Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ace
Song- Fire In Your Eyes, Chase & Status, Maverick Sabre
She's looking at me the way she used to look at me when she was about to run.
That heat behind her eyes. That stubborn tilt to her chin. The way her chest rises and falls just a fraction too fast, like her body's already making decisions her brain hasn't signed off on.
Six years. Six goddamn years since I've been this close to her. And she's standing in front of me in a skirt and cowgirl boots with rope marks on her wrists and fire in her eyes, and I don't know if I want to scream at her or kiss her until she can't breathe.
Both. I want both. All I ever fucking wanted was her.
"Hello, Ace," she says, and her voice is steady, but her hands aren't. I clock that.
I clock everything about her, always have.
The way she's jabbing her nails into her hands to stop herself from grabbing my shirt.
The way she keeps swallowing. The way her gaze keeps dropping to my mouth and snapping back up.
Good. Look. Remember what you walked away from.
"So," I say, pulling off my hat and running a hand through my hair. "You're the reporter."
Her jaw tightens. "I'm a criminal journalist for the LA Press."
"You're the journalist who's been investigating us. Right?"
"Sort of. Ish. More like burying your secrets, Ace." She says it with a fire that sparks something in me.
I nod. And I owe her for that. Even though I have no clue what she’s really been burying. Or how or why. I guess Hunter can fill me in on that.
"Without telling me," I say.
"You weren't part of the plan, Ace. The plan was to keep you all out of trouble, and that was it."
I laugh. It comes out bitter, and I don't bother stopping. "No. I never am, am I, Harper? Not when you left. Not when you came back in secret. Not when you let my cousin throw you in a barn rather than pick up the damn phone and call me."
Her eyes flash. There she is. That fire I've been missing.
"I didn't let him do anything. I agreed to the terms because Hunter—"
"Hunter isn't the Sterling you should've called, Harper. You know I’m the one man you can call no matter fucking what. Heartbroken or not. I’d walk through fire to help you. I still would die for you. Even after all this time. But you didn’t call. You don’t even want my help."
Fuck. I run my hand over my face and take a breath, trying to calm myself.
That lands. I see it hit. She takes a breath, holds it, and I watch her rebuild her composure in real time. She's gotten better at that. At locking things down, at hiding what she feels. The Harper I knew couldn't hide anything. Her face was an open book, and every page was about us.
This Harper has walls. I wonder who taught her that. I wonder if it was me.
"You're right," she says quietly. "But I had my reasons."
"You always do."
We stare at each other. The barn is quiet. Just the sound of a horse shifting in its stall, the creak of the timber above us, and the blood roaring in my ears.
She's so fucking beautiful it makes me angry.
That's the part nobody tells you about heartbreak.
You expect the pain, the missing, the emptiness.
You don't expect to be furious that she's still the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen and that nothing has come close. Not even in the same goddamn league.
Her hair's longer. Blonder. Sun-bleached in a way that tells me LA has been good to her in at least one way. The freckles across her nose are still there. I used to kiss every one of them, and she'd squirm and laugh and shove my face away and then pull it right back.
The nose ring. Still there. My chest does something stupid when I look at it.
"You need to come with me," I tell her. "Hunter wants to see you. At the ranch."
"Sterling Ranch?"
I can’t help but chuckle. "That's the one."
She shakes her head. "I told Hunter I wouldn't go to the ranch. That was the agreement."
"Well, the agreement changed when my cousin showed up in a flamingo shirt and tied you to a chair, Harper. Plans are fluid."
"I'm not going to your ranch, Ace."
"Why not?"
She doesn't answer. But I know why. The same reason I can't stop looking at her mouth. The same reason my hands are shaking in my pockets. The same reason neither of us has taken a single step back, even though we're standing close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her green eyes.
Because Sterling Ranch is where we happened. Every first. Every last. Every moment in between that made us who we are. And walking back onto that land together is either going to heal us or destroy us, and she's not ready to find out which one.
Neither am I. But I don't have a choice.
"Get in my truck, Harper," I say, my voice low. Just how she always liked it.
"No."
I arch an eyebrow. "That wasn't a question. I ain’t changed that much."
She steps closer. Which is a mistake, because now I can smell her. Vanilla and the faintest trace of that coconut shampoo she's been using since she was seventeen. My brain short-circuits. My body remembers things my heart is trying to forget.
"You don't get to tell me what to do anymore, Ace. You lost that privilege."
"I lost it?" I lean down. I’m way too close. Close enough that if she tilted her chin up, our lips would touch. "You took it, sweetheart. Along with everything else."
Her breath catches. I hear it. That tiny hitch. The same sound she used to make right before I kissed her. Right before she'd grab the front of my shirt and pull me in and whisper fuck me, cowboy against my mouth.
My jaw clenches, and I straighten up. Step back. Put distance between us before I do something I can't take back.
"Get in the truck," I say again. Quieter this time, taking a new approach for this new version of my soulmate. "Please."
It doesn’t matter which version of Harper stands in front of me at any given moment. I’d love her regardless. That is one simple fact in my life: I will always love this woman. Even when I really don’t fucking want to. I do.
The please does something to her. I see it crack through that wall she's built, just a fracture, just a flash of the girl underneath who used to melt every time I remembered my manners. Because Harper has always been a sucker for a cowboy who knows when to say please.
"If I go to the ranch," she says slowly, "I need your word that this stays professional. I'm there for Hunter. For information. Not for—" She gestures between us. "This."
"This?"
Ouch. My hand rests over my chest, and I can’t help it.
"You know what I mean."
"Enlighten me," I say with a smirk.
Her eyes narrow. "Don't play dumb, Ace. It doesn't suit you."
"And playing cold doesn't suit you, Harps. But here we are."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
"Fine. I'll get in your truck," she huffs.
Sassy Harper is the one who makes my dick nearly explode.
"Thank you."
Not allowing me to have the last word, she says, "But I'm choosing the music."
I almost smile. Almost. "You always did."
"And you're not going to talk to me on the drive."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"And stop calling me sweetheart. Or any cute names."
I know which one would hurt her most, calling her Goldie.
"No deal," I say.
She swallows.
I turn and walk out of the barn into the sunlight. I don't look back. I don't need to. I can hear her boots on the dirt behind me, and the sound is so familiar it nearly puts me on my knees.
I open the passenger door of my truck and hold it. She reaches the door and stops. We're side by side. Her shoulder an inch from my chest. Her eyes straight ahead. Mine on the side of her face.
"Nice truck," she says.
My gaze tracks down her body, landing on her perfect legs. “Nice skirt, Harps.”
She turns to face me, and my heart skips a damn beat.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” she warns.
"I'm not thinking anything, Harper."
Truth is, she’s the one thing I do think about every day.
"Liar." She teases.
"Takes one to know one."
She climbs in. I close the door. Walk around to the driver's side. Get in. Start the engine. Trying to concentrate on something that isn’t Harper Amelia Jones.
The cab fills with her. All the things I've been starving for, now trapped in a confined space with me and thirty minutes of ranch road between here and the conversation that's going to change everything.
She might’ve told me not to talk. But I ain’t ever a man who followed instructions well. And she’s right, I lost privilege to her, well, ditto.
She reaches for the radio. Fiddles with the dial and finds a country station. The music fills the cab, and she leans back against the headrest and closes her eyes.
I pull out of Jett's drive and hit the dirt road, my entire body on high alert. This is worse than that feeling right before I get on a bull that wants me dead.
"Ace?"
"I thought I wasn't allowed to talk."
"You're not. I am." She pauses. "Thank you for untying me."
I grip the steering wheel. "Yeah. Well, probably say we’re even, seeing as my cousin kidnapped you," I say deadpan.
She giggles. "Well, I'm thanking you."
"Noted."
“God. It’s been a long time since a guy tied me up,” she says, glancing at me.
I suck in a breath, praying my dick behaves. I hope she’s talking about me. That I was the last guy.
“Yes, Ace. You.”
I nod and let the silence follow. I don’t know what I want to say. I’ve played this moment so many times in my head. Everything is the same, except she doesn’t keep me at arm's length.
That electricity running through me because she’s near, that was expected.
My heart flipping. Yep. Saw that coming.
Her playing it cool? No. I did not anticipate that.
"Your arms are bigger," she says, eyes still closed.
"Your ass is still perfect," I reply before I can stop myself.
And then I turn to look at her properly when we reach the red light.
The tiniest smile crosses her lips. Gone before it's fully formed.
"Stop noticing things about me, Ace."
"Stop being noticeable."
She opens one eye and looks at me. Both of our walls drop in that single second, and I’m thrown back in time, listening to her sing in the truck, my hand on her thigh, probably driving somewhere so I can chase her.
Walls gone, and what's underneath is so raw and so real and so goddamn devastating that neither of us can hold it.
She closes her eyes. I look back at the road, shaking my head.
We don't say another word for the rest of the drive.
We don't need to. The silence says everything.
And it's the loudest thirty minutes of my life.