Page 82 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

“I knew it!” Damon pointed at me. “I knew you two had something going on.”

“Damon, it’s not the time,” Dawson’s tone left no room for argument.

“That was a week ago⁠—”

“A week?!” Dylan cut me off.

“And since then I’ve been working to figure out how to buy her out,” I continued, ignoring my little brother’s interruption. “The land is now worth millions, and it took me time to figure out how to pay her and save the ranch. I have a plan now. I’ve secured a bridge loan, that I will need to pay back within eighteen months, if not, I will sell my shares to investors, but⁠—”

“Stop,” Dawson barked, as he glared at me.

His large hands splayed over his knees, as if he wanted to throttle someone but couldn’t decide who. Dylan stood and started pacing. Mom’s knitting needles clattered to the floor and rolled under the coffee table, and she didn’t even notice. Damon was staring at me in disbelief, his face red, his ears practically steaming.

I braced myself for the fallout. I’d expected it would be bad. I hadn’t expected it would be this personal.

Dawson broke the silence. “You think you’re the only one who cares about this place? Or that we’d just sit back and watch you mortgage your future for the rest of us?”

I opened my mouth to explain that it wasn’t about being a martyr or not trusting them, it was about not wanting to lay my burden at their feet. I’d always handled things. Even as a kid, if there was a mess, I cleaned it up before anyone else noticed. I tried to say that, but Damon cut me off.

“You should’ve told us, Dean. All of us,” he said, his jaw still tight. “You always act like you’re the only adult in the room, but that’s bullshit. We are all just as responsible as you for this land, this ranch, the Lockhart legacy.”

“I didn’t want to come to you guys with this until I had a solution.” It was the same reason I hadn’t spoken to Felicity all week. I wasn’t about to show up on her doorstep emptyhanded. I had to have a concrete plan in place.

Dylan shook his head and finally looked up from his phone. “You know what makes us family? Dealing with crap together. Not just the easy stuff. The hard stuff, too.”

My mom, still in shock, managed to interject quietly, “We love you, honey. But you don’t get to decide what we can handle.”

I took a shallow breath, the kind that floated at the top of your lungs and never made it all the way in. If I were honest, I’d never figured out how to let people help me. The more I tried to protect everyone, the less I shared. It was a closed loop.

Damon came and stood in front of me. “If you pull this shit again, I swear on everything I love, I will drag your ass to a family therapist.”

It was a strange threat. Not kick my ass. Drag me to a family therapist?

Dawson exhaled a sigh of frustration. “We figure it out together as a family. We carry the burdens together, as a family. We succeed or fail together as a family. Understood?”

I nodded because I didn’t think I had a leg to stand on, and even if I did, my brother wasn’t asking, he was telling.

I tried to put myself in their shoes, to understand why they were all so upset. Yes, I’d kept them in the dark, but it was only to save them from unnecessary worry.

Was it? A little voice sounded in the back of my head. Or was it because you believe you are the only one who can fix issues of this magnitude, and you didn’t trust them to handle it the right way, aka, your way?

Fuck.

My internal voice—that sounded a hell of a lot like Felicity—could be onto something. Maybe I did only trust myself and I didn’t want to fix other people’s mistakes.

Then, as if summoned by the universe’s twisted sense of timing, there was a light knock at the door. The voices in the room stilled. Felicity peeked her head in, and I knew instantly something was off. She was holding her tote like a shield, and her smile was the tense kind, practiced in bad mirrors.

“Sorry, I hope I’m not interrupting,” she apologized, eyes darting over the crowd like she was checking for exits. It was obvious that she hadn’t expected to see all of us.

“No, not at all.” My mom stood up and assured her, her voice warm but strained. “Come on in, honey.”

Felicity stepped inside, her gaze landing on me, then immediately looked away. She drew in a breath and squared her shoulders. She turned to my mom. “I was hoping to talk to you in private, if you have a second?”

The way she asked—gentle, deferential—sent a cold pulse through my spine. I’d heard that tone before, when she was about to drop news she didn’t want to share.

“Of course, mija.” My mom gestured for Felicity to go into her home office.

Damon and Dylan exchanged a glance and, with a subtle nod from Dawson, indicating that this meeting was now adjourned, headed toward the kitchen, stopping just long enough to sweep up the fallen knitting supplies and deposit them on the coffee table.