griff says. "He also apologized to me. For how he's treated me since the divorce."
That surprises me even more. Daniel had always been so cold toward Griff, so unforgiving about the divorce.
"That's... wow." I lean back against the couch, processing this unexpected development. "So he won't tell everyone about us?"
"That's what he said," Buck confirms. "And even if he breaks his word, so what? Like you said—let them talk."
