Page 43 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies (Men of Medford #4)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Riley

I woke up warm. Really warm.

For a second, I didn’t know where I was. Then I felt the weight of an arm slung over my waist, a second one brushing my thigh, and the deep, even breaths of three sleeping men pressed in close on either side of me.

The fireplace had burned low, but the bed was a furnace of tangled limbs and slow, steady heartbeats. I smiled before I even opened my eyes.

My body ached in the best kind of way, my thighs sore, lips still swollen from hours of kissing, and something soft and achy humming in my chest.

Asher was curled behind me, his hand resting low over the curve of my belly. Beckett had thrown one leg over both of ours, basically pinning me in place, while Garrett snored lightly, almost curled up into a ball.

I’d never felt so safe.

For a minute, I didn’t move. I only breathed. Let myself soak in the stillness, the crackling logs, the scent of woodsmoke and skin and home.

And then I made the mistake of thinking it would last.

I untangled myself as gently as I could, slipping out from between them with whispered apologies they didn’t hear.

My body felt like it belonged to me again, and somehow to them, too, and I couldn’t stop the little flutter that rose in my chest as I tugged on one of Beckett’s T-shirts and padded toward the bathroom.

The water steamed fast, filling the small bathroom with heat. I stood under the spray, letting it pound the tension from my shoulders, washing away the leftover fear and guilt and all the things I hadn’t yet figured out how to name.

It was the day after Christmas, and for once, I didn’t feel like a walking disaster.

I dried off slowly, wrapped my hair in a towel, and reached for my phone to check the time.

That was my first mistake. The second was unlocking it.

Forty-two missed messages. Twelve Instagram DMs. A handful of voicemails. Group texts I hadn’t seen light up in years.

And then I saw it.

My name. Trending. Again .

I tapped the notification, heart pounding, and froze.

A photo.

Me, at the Christmas Eve tree lighting. Asher’s hand on my lower back. Beckett close beside me. Garrett in the background. All three Wolfe brothers, in one frame, too close, too familiar.

The headline was worse than the photo.

Disgraced Influencer Riley Brooks Resurfaces in Remote Town, Pregnant and Living With Three Men.

I stared at the screen, the words swimming as if my vision had gone underwater.

Pregnant.

Living with three men.

No one knew. No one was supposed to know.

I wasn’t even living with the Wolfe brothers. But that didn’t matter. I knew all too well that the details didn’t need to be accurate to spread.

The only people who knew about the pregnancy were me and the Wolfe brothers. And Lucy. And my parents.

But the Internet? The press? The whole world?

How?

A hot, sour wave of nausea rolled through me, fast and ugly. I dropped the phone. It bounced off the edge of the sink and landed face down on the floor.

A sound clawed its way out of my throat before I could stop it. A jagged, broken kind of cry that echoed off the tile walls.

Then came the second one, sharper this time. More animal than human.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It was happening again, and this time I wasn’t some glossy PR version of myself with a team to spin it.

This was raw. Personal. Private.

And it had been ripped away.

I staggered back against the counter, bracing myself with both hands. My knees buckled and I let out a sound between a sob and a howl—loud, guttural, and impossible to contain.

Footsteps thundered down the hallway. The door slammed open.

“Riley!” Beckett’s voice, tight with panic.

“Riles, what happened?” Asher said.

“Are you okay?” Garrett, still half asleep and already on high alert.

They rushed in, three sets of bare feet on the cold tile, three pairs of eyes scanning me like I’d been shot.

I couldn’t speak.

I pointed one shaking hand toward the phone on the floor. I couldn’t even look at it again. Couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

Beckett moved first. He crouched, picked it up, unlocked it, and then his jaw clenched so hard I could see the muscle ticking.

Asher took it from him and swore under his breath.

Garrett stared at me, his chest rising and falling fast. “Who the hell…?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. My voice was thready, broken. “I didn’t tell anyone. I haven’t… I didn’t post anything. I haven’t even talked to anyone outside this town.”

Asher handed the phone to Garrett, then came to me, wrapping his arms around my shaking body. “Okay. It’s okay. We’ve got you.”

But it wasn’t okay.

Because that was when the worst thought hit me… colder than the tile, sharper than the panic.

“Lucy,” I whispered, pulling back just enough to look up at them.

Garrett’s face blanched.

“She’s going to see this." I clutched Asher’s shirt. “She’s going to find out this way. Through gossip blogs. Through headlines calling me a disgrace.”

Beckett cursed, dragging a hand down his face. “Shit. Shit. We should’ve told her about us.”

“I didn’t think it would go public like this,” Garrett snapped, pacing now. “We couldn’t have predicted this .”

“Well, it’s happened,” I said, the words thin and shaking. “We’re out of time.”

The silence that followed was brutal.

Because we all knew what Lucy meant to each of us. And we all knew this would hurt her.

I had no idea how to fix it.

The cabin was suddenly alive with motion.

Garrett grabbed his phone and stepped into the hallway, already dialing. Asher sat beside me on the closed toilet lid, rubbing circles on my back while Beckett crouched near the sink, scrolling through my notifications like he was looking for someone to fight.

“She’s not answering,” Garrett growled from the hallway. “Straight to voicemail.”

“Try again,” I said, louder than I meant to. My voice cracked. “Just keep trying.”

I imagined Lucy waking up, bleary-eyed, checking her phone over coffee, only to see this . A headline that reduced everything I felt, everything I was trying to protect, to a sordid little drama for public consumption.

Beckett handed me back my phone, jaw tight. “There’s no tag, no credit. This came from a gossip account. An anonymous one.”

“What?” My fingers closed around the phone like it might burn me. “You mean, not Ava?”

“I checked,” he said. “Her name’s not on it. She hasn’t posted anything.”

“But that doesn’t mean she didn’t send the photo to someone else,” Garrett muttered, reentering the room. “Someone more vicious. Maybe they sold it.”

I wanted to believe it wasn’t her. I really did.

But the truth was, I’d underestimated her once already.

She was the one who found me here and claimed I was sleeping with all three of them—livestreamed it, too.

At the time, it seemed ridiculous to accuse four people walking out of a car.

But the photo… We were too close to look like just friends.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter. I mean, Ava is in town, and now this happens.” I sighed. “I just need to figure out how to stop it.”

My phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Mentions on Twitter. Comments on my Instagram posts. Screenshots sent by old contacts.

Half the messages started with “Are you okay?” and ended with some variation of “Wow, didn’t see that coming.”

And the backlash…

Oh, it was immediate.

Tabloids picked it up within the hour. Clickbait titles were multiplying like roaches. From viral star to mountain mistress. Riley Brooks caught in another scandal.

The trolls came crawling out of the woodwork, like they’d been waiting for a new excuse to drag me down. The comments were cruel, predictable, and somehow still hit like a punch to the gut.

Of course it’s her.

Trash attracts trash.

This is what happens when you give nobodies fame.

I knew better than to read them. But I read them anyway.

And what scared me more than the hate was the flicker of something else. Something hot and electric in my blood.

Fame. Notoriety. Attention.

The old me would’ve loved this.

The Riley from a few months ago would’ve leaned in. She’d have posted a cryptic selfie, made a joke about orgies, gone viral all over again with some flippant caption that let people think what they wanted while she raked in the engagement.

But this Riley?

This Riley felt split down the middle.

One half curled into Asher’s side, nauseous and shaking, terrified of what this meant for Lucy, for the baby, for everything she’d built back up from the ruins.

And the other half…

That part of me looked at #RileyBrooksScandal and felt the tiniest thrill.

Like touching a bruise to see if it still hurt.

The past was calling out to me, saying: See? You’re still interesting. Still worth watching.

It made me sick. But it also made me feel alive.

What the hell was wrong with me?

We didn’t wait for Lucy to call back.

By noon, she still wasn’t answering any of us, texts, calls, voicemails, nothing, and panic had officially settled like a stone in my chest.

“She’s probably with Nate still,” Beckett said, grabbing his keys.

“Or she saw the headline and smashed her phone,” Garrett muttered, already pulling on his boots.

“Then we’re going to her,” I said, standing despite the sick feeling curling in my stomach. “We’re not waiting for her to find out the rest from strangers.”

I didn’t know what we’d say when we saw her. But I knew we had to try.

We drove out to her cabin first, but the place was empty—no car, no sign of her. So we turned around and headed into town.

The ride into Medford was quiet. Too quiet. No one turned on the radio. No one said a word.

I sat in the back seat between Beckett and Garrett while Asher drove, my phone clutched in my lap like it might bite me if I let it go.

When we rounded the last bend before the town center, I knew something was wrong.

There were cars.