Chapter 4 #2
Hunter runs a hand over his face, exhaling through his nose. "Unfortunately for us all, yes. Piercings included."
"Wyatt, Lola is making pancakes. Put Gary outside first," Hunter tells his son. Wyatt slides off the bed, grabs Gary by the collar, and drags the goat out of the room. Gary goes willingly, because even the goat knows better than to argue when Hunter uses that tone.
I look at my brother. Really look at him.
He's just like Dad. Same dark hair, same dark eyes, same way of standing in a doorway like he's holding the whole frame up.
For a while after Dad died, I was scared the light behind those eyes was fading, like the weight of everything was slowly crushing him from the inside out.
But since Lola, Hunter's come back to life.
Not all the way. Enough to laugh. Enough to love.
Enough to stand here grinning about a baby.
"Do I get pancakes? Seeing as I'm a guest."
He rolls his eyes. "Yeah. Then get your ass to work." He pauses, studying me. "You know, if you'd gotten laid last night, I'd have probably given you the day off."
I run my hand through my hair and look at the floor. "Well. Instead, I texted my ex. I've become that fuckin’ guy. Just shoot me."
Hunter chuckles, resting his hand on my shoulder. "I believe that's what they call yearning. Or pining? I don't fucking know. Women are into that."
"Desperate," I correct him.
He laughs. Then stops and studies me with that darkness in his eyes that misses nothing.
"You fuckin' said it, bro. Wait." He tilts his head. "You have fucked someone else since, right? You've been using your dick the last six years?"
I don't answer. I got a Jacob’s ladder to impress my girl. And she’s the only one who is ever going to make use of them.
"Ace Trent Sterling. Fuck off. You haven't?"
I shake my head. I can hear the shock in his tone. It ain’t something I publicly announce. I just have no interest in anyone else. My dick ain’t getting hard for another woman. Just my woman.
The one who doesn’t want me and lives in another damn state.
"For the last six years, I've been helping you run a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-acre ranch. Building a mafia empire. Oh, and becoming a bull riding champion. When the hell do I have time?"
He stares at me for a long beat. Not judging. Just… recalculating. Adjusting whatever picture he had of me in his head.
"Last night, for one." His voice is gentler now. "Do you think maybe it's time to let Harper go? She's not coming back, Ace."
I take a step back. The words land like a fist to the sternum.
"How do you know?"
"I don't. But how long are you prepared to wait for her? What if she's moved on?"
I rub my chest. Right over the spot where it hurts. Where it always hurts.
"Ouch."
She hasn't. I know she hasn't. Because I'm pretty sure when my soul mate moves on, I'll fuckin' drop dead.
I'll be out on a bull, and my heart will just stop, and that'll be it—Ace Sterling, taken out not by two thousand pounds of angry Brahma, but by a five-foot-six journalist with honey-blonde hair and a smile that could end wars.
"I say this because I care about you, Ace. You've got a lot to offer. Settling down is the best damn thing to ever happen to me. Just maybe… consider the option there's someone else out there for you."
I nod. I get it. I understand where he's coming from. He's not being cruel, he's being a brother.
"Do you give Colten this same lecture?" I ask, grabbing my T-shirt from the floor.
"Colten ain't pining over a woman. He's doing just fine."
I scoff and pull the shirt on, catching sight of the tattoo on my hip as the fabric drags across it. A small sun. Golden ink, faded a little now, the rays reaching out across the bone.
I got it the week after she left. Walked into the shop on Main Street, sat in the same chair where she held my hand while I got my dick piercings, and asked the artist to put a sun where only I would see it.
Because that's what she was. My sunshine.
My Goldie. And even if she wasn't mine anymore, I wanted to carry her somewhere close.
She was my good luck charm in life.
Even my skin is a reminder of her.
I've gotten through the heartbreak phase. The anger. The resentment. The months of agony after she told me she didn't love me enough, words I know she didn't mean, words she chose specifically because she knew they were the only ones brutal enough to make me stop fighting for her.
And every day I reflect on that. I know my heart is hers. I know she lied that night. I know the girl who used to whisper I love you so much it scares me into the dark of my truck didn't just wake up one morning and stop.
She let me go so I'd stay. So I'd ride. So I'd become this.
And I hate her for it. And I love her for it. And I can't tell the difference anymore.
"Meet you downstairs," Hunter says, heading toward the door.
"One more year, Hunter."
He stops in his tracks.
"I'll wait one more year. If by my twenty-eighth birthday, she hasn't reached out, I'll forget about her."
He watches me for a long moment. Something moves behind his eyes. The look of a man who knows what it's like to love someone so hard it rewires your entire brain.
"Alright," he says, and gives me a sad smile. "I'll mark it on the calendar."
He disappears down the hallway, and I stand in the empty room, pantless and hungover and heartbroken, with a cracked phone screen and a tattoo that won't fade and a year-long countdown that started ticking the second he walked out.
One year, Goldie. That's what I've got left in me.
After that, I'm either yours or I'm no one's.
Seven knows something's wrong before I do.
My stallion pulls up sharp at the crest of the hill overlooking Pasture Fifteen, ears pinned forward, nostrils flaring at something I can't see yet. I let him have his head and trust the instinct. Seven's been my horse since he was a colt, and in five years, nothing’s ever spooked him.
"Easy, boy. Easy."
The morning sun is hammering down hard. From up here, Sterling Ranch stretches out in every direction, so much land you could ride all day and never hit a fence. Dad used to say this place was God's rough draft, too big, too wild, too beautiful to be finished. I think he was right.
I click my tongue, and Seven walks on, picking his way down the slope toward the fence line where Jace and Paulie are already working.
Jace is on his bay mare, sitting high in the saddle, scanning the pasture.
Paulie's on the ground near the fence, hat pushed back on his head, hands on his hips, staring at something I can't make out from this distance.
Neither of them looks happy.
"Mornin'," I call out, reining Seven in beside Jace. "How bad is it?"
Jace shakes his head. "Bad enough. We've got cattle scattered from here to the creek bed. Paulie's been out since six trying to get a count, but they're spread thin. Some of 'em pushed through into the brush, gonna be a bitch to flush out."
I nod, squinting against the sun, and nudge Seven toward the fence line where Paulie's standing.
What I see when I get there makes my blood run cold.
The fence isn't broken. It's cut.
Three sections of heavy-gauge wire, each one severed at the post with the kind of precision that doesn't come from a spooked animal or a fallen branch.
Someone took bolt cutters to this fence.
Someone who knew exactly where to cut and how much to take down to create a gap wide enough for cattle to drift through overnight.