Page 47 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies (Men of Medford #4)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Asher

Fuck this.

Fuck all of it.

What the hell were 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. She had to 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.

She looked at me, and I felt every bit of my anger disintegrate into something worse.

Guilt. Regret. That helpless kind of fear that punches straight through your ribcage.

“I needed to breathe,” she said finally, her voice rasping like she’d worn it out on tears.

I stopped a few feet away. I didn’t want to scare her. Didn’t want her to flinch away as if I was one more thing that might break her.

But she didn’t flinch.

She looked tired. Bone-deep tired.

And so damn lost.

I pulled in a breath, thick with cold, thick with everything I wanted to say and couldn’t. Then I did the only thing that made sense.

I turned back toward the cabin.

“Beckett! Garrett!” I shouted, loud enough for my voice to carry through the trees, past the guilt and pride and whatever else was still stewing in that room. “Get out here!”

A pause.

“Now!”

Riley blinked at me, confused. “Asher?”

I turned back to her, my voice softer this time. “I know we’re all mad. I know it’s a mess. But this?” I gestured toward her, standing out here in the snow, trying to hold herself together. “This is more important.”

The cabin door swung open behind me. Beckett stepped out first, then Garrett. Both looked strung out, still running hot from the fight.

Then they saw her.

And just like that, everything changed.

No more yelling. No more blame.

Just three brothers and the woman we’d all hurt, standing in the middle of the snow, trying not to fall apart.

“She doesn’t need to be alone right now,” I said, my voice steady, though my chest ached. “None of us do.”

Beckett took a step forward. Garrett followed.

And I stood still, watching the three of us orbit her like gravity was pulling us back into place.

Maybe this wasn’t the end.

Just the part where we finally started to listen .

Beckett reached her first. He didn’t say anything, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, as if that was the only place she’d ever been meant to be.

She melted into him with a breath that sounded more like a sob, and I felt something loosen in my chest watching it. Watching them.

Garrett sat down next, kicking snow aside so he could sit directly in the cold without complaint. He didn’t touch her, he leaned close, resting his arms on his knees like he needed her to see the steadiness in him.

“We should’ve been there for you. No excuses.”

I joined them, dropping into the snow on her other side, close enough for her to feel our presence on all sides. I didn’t touch her either, I sat with my shoulder brushing hers, anchoring her between us like maybe we could hold her together that way.

For a long moment, none of us spoke.

The wind moved through the trees. Her breath shuddered out.

And then Beckett said, quietly but with that steel edge that said he meant it, “We’re not going anywhere.”

She looked up, eyes rimmed in red, lashes wet.

He reached up, thumb brushing her cheek. “No matter how bad it gets. No matter what Ava or the Internet, or anyone else says. This is ours. Not theirs. They don’t get to write our story.”

Garrett nodded. “Let ’em talk. Let ’em twist it all they want. We know the truth. You know the truth. That’s all that matters.”

“Medford knows it, too,” I added, watching the trees sway gently beyond the clearing. “This town? It’s not perfect. But these people aren’t like the ones out there waiting to tear you apart. They’ve got your back, Riley. We have your back.”

She swallowed hard, voice shaking when she spoke. “I don’t know how to fix it. With Lucy. With all of this.”

“We’ll help you,” Garrett said, firm and certain. “With her. With everything.”

“I shouldn’t have lied?—”

“Then be honest now,” Beckett cut in gently. “Start there. She’s angry, sure. Hurt. But she loves you. That doesn’t just disappear.”

“You’re family,” I added. “No matter what it looks like right now.”

Riley stared at the snow, then at us. One by one. As if checking to make sure we were real. Still here. Still hers.

And we were.

Even broken and bruised and half-mad with jealousy or rage or fear, we were still hers.

Always had been. Always would be.

“I don’t deserve you,” she whispered.

“You do,” Beckett said simply. “You do, Riley.”

And this time, when she cried, she didn’t do it alone.