Page 6 of Heart Breaker

At first, I was naïve enough to think it would all sort itself out. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I figured someone would step forward, that the truth would eventually come out.

It didn’t.

Unlike me, the other guys had families with money and lawyers on speed dial. They had futures already waiting for them: one had a scholarship to UCLA, the other had a full ride for hockey. I didn’t have anything like that. No plan. No direction. No one expecting anything better from me than what I was being accused of.

A muscle tightens in my jaw as the memory settles in, familiar and unwelcome all at once. The police told me if I just admitted it, I could probably plead out. Avoid it turning into something worse. So, I made a choice to save my brothers from having to endure a trial and to protect my friends who had their lives all mapped out. I lied and said that I did it.

I ended up with community service and probation. Enough to keep it quiet, but not enough to make it disappear. In a town like this, it never does. The whispers follow you. The looks linger a little too long. People decide who you are, and once they do, there’s no changing their minds.

So, I left the day after graduation. I packed what I had, got on a bus, and didn’t look back. I needed distance. A chance to start over in a place where people hadn’t already made up their minds about me. I went to live with my uncle.

He was a retired pilot, the kind of man who didn’t say much but knew exactly how to keep you steady. He was everything my dad wasn’t, and being around someone calm, someone consistent—it mattered more than I probably understood at the time. He took me in and gave me a place to live. And somewhere along the way, he put me in a cockpit.

From day one, flying made sense in a way nothing else did. It gave me direction. Something to focus on. Five years later, I was flying commercial, thousands of feet in the air where the past couldn’t reach me.

While I was away I stayed close to my brothers Ford, Jesse, and Noah. I would visit them in Deep Cove, but I never landed there for too long. When Ford asked me to help with the business he was building, of course I said yes, but he always understood that I had a career of my own as well.

That was years ago. Now Cove is a huge success, but not so big that it can’t be rocked by scandal. And this past year has brought a lot of that. Too much.

I hate knowing that part of that is my fault.

“Lottie’s furious,” Jesse continues, stating the obvious now. “And not the quietly seething type of furious. She’s out loud, in your face, not backing down, fucking furious.”

“You think I didn’t notice that?”

“I’m just telling you that she’s not one of those people who just rolls with things,” he says. “Your plan to just talk her into agreeing to this is not going to work.”

Jesse is right. Lottie is a firecracker. She’s impulsive, outspoken, and completely unwilling to sit back and accept something she disagrees with without a fight. Which means that asking her to go along with this isn’t just unrealistic, it’s like asking her to go against who she is.

Ford studies me for a second longer, measured and deliberate. “Victoria’s not wrong about the strategy,” he says. “I’m just not sure how you’re going to convince Lottie. There’s nothing in it for her.”

Victoria’s strategy is simple, at least on paper. When my past resurfaced, it breathed new life into old assumptions. That I’m a troublemaker. A problem. Not the kind of guy the Cove board wants tied to the company. Anything that damages me has the potential to damage the brand. They can’t afford to risk that right now.

So now they want the opposite. Not reckless and out of control, but stable and reliable. And according to Victoria, the fastest way to shift a narrative is to give people something solid to believe in. A love story. A marriage. Something they want to root for.

Lottie fits that story perfectly. She’s smart, beautiful, composed. Standing next to her makes me look better. And if it improves how people see me, it improves how they see Cove too.

That’s all the board needs it to do.

“I’m not expecting her to just go along with this.”

That seems to catch Ford off guard. “Then what are you expecting?”

I shrug. “That she’ll listen.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Jesse asks.

I meet his gaze evenly. “She will.”

He shakes his head, a grin pulling at his mouth. “You’re delusional.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I have a plan.”

I’ve dealt with bigger complications than Lottie Hart.

I’ve just never had to marry them.

THREE