Chapter 18
Wyatt
My body is exhausted from the flight, but my heart is light, buzzing with an energy that has nothing to do with caffeine and everything to do with Snow.
The moment the plane touches down at Teterboro, I’m fumbling for my phone, a wide, lovesick smile already on my face as I switch it out of airplane mode, eager to see her reply to my text.
My phone explodes.
It’s a violent, jarring deluge of notifications. But none of them are from Snow. It’s a flood of alerts from Instagram and Twitter, and a series of increasingly frantic messages from my friend Derek.
Dude. What the hell is going on? Call me.
Have you seen the gossip sites?
Wyatt, this is bad. She’s going to see this and not understand.
A cold dread, sharp and immediate, cuts through my post-flight haze. I click on the link Derek sent. The page loads, a sleazy gossip site with a screaming headline: “Co-stars or Couple? Wyatt Ford and Jade Nelson’s Intimate Island Dinner.”
My world shatters. I scroll frantically, my blood turning to ice in my veins. There they are: the photos of the dinner, expertly shot to look as romantic as possible. The article is a toxic stew of innuendo and anonymous sources, painting a picture of a clandestine romance.
Then I see another link. “The Morning After? Wyatt Ford Seen Leaving Co-Star Jade Nelson’s Hotel Room.” The photo of me leaving her room after the zipper incident is grainy, voyeuristic, and utterly damning.
Disbelief gives way to a cold, sickening horror. I see it now. The over-the-top enthusiasm from Leo and Delilah. The “accidental” reservation mix-up. The perfectly positioned photographer at the restaurant. It was a setup. A deliberate, calculated publicity-stunt ambush.
But we made it so much worse. We handed them more ammunition.
That photographer didn’t just get the dinner shots — he followed us back to our rooms. He was lurking in the hallway waiting for…
what? And we gave him exactly what he wanted.
Me, leaving Jade’s room after midnight, smiling like an idiot.
My fury at Leo and Delilah is a white-hot flash, but it’s instantly extinguished by a tidal wave of pure, gut-wrenching panic.
Snow.
Oh, God. Snow. I know her history. I know her deepest fear is being made a fool of again, of falling for another beautiful lie. And I, in my blind, trusting stupidity, have just handed her a mountain of high-resolution, professionally packaged “proof” that I am exactly the man she fears most.
“Wyatt?”
I look up. Jade is standing a few feet away, luggage at her feet, staring at her own phone with a bemused smile. “Have you seen—” She looks up, sees my face, and her smile falters. “Oh. You’ve seen it.”
“They set us up,” I choke out. “Leo and Delilah. The whole thing.”
“Yeah, I figured.” She shrugs, surprisingly unbothered. “Clara already saw the articles. She’s laughing her ass off.” Her smile returns. “Sneaky bastards, though. That photographer must have been camped out in the hallway. The zipper thing — God, they’re going to milk that for all it’s worth.”
She’s treating this like an annoyance. A professional inconvenience. She doesn’t understand.
“Jade.” My voice comes out strangled. “Snow…”
Jade’s smile disappears instantly. “Oh shit. Wyatt, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think—” She stops, her eyes widening as something clicks. “Wait. That call. The one that dropped. The one where I answered your phone when we were boarding.”
The memory hits me like a freight train. Snow’s strained voice. “Have you seen, there are photos online, and I—” And I’d brushed her off. Told her we’d talk when I got home. Then the call dropped. Then Jade answered the second call.
“Oh my God,” Jade whispers, her hand covering her mouth. “Wyatt, I answered your phone. Right after these photos went live. She must think… Let me call her,” she says urgently. “Let me explain. I can tell her about Clara, about the zipper, about—”
“No.” I’m already pulling up Snow’s contact. “I need to—I have to—”
My hands are shaking as I jab at her name in my contacts. I press the call button, my heart hammering against my ribs.
It doesn’t ring. It goes straight to a cold, impersonal, automated voice. “The person you are trying to reach is not available at this time.”
I try again. And again. The same result.
She’s blocked me.
I’m already moving, grabbing my bag, leaving everything else. Leo can deal with the rest of the luggage. I don’t care.
“Wyatt!” Jade calls after me as I sprint toward customs. “Wyatt, wait! Call me if Clara or I can do anything! Anything at all!”
I don’t stop. Can’t stop. The private charter meant we landed at Teterboro - smaller, faster to get through.
It’s early afternoon on a weekday, and customs is nearly empty.
I fly through in minutes, my Global Entry clearing me without delay.
My truck is in long-term parking, where I left it four days ago. Four days. It feels like a lifetime.
The drive from Teterboro to Garden City is a special kind of hell. I replay every innocent moment from the trip, seeing it now through the poisoned lens of the media narrative. I feel like a fool.
I pull up to her cottage, my tires screeching on the quiet, suburban street. All the curtains are drawn.
“Snow!” I yell as I pound on the door, my voice rough with a desperation that borders on panic. “Snow, please! Open the door! Just talk to me for five minutes! Let me explain! It’s not what it looks like!”
There is only silence. A heavy, unyielding silence that is more painful than any angry words could be. I know she’s in there. I can feel her, a wounded presence on the other side of the door, and the knowledge that I am the one who caused her pain is a sharp, twisting knife in my gut.
I pull out my phone, my fingers clumsy with cold and panic, and send a barrage of texts I know she will never read, but I can’t stop myself.
Snow, please. It was a setup. A publicity stunt. I had no idea.
Jade is my friend. She’s married. To a woman. I was at their wedding.
Please don’t shut me out. Don’t let them win. Talk to me. Let me make this right. I’m so sorry. I love you so damn much.
The messages sit there, marked as delivered, but I know they’re going nowhere.
She’s blocked me. They’ll never reach her.
The irony is a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth.
My job is to be the hero - the billionaire who always knows what to do, the knight who slays the dragon, the one who always gets the girl.
But right now, standing on this porch like a stalker, I’m just a man who has royally, catastrophically screwed up, with no idea how to fix it.
My phone buzzes in my hand. For a foolish, hopeful second, my heart leaps. But it’s not her. It’s a text from an unknown number.
Meet me. Now. We need to talk, Nico.
I’ve met Snow’s best friend a handful of times over the past few months — coffee meetups, dinners where she scrutinized me with those sharp eyes, always making sure I was good enough for Snow.
We’ve never exchanged numbers, never had reason to.
But she has mine now. This could be my only shot at reaching Snow, or it could be Nico planning to tear me apart. Either way, I have to go.
The diner is a brightly lit place that smells of stale coffee.
I spot Nico immediately in a booth in the back, her arms crossed, her expression a mask of cold fury — the same protective rage I’ve seen flash across her face when Snow mentions Preston.
She looks like a queen about to order an execution, and I am the condemned man walking to the gallows.
I slide into the booth opposite her, the vinyl cool against my jeans.
“You have five minutes to convince me I wasn’t wrong about you,” she says, her voice cold and sharp. “Start talking.”
The words tumble out of me in a desperate, frantic rush. I tell her everything. The staged dinner, the stuck zipper, my complete and utter ignorance of the plan. I tell her about my friendship with Jade, about her wife, Clara. I feel like I’m pleading for my life, and in a way, I am.
Nico listens, her dark gaze unwavering, her expression unreadable.
She’s a human lie detector, and I know I’m being judged on every word, every flicker of my eyes, every tremor in my voice.
When I’m done, she’s silent for a long, agonizing moment.
She glances at her phone - checking the time against her five-minute ultimatum - then looks back at me.
“Why should she believe you?” she finally asks, her question cutting straight to the bleeding heart of the matter.
“Her ex-husband was a professional liar, too. He just did it in a boardroom instead of a photography studio. He sold her a fantasy of a perfect life while he was cheating on her. You’re asking her to trust you when her entire life has taught her that men who look too good to be true always are. ”
Her words are a punch to the gut because she’s right. The facts don’t matter. Not really. This isn’t about logic. It’s about trauma. It forces me to stop explaining the plot and start explaining my heart.
“Because it’s real,” I say, my voice raw with an emotion I don’t try to hide.
“What I feel for her is real. She’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met.
She’s smart, and funny, and so damn strong.
And she sees me. The real me. Not the guy on the book covers.
” I take a ragged breath, the confession tearing from a place deep inside me.
“I love her, Nico, so damn much. I told her that three weeks ago, and I meant it with everything in me. And now I think I’ve destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me. ”
I see a flicker of something in Nico’s eyes. The icy fury softens, just a fraction, replaced by a grudging respect.
“She’s destroyed,” she says softly. “When I got to her place, she was curled up on the couch with her phone smashed on the floor. She wouldn’t say a word. That’s not Snow.” She shakes her head. “You broke something in her, Wyatt. She was just starting to believe again, and you broke her.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I say, and I hate how helpless I sound. “She’s blocked my number. I went to her cottage — she wouldn’t answer the door. I can’t reach her. I can’t explain. I can’t—” My voice cracks. “Tell me what to do. Please. I’ll do anything.”
She lets out a long, weary sigh. “Okay,” she says, and the single word is a reprieve, a stay of execution. “I’ll talk to her. I’m not promising anything. She’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox right now. But I’ll try.”
“Why?” The question bursts out of me. “Why are you helping me?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Because I’m Team Wyatt.”
I stare at her, stunned. “Team Wyatt? You should be Team Snow. You—”
“I am Team Snow,” she cuts me off, her voice firm.
“Which is exactly why I’m Team Wyatt. Snow needs you.
I’ve seen her these past three months. She’s been…
alive again. Really alive, not just surviving.
” Her expression softens for just a moment.
“And for the record, I had you fully vetted before I signed onto Team Wyatt. When Snow first mentioned you, I ran a complete background check. Credit history, criminal record, social media deep dive, interviews with your exes, the works.”
I don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. “You… what? Who are you?”
“My girl went through hell with him,” Nico says, her voice hard as steel.
“I wasn’t about to let another asshole break her.
So yeah, I checked you out. You’re clean.
Boring, even. You pay your bills on time, you’ve never cheated on anyone, your exes all say you’re a decent guy who just wasn’t the right fit, and you tip well at restaurants.
” She leans forward. “Don’t make me regret my endorsement. ”
She slides out of the booth and gives me a long, hard look. “You get one chance to fix this, Wyatt,” she says, her voice a deadly serious warning. “Don’t blow it.”
She turns and walks out, leaving me alone in the diner with the crushing, overwhelming weight of my mistakes.