As elegant as Katrina had made things, and as gorgeous as the ceremony spot next the Rayburn falls was decorated, this was still a country mountain wedding. And her fiancé was still a rough mountain man.

…Which is to say, even if there was plenty of champagne and good wine, there was also plenty of whiskey.

Perfect.

My nerves had been on edge the whole night before after the call from my OB’s office. I’d hid it as best I could when I’d taken on my maid of honor duties by kicking Braun out for the night to go stay at Vlad and Chloe’s so Katrina and I could have girl time. I’d even sort of put it out of my mind as we stayed up late talking about old times, plans of the future, doing her nails, and all that stuff.

But now the day of? It was all coming back. And I was a wreck.

Part of me wanted to run — run, not walk — down the mountain to the nearest drug store and buy a pregnancy test. But I knew that was ridiculous. Even if — and if was the huge word there — something had, well, taken, day two was hardly when a pee test was going to show anything.

Before my first run-in with Austin and Dallas, I hadn’t had sex in, well, a while. Actually I’d joked with Katrina over the phone that closest thing to getting laid I was getting was a nurse’s assistant implanting my own eggs inseminated with a stranger’s sperm into my uterus.

Yeah, real steamy.

But then, I’d run into them, I’d lost my freaking mind, and I’d lost my damn heart along the way. I’d also had both of their cum inside of me, multiple times. So, if there was a pregnancy test that could magically show after a day? Well, there’d only be two men I’d need to talk to.

…Two men who I was going to have to face any minute now when they arrived.

I grabbed a glass of the whiskey Braun had set out off the bar and brought it to my lips. I closed my eyes, breathing deeply, feeling my blood pound in my ears before slowly, I took it away from my face.

No.

And suddenly, the word roared through my head even louder, and I set the glass back on the table and shoved it away.

Hell no. I knew my chances were low — really low, even with how fertile I was from the treatments. But still, if I was? I almost wanted to slap myself. Yeah, no fucking way was I drinking a drop until I could pee on a stick and find out for sure.

And then, maybe, I’d have to have some pretty real conversations with Austin and Dallas.

…And me possibly being pregnant wasn’t the only thing I was scared to talk to them about.

They’d lied to me. Or at the least, they’d omitted some serious shit from me. The whole thing with their father — I shivered as I turned away, biting my lip and losing myself in my thoughts. I didn’t think they were killers, even if the story about them going on the run for being accused of it was true. They’d spoken of their father with such love and admiration that they’d have to be total psychopaths to also have killed him. But even so, they were on the run from the law. They were fugitives wanted for murder, and they hadn’t mentioned it.

I paced the clearing by the falls, trying to escape the cloud over my head by mingling with the guests. Katrina’s parents were there, and however weird and zany in that super-rich way they were, it was still nice to see some familiar faces. Eventually though, everyone headed back down the path to the house, where we were all going to meet first before taking our seats for the ceremony back up here.

And then I was alone. Alone with the cloud following me. The cloud of doubt, and worry, and fear The cloud that kept whispering in my ear that even if I’d fallen hard for the two mountain brothers, I really didn’t know them very well. And that scared me.

“Stella.”

I froze at the sound of his voice — one of the men I’d just had blazing through my head now standing right behind me. I took a shaky breath, wanting more time to let all of this try and find a place in my head, but knowing I had to turn around. And slowly, I did.

“Hi,” I said quietly and shortly, my voice terse and my eyes avoiding them. Dallas and Austin frowned slightly, and Dallas stepped closer.

“Beautiful, what’s wrong—”

“Nothing,” I snapped heatedly, my heart breaking a little as I watched the two of them flinch and then glance at each other.

“The hell is going on, Stella?” Austin growled, stepping towards me.

When I recoiled, his frown deepened.

“Tell us what’s wrong, baby girl,” he said quietly, his eyes burning into mine. “I can see you’re hurting, so let us be here for—”

“I have to go.”

I snapped the words as I turned to storm away to follow the last of the guests disappearing into the woods down the trail. But suddenly, I gasped as strong hands grabbed me and pulled me back. The shriek caught in my throat as Austin physically threw me over his shoulder and turned to storm the opposite way out of the clearing, toward the falls.

“Get your hands off of me!” I screamed, kicking and hitting his hardened, muscled body before he finally lifted me off and sat me down on wooden bench someone had long ago built here next to the waterfalls.

“Easy!” he growled, stepping away as I took a swing at him. “Fuck, Stella, what the hell is going on!”

My eyes darted between, my mind and my heart and my emotions still not sure if I was angry or scared or just everything all at once.

Both of them looked at me carefully, before slowly, Dallas nodded.

“Someone told you something, didn’t they?”

I bit my lip.

“Fucking Braun,” he spat, his brow scowling as he looked away.

“Well?” I snapped. “Is it true?”

“There’s a lot we haven’t told you,” Austin said quietly.

I barked out a laugh. “No shit.”

“We’ve known you for a day,” he growled. “How about some slack?”

The three of us froze like that, and suddenly, the fight just went out of me. I hung my head, my emotions welling up inside of me. And I wasn’t even angry, I was just scared, and more than a little freaked out.

“I’m…” I closed my eyes. “I’m sor—”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about,” Dallas said fiercely as the two of them swept me up in their arms, holding me tight as I trembled against them. “Nothing. We should have told you everything. We wanted to, we were just…”

He trailed off.

“Being pussies,” Austin muttered. “We were scared of, well, this. Of scaring you off or freaking you out. Look, Stella, the whole thing with our dad, you know that’s not us, right? You know we’re not even capable of something like that.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“Our uncle set everything up,” Dallas muttered. “He paid off doctors, board members — you name it. He didn’t just want our company, he wanted to bury us and make sure we never came to try and take it back. When we figured out what the hell was going on, yeah, we ran, and we’ve been here on Blackthorn ever since.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly, holding them close and kissing each of them on the cheek.

“And you really have nothing to be sorry for, beautiful,” Austin purred, kissing me slowly. “That’s all there is. We’ve been here on Blackthorn. At first, we thought about revenge, and how to ‘get back’ at our uncle. But the longer we lived here, the more that life just didn’t even appeal to us anymore. We’ve found peace here in these woods, and now that we’ve found you?”

He grinned, sending a spark right through me.

“Now that we’ve found you, I don’t know what else there is,” Dallas said, kissing my cheek. “And now you know everything about us.” He chuckled. “So I guess now we just need to know everything about you.”

He kissed me slowly, pulling away to let his twin do the same. They moved closer, my pulse spiking as the two of them moved against me and let their hands slide down my body. I gasped, trembling against them and wanting so badly to just get lost in them.

…But there was something they had to know. After they’d just told me all of that? I couldn’t keep it from them any longer.

“Everything about you,” Austin growled, his fingers tugging the hem of my bridesmaids dress higher. “Like what color panties you’re wearing under this—”

“I have to tell you something!”

I blurted it out like a swear word, stumbling back away from them, my eyes darting between them.

“I really have to tell you something.”