Page 9 of Stuck with my Mountain Daddies (Men of Medford #4)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Riley

This was it.

The actual worst-case scenario.

Trapped in a cabin. No Wi-Fi. No signal because of the storm. No way to check in on what the internet was saying about me, which was probably for the best. But still it felt like slow suffocation.

My thumbs twitched with the ghost of my phone. I kept unlocking it every ten minutes out of habit, staring at that No Service notification like it had personally wronged me.

I’d tried opening Instagram earlier, as if maybe the algorithm would pity me and let one post load. It didn’t.

“Cool, cool,” I muttered to myself, tossing the useless brick of a phone onto the worn leather couch. “Nothing like a complete digital blackout to really take the edge off a public meltdown.”

Outside, snow fell in fat, fluffy clumps. Inside, everything smelled like woodsmoke and testosterone. Three Wolfe brothers, one ticking time bomb formerly known as me, and no way out.

This cabin was gorgeous in that rugged, lumberjack-core way. Vaulted ceilings, stone fireplace, wide plank floors, and a kitchen stocked with enough canned goods to ride out the apocalypse.

Great for the average person. Aesthetic. Cozy.

I hated it.

Not because it was ugly, because it was too nice. Too real. Too untouched by the curated chaos of the life I used to live.

I paced the living room, wrapped in an oversized flannel that definitely wasn’t mine and somehow smelled like all three brothers at once. Leather, wood, fire. Trouble.

Beckett barely glanced up from where he sat in the corner, whittling something out of a block of wood like he’d been born in a damn folk song.

He hadn’t said a word to me since this morning. Just kept working with this quiet, concentrated intensity that felt like a wall I couldn’t scale.

Every time I tried to start a conversation—“Whatcha making?”, “How long have you lived here?”, “Do you ever smile or is this a permanent thing?”—he’d respond with a grunt or a blink or, if I was really lucky, a full sentence that sounded vaguely like a threat.

Asher, of course, was having the time of his life.

He sprawled across the love seat like a cat in a sunbeam, strumming a beat-up guitar I was pretty sure he’d only picked up to annoy me.

“You’re wound so tight,” he said around a lopsided grin. “You know, there are worse things than being snowed in with three hot guys.”

“Hot guys?” I raised a brow. “Point me in their direction.”

He clutched his chest. “Ouch. You wound me.”

“You’ll live,” I said, plopping down on the edge of the couch and tugging a blanket over my legs.

“Barely,” he said, plucking a few moody chords like he was about to launch into a broody breakup song. “It’s the lack of appreciation that kills me.”

“You’re like a golden retriever with a superiority complex,” I muttered, leaning my head back against the couch.

He winked. “Still hot, though.”

Garrett entered the room like some kind of storm-tracking general, clipboard in hand—and yes, the man actually had a clipboard.

He was tall, broad, annoyingly attractive in that responsible eldest brother way, and clearly one power outage away from taking over a small country.

“We’ve got enough wood stacked for two more days if the temps stay low,” he said, talking more to himself than any of us. “Water’s fine. Pantry’s stocked. Should be able to ride this out.”

“Ride what out?” I asked, lifting my head. “Like, the storm? Or the awkward tension in here?”

His eyes met mine. Brown. Intense. Flickering with emotion. “Both.”

I blinked.

Beckett snorted from the corner. Asher nearly choked on a laugh.

“Garrett’s idea of a joke,” Asher stage-whispered. “Don’t encourage him. It only makes it worse.”

I sighed and stood up again, too restless to stay still. “I need something. A walk. A distraction. A cell tower. Anything.”

“You go out there, you’ll be knee-deep in snow within ten feet,” Garrett said, not unkindly. “Not safe.”

“I’m not breakable,” I snapped, harsher than I meant to.

“I didn’t say you were,” he replied, voice level. “I said it’s not safe.”

I stared at him. He didn’t flinch.

He was so calm. So grounded. Like nothing could shake him.

And dang, I hated how much I envied that. How different we were.

Garrett Wolfe had probably never had a panic attack over an unflattering photo. Never had to crawl out of a scandal or cancel a brand deal or watch half a million people decide overnight that he was the villain of a story they didn’t understand.

“You’re not used to slowing down,” he said, more observation than judgment.

I crossed my arms. “I’m not used to this .”

“No distractions,” he said. “No noise.”

“No control,” I muttered.

His expression shifted. Just a flicker.

“You don’t have to control everything,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to sit with it.”

I scoffed. “That sounds like something people say when they do have control.”

He didn’t argue. Just watched me, quiet and steady.

And that made it worse somehow, the way he didn’t push, didn’t try to fix it, didn’t offer me a shiny solution to slap on like a filter.

The silence stretched.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

So I turned and walked away, retreating to the kitchen where at least the coffeemaker obeyed me. I poured myself another cup and stared out the window at the whiteout beyond.

Still no Wi-Fi. Still no answers. Only snow and sky and three men I didn’t know how to be around.

I missed my old life. Even if it wasn’t real.

Even if I wasn’t sure it had ever actually made me happy.

Maybe especially because of that.

Eventually, Beckett headed out to the garage with a muttered excuse and a mysterious toolbox. Asher disappeared upstairs with a dramatic sigh and a bag of chips, probably to brood or curate a new playlist called Rainy Days and Existential Dread .

Which left Garrett.

And me.

Alone.

In a kitchen that was suddenly way too quiet.

I hovered awkwardly near the fridge, pretending to look for something. Anything. Maybe I’d discover a hidden stash of oat milk and a sense of dignity.

Nope. Just a sad bag of spinach and what might’ve once been a lemon.

Garrett was focused on refilling the wood pile beside the fireplace. He stacked the logs with calm, competent movements, all biceps and flannel and that annoying, stoic energy that made him look like a cursed lumberjack from a romance novel I would absolutely not admit to reading.

I turned too fast and immediately slipped on something slick on the tile.

“Shit!”

In a split second, I went sliding, arms pinwheeling like a malfunctioning windmill, crashing straight into Garrett’s very solid body.

We collided with a thud .

My hands landed somewhere between his chest and his shoulder, and his hands instinctively shot out to catch me. One landed on my waist, the other braced my back.

Time slowed.

Our faces were close.

Like, close , close.

I could smell cedar and clean laundry and the tiniest hint of coffee on his breath. His jaw clenched. My heart did a backflip.

My dignity packed its bags and left the building.

“You good?” he asked, voice low.

I nodded. Or tried to. It came out more like a panicked bobblehead motion.

“Totally fine,” I squeaked, still gripping his shirt. “Just testing the floor’s friction. For safety.”

“Mmm.” His brow quirked. “You planning a slip ’n slide?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

He didn’t let go right away. And neither did I. Which made it worse. Way worse.

Because now I was very aware of how close his hand was to the small of my back. And how warm he was. And how intense his gaze felt this close up.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. Um. Boundaries. Gravity. Personal space. All important things.”

And then I bolted.

Up the stairs, two at a time, like my life depended on it.

Because if I stayed down there one second longer, I was going to do something really stupid.

Like kiss him. Or worse, catch feelings .

Which, obviously, was out of the question.

I didn’t even know where I was going until I was sitting cross-legged on the edge of the bed, half-unpacked makeup bag dumped out beside me like a lifeline.

My phone was still a brick. No bars. No Wi-Fi. No portal to the outside world or digital validation.

But I opened the camera app anyway.

And I hit record.

“Hey guys,” I said softly, voice raspier than usual. “So, today’s look is called ‘trapped in a mountain cabin with three lumbersexuals and no coffee shop in sight.’”

I tried to smile. It twitched at the corners, a little wobbly. But I kept going.

As if muscle memory could save me from unraveling.

I grabbed my foundation and started buffing it in with a too-damp beauty sponge. The texture was off, but I didn’t care. I needed something to do with my hands.

“First step,” I murmured, “cover the existential crisis with medium-build coverage.”

I reached for concealer next, dotting extra under my eyes.

“Okay, so this part’s important. We’re gonna erase the fact that I haven’t slept in two days and possibly cried in a broom closet.”

Blush next, a warm, dusty rose. I dabbed it onto my cheeks with a brush that probably hadn’t been cleaned since I still had sponsorships.

“Add color so you look like a person who doesn’t spiral at the mention of the word ‘algorithm.’”

I paused. Looked at my reflection.

Crap, I looked tired.

But I kept going.

Highlighter, a soft champagne shimmer, went on next. I swiped it across my cheekbones, nose, cupid’s bow. The usual map to glowing perfection.

“No one’s going to see this,” I muttered. “But sometimes you have to fake it. Even if it’s just for you.”

I curled my hair in lazy waves, letting the hot barrel singe away the stress. I applied eyeliner with the shaky confidence of someone who’d once done it in the back of a moving Uber, while holding a matcha in the other hand.

Then mascara. Then gloss, a sheer rosy tint I hadn’t worn in months but suddenly needed to.

And by the time I was done, I looked…

Beautiful.

Soft curls. Glowy skin. Glossy lips. Effortless and intentional. The kind of look I used to curate for brand deals and rooftop brunches and paparazzi sightings outside Erewhon.

But here, in a weather-beaten cabin, with the wind howling through the trees and literally zero audience, it felt like something else.

Like armor.

Or maybe a reminder.

That I was still me. Even if everything else had fallen apart.

I stared at my reflection for a long time. Then at the lens.

And I whispered, “You’re still here.”

Not for the camera. Not for the likes.

For me.

A minute passed. Then another.

Downstairs, I heard the faint murmur of voices. The clatter of a pot. One of the Wolfe brothers laughing, maybe Asher, maybe Garrett. Something being fixed, or broken, or set on fire. Who knew with them.

I sat there with my freshly curled hair and perfect highlighter, in a cabin that smelled like woodsmoke and lemon cleaner, and wondered how the hell I was supposed to fit into this picture.

I didn’t know.

But at least I looked good trying.