Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ace
She's sitting three feet from me, and it might as well be three thousand miles.
She’s engaged.
She might as well put a bullet right through my chest and be done with it.
"Harper," I whisper.
My voice fucking cracks, and I can’t stop it.
She doesn't look at me. She's watching the last strip of light on the mountains, her arms wrapped around her knees, chin resting on top of them. She looks small. She never used to look small.
She used to be the light of my goddamn life. My Goldie.
"Harper."
"I heard you," she snaps.
"Goddammit, look at me," I order, slipping back into our old habits.
She does. Her eyes are glassy. Her jaw is tight. She's holding herself together with everything she's got, and I can see the cracks. I've always been able to see the cracks. I used to be the one who filled them.
"When did you stop loving me?" I ask.
The question leaves my mouth and hangs between us. I didn't plan to say it. It just came out, ripped from somewhere deep, somewhere that's been holding that question for years.
Her lips part.
"Why? What difference would that make?" she whispers.
I chew on my lip. Trying to do something, anything, to stop me breaking.
"I always thought that the second you stopped loving me completely, I'd die.
I'd just drop dead. Heart would stop. Lights out.
Done." I stare at the ground. "And that never happened.
So I thought you'd come back to me. That fate would put us together.
That I was still alive because you were still mine, no matter which state you lived in. "
My voice is steady. I don't even know how.
"But if you're marrying another man, that means at some point, you fell out of love with me."
She flinches. I see it run through her whole body.
She closes her eyes. Her hand goes to her bare left ring finger, and she presses it like the ghost of the ring still burns.
“What kind of man asks you to marry him and doesn’t give you a ring?” I ask.
"I took it off," she says. "Before I came here. I couldn't wear it on this land. I couldn’t…"
I sigh. “Face me?” I finish for her.
That tells me more than she means it to. She couldn't bring his ring onto Sterling soil. Couldn't let something that belongs to another man touch the place that belongs to us.
But it doesn't change the fact.
"Why am I still alive, Goldie? If you stopped loving me. Why am I still here?"
She makes a sound. Not a word. Something broken and involuntary, torn from her throat. Her hand comes up to her mouth.
"Ace—"
"Answer me."
Tears roll down her cheeks, and she doesn't wipe them. She just looks at me with those green eyes, drowning, and her whole body trembling.
"I never stopped."
Three words. My whole world tilts.
"I never stopped loving you, Ace. Not for one second.
Not for one day." Her voice cracks, and she pushes through it, like the words have been trapped inside her for so long they're fighting to get out.
"Every morning, you're my first thought.
Every night, you're the last face I see.
I read every text you ever sent me. Every single one.
And I held my phone so tight afterward, my hand would cramp because I wanted to reply so bad it physically hurt. "
She presses her palm flat against her chest. Right over her heart.
"I tried to get over you. I tried so hard. I went on dates, and I sat across from men who were perfectly fine, and all I could think was his eyes are the wrong color and his laugh is wrong, and he isn’t my Acey.
" She wipes her face with the back of her hand.
"And I know that's not fair to you. I know holding on while pushing you away is the cruelest thing I could do.
I know that, Ace. But I don't know how to stop because you're in me.
You're in my blood. And I can't cut you out without losing everything. "
She's sobbing now. The ugly, full-body kind that shakes her shoulders and steals her breath.
And I can see it—this isn't a woman who chose to leave.
This is a woman who's been carrying something so heavy for so long that her spine is bending under it.
She's not selfish. She's drowning. And she's been drowning alone because she won't let anyone, no, she won't let me throw her a rope.
I want to hold her. God, I want to hold her so bad my arms ache. I want to pull her into my chest and tell her it's going to be alright. The way I used to. The way nobody else ever could.
But if I touch her, I'm done. If I hold her, I'll never let go. And she'll still leave. She always leaves. And this time it will actually kill me.
"Stop," I say.
She looks at me, tears streaking her face.
"Ace, I'm sorry—"
"Stop, Harper. Please."
The please comes out ragged. I drag my hand over my face, pressing my fingers into my eyes until I see stars.
"You can't do this to me. You can't sit here and tell me you love me and then go back to LA and marry someone else. I need you to understand what that does to me, Harper. I need you to understand that every word you just said is a gift and a knife at the same time."
"I know." Her voice is barely there.
"Then why? Why are you marrying another man, Harper? If you still love me, why would you do this to me? To make sure you never crumble and come back to me? Is that it?"
She opens her mouth. Closes it. And I watch something move behind her eyes, a war, fought in real time, between what she wants to say and what she's allowed to say. Between the truth and whatever cage she's locked it in.
"He's not—" She stops. Starts again. "It's not what you think it is, Ace.
It's not love. It's not even close to love.
It's—" She presses her hands against her temples.
"Business. I can't explain it. Not yet. But I need you to believe me when I tell you that everything I'm doing, everything, is to keep you safe.
You, Hunter, Colten, Wyatt, and this ranch.
I am standing between your family and something that could destroy all of it, and the only way I can do that is—"
"By marrying him."
She nods. Her chin trembles. “Not marry. I’m just engaged. It’s all for show, for his benefit. In return, I get to be here. I get to tell the story how we want it to be told. Just like I did for Ashley’s murder. The Greeks. Your missing brother.”
My mind rattles. Does she know I killed him? Does she know who we really are?
"Why didn’t you just tell me? You know how a phone works, Harper.”
She shakes her head. The tears are falling again, silent now.
"Because this is my mess. I made a deal, and I have to honor it. I’m here for work, Ace. That’s all this is. I came here to see Hunter because I didn’t want you to have to worry about it. I don’t want to let anyone down."
"I'm a Sterling. I can help you, doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t protect me, Harper. That was never how this works. You come to me. I fix it. Simple. You know me better than that."
"I just need you to let me do my job." Her voice drops to nothing. "Please. I am begging you to trust me. I know I don't deserve it. I know I've given you every reason not to. But I am trying to protect you, the only way I know how, and it is destroying me. Please don’t make this any worse."
I look at her. Really look. She's not performing. She's not playing games. This is a woman who has taken every ounce of love she has for me and weaponized it against herself. She's using her own heart as a shield for mine, and it's shattering her from the inside out.
And she won't let me help. Because me helping means I'm involved. Quite clearly, that ship has sailed for us.
I stand. I need to move. I need distance. I need to not be sitting next to her while she falls apart and smells like coconut and looks at me the way she used to look at me before she left.
I walk to the edge of the ridge. The valley is dark below, just shapes and shadows and the distant lights of the ranch.
"Do you know what it's like?" I ask, my back to her.
"Loving someone who won't let you? Every woman I look at, I see you.
Every bed I sleep in is empty on the wrong side.
I've got your name on my skin, Harper. A sun on my hip because you were my sunshine.
I wear your hat every day. I still smell your perfume in places you haven't been in six years. "
I turn around.
"And you're right here. Telling me you didn’t stop loving me.
And it should be the best moment of my life.
But instead, I'm watching you carry something that's breaking you in half, and you won't let me take any of the weight.
You'd rather collapse than lean on me. And that—" My voice splinters.
"That's what hurts the most. Not that you left. I can deal with that. I understand that. What I can’t take is that you still don't trust me enough to stay. "
She stands. And she looks at me with an expression that guts me. It’s not defensive, not guarded. Just tired. Bone-deep, soul-deep tired.
The Harper I’m staring at right now is a shell of the girl who drove off to LA.
"I trust you more than anyone alive," she says. "But I also love you enough to know this isn’t going to work. That your life here, this land, your bull riding, that is you, Ace. I don’t fit into that. I made my choice back then, and now I have to deal with the consequences."
She's shaking. Her whole body is shaking. I couldn’t give a shit what happened in the past. I never stopped loving her, not for a single second.
None of this is making sense.
"What aren't you telling me?" I ask.
She flinches. Hard.
"Nothing. Just let me explain the rest when Hunter’s there. Okay?"
"Harper."
She can’t look at me. She presses both hands over her face, and her shoulders cave inward, and she cries the way people cry when they've been holding it together for so long that the collapse, when it comes, is total.