Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Harper
"Do you want pancakes?"
Emma's voice drifts down the hallway from the kitchen, bright and offensively cheerful for someone who's been conscious for less than twenty minutes. I can already hear the sizzle of the pan.
My roommate is an early riser. The kind of person who wakes up at five, immediately wants food, and can't fathom why the rest of the human race doesn't share her enthusiasm for eggs before the sun's fully committed to the sky.
I, on the other hand, find the thought of eating before nine nauseating. A coffee is all I need. Strong and borderline aggressive, something that has enough caffeine to defrost my brain and drag me into the land of the living.
But today, even coffee feels like a tall order.
I'm lying on my back, staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, and there's a fist of dread sitting right in the center of my stomach. Tonight is my date with Hudson. The word alone makes me want to pull the blanket over my head and not come out until next year.
Is this rock bottom?
"I'm good! Thank you!" I call back and roll over to grab my phone from the nightstand. I’m itching to re-read Ace’s text.
The stomping starts immediately. My bedroom door swings open before I've even unlocked my screen.
"Harper. You have to eat." She leans against the doorframe, spatula in hand, wearing a sports bra and bike shorts like she's about to film content for her fitness page, which she probably is. "You've been quiet since you got home from work last night."
I met Emma during freshman year at UCLA.
We were assigned the same dorm, bonded over cheap wine and a shared hatred of our RA, and never looked back.
We lived together through undergrad and got this apartment in Echo Park the week after graduation, a two-bedroom with a balcony the size of a bath mat and a view of absolutely nothing, but it was ours.
I went into criminal journalism. Emma became a fitness influencer with three hundred thousand followers who worship the ground she lunges on.
She teaches the meanest Pilates classes in the city and has an almost religious compulsion to shove protein into everything she tries to feed me. Pancakes included.
"I'm good. I just had a bad day, and today is probably going to be worse."
The spatula drops to her side. She studies my face for a beat, then crosses the room and sinks onto the end of my bed, tucking one leg underneath her.
"You haven't been yourself since you came back from New Falls." Her voice is softer now. "Was going home tough? Did you see him?"
I sit up against the headboard, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see sparks. I need to wake up for this conversation.
She's right. Going home for the first time in nearly six years cracked something open inside me that I thought I'd sealed shut. I thought I could handle it. That I could go there unnoticed, get the information I need, and hide it from my boss.
"It's made me miss home," I tell her, wrapping my arms around myself.
She scoots closer on the mattress. "Miss home, or miss him?"
She was there the night I ended it. She's the one who found me on the bathroom floor of our dorm, mascara running down my face, phone in my hand, hyperventilating so hard I couldn't get a full breath in.
She held my hair back while I threw up from crying.
She slept in my bed for a week because I couldn't stop shaking.
She watched me try to rebuild a life around a hole in my chest that nothing, not work, not time, not distance, has ever been able to fill.
Because that's what losing Ace felt like. Not a breakup. An amputation. Like someone reached inside my ribcage and tore out the half of my soul that knew how to be happy, and I've been walking around with the wound ever since, pretending I'm whole.
Going back to New Falls just ripped it wider.
When I met Hunter's new wife, Lola, I couldn’t help but be jealous of her.
That she gets to live the life I once dreamed of.
Not with Hunter, with Ace. Being a Sterling was the dream I let go of.
I let the entire town throw me a big send-off party to start my new life and follow these big career goals I had.
But our long-distance love got too real.
The moment he told me he was about to throw everything away for me, I lost it and made the stupidest decision of my life.
I couldn’t drag him down with me, and I’m still glad I didn’t.
Everyone believed in me, and I couldn’t let them down by giving up and coming home.
The embarrassment would kill me. Even Ace wanted me to succeed.
So I stayed here. I studied hard and started working at LA Press.
But something has always been missing. That spark.
That love. It died the day I broke up with Ace, and it never returned, no matter what I tried.
"Both," I whisper, and my voice cracks on the word.
Emma doesn't flinch. She never does.
"And why is today going to be so bad?"
I blow out a long breath and tip my head back against the headboard. "Well. Remember how I took on the research of this case so I could control the story and protect Ace and his family?"
"Hmm." She presses her lips together. She wasn't a fan of this idea. She told me so at the time, in explicit detail, using words like "reckless" and "self-sabotaging," and “Harper, you are going to get yourself fired.”
"Well, it kind of backfired. And now I'm in a situation with my boss."
Her eyebrow arches. "What kind of situation?"
I chew on the inside of my lip. "I owe him a favor. And he's cashing it in. In the form of a date tonight, so his dying father will feel confident enough to sign the company over to him early."
Her mouth falls open. Her blue eyes go wide, and then the spatula hits the blanket.
"Shut. The. Fuck. Up. What?"
"Fucked up, isn't it?"
"Uhh. Yeah? Extremely." She throws her hands up. "I told you not to get involved, Harper. I said those exact words. I said do not sacrifice your career for a man who doesn't even know you're doing it."
I pick at a loose thread on my comforter. "I know. I couldn't help myself. I hurt him so bad, Emma. I destroyed him. And if I can stop even one more bad thing from landing on his doorstep, I have to. I have to."
She places her hand on my shoulder. "Harper. Ace is a grown man. He will be just fine on his own. Hell—" She tilts her head. "I've seen how well he's doing with that bull riding craziness. The man is thriving."
I blink at her. "You've stalked my ex?"
She has the audacity to giggle. "Yeah. Harper, he's easy to look at. My God."
I slap her arm. "Not helpful, Emma. I know he's fucking gorgeous."
She nods, completely unrepentant.
"You don't owe him anything. It's been six years, Harper.
I'm sure he's over it." She pauses, and something shifts in her expression, a flicker of hesitation.
"Well, actually. I kind of know he is. Stop making decisions that fuck you over to protect him.
You've done enough. You need to let that man go and ride off into the sunset. "
My stomach drops. "What do you mean?"
She huffs, reaches behind her, and pulls her phone from the waistband of her bike shorts. She taps the screen twice and holds it out to me.
"He got tagged in this last night, Harper. He's fine. See?"
I snatch the phone from her hand.
It's a reel. Shaky camera, neon bar light, a crowd of cowboy hats and beer bottles. And there is Ace. My Ace. Except he's not mine anymore, and the proof is the pretty blonde cowgirl running her tongue up his abs while whiskey rolls down his skin.
The crowd is cheering. He's smiling. His hat, my hat, the one I bought him, is tipped back on his head, and his hand is hovering near her waist like he can't quite decide whether to pull her closer or not.
"I’m going to be sick," I mutter.
But I replay it. Once. Twice. Three times, I’m pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurts. It does. It hurts so much I can barely breathe.
Was this before or after he texted me? Did he send me that birthday message and then take this girl home and pretend she was me? Did he close his eyes when she touched him and see my face?
He's into it. I can see it. That spark behind his eyes, the way his jaw tightens, the way he leans into her just slightly. I know that look. I cataloged every version of that look.
He used to save that look for me. Usually, right before he'd grin and then chase me around the ranch until I let him catch me.
"Harper." Emma's voice pulls me back. She's watching me with that careful expression again. "This is good. It means you can stop worrying about him, right? That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
I can't stop the tears. They spill over before I can blink them back, rolling hot and fast down my cheeks, and I shake my head because my throat is too tight for words.
"I-I don't think that was what I really wanted, Emma."
"Oh, Harper." She pulls me in, wrapping both arms around me, and I bury my face against her shoulder and sob.
Ugly, heaving sobs that shake my whole body and soak through her sports bra and make me feel twenty again.
When I was terrified and so in love with a boy that the thought of a world without him in it, made me physically ill.
She holds me tight and rubs my back in slow circles. She doesn't say a word until the worst of it passes, and I'm just hiccupping against her collarbone.
"You're going to be fine, Harps. You're strong. You've got an awesome career here. A whole new life. You'll find a man who will love you even more than he did. You'll find one that you'll love forever."
I pull back, dragging the back of my hand across my eyes.
"I guess I was kind of hoping that he wouldn't close the door on me," I say, staring down at the little flowers printed on my duvet because I can't look at her right now. "That maybe the stars would align, and we'd get our second chance, you know?"
One day, I’d get my shit together. Or maybe one day it would hurt less.
"Harper. Look at me."