Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Ace
The house is too quiet.
I've been sitting on the couch for three hours. Boots still on. Hat still on. The house settling around me with those small creaks and groans that you never notice until you're alone and the silence is big enough to hear them.
Hunter came. Saw Paulie. Didn't say a word for a full five minutes.
Just stood there with his hands on his hips, staring at the body of a man who'd been part of this family since before any of us understood what family meant.
Then he made his calls. Gave his orders.
Had Paulie brought back to the ranch with more care and dignity than most people get in death.
Colten handled the logistics. Xander secured the east fence. Jett drove into town to talk to the sheriff, which is a formality more than anything, because we both know the law isn't going to solve this. We are.
And we know exactly where we’re heading… to end this war with the Greeks.
And I came home. Grabbed a pack of beers and sat down. Haven't moved since.
My phone is in my hand. Harper's location is a blue dot crawling along the interstate, getting closer. I've been watching it the way you watch a candle when the power's out. Not because it does anything. Because the light of it is the only thing keeping the dark from swallowing you whole.
Paulie is dead. The man who taught me how to check a fence line.
Who showed me how to clean a rifle when I was ten, and my hands were too small to hold it properly.
Who drove me to my first rodeo because Dad was sick, and Paulie didn't even think about it.
Just put me in the truck and drove four hours and sat in the stands with a coffee and watched me ride a sheep in the junior division and told me afterward, completely straight-faced, that it was the finest piece of riding he'd ever seen.
I believed him. I was six. I believed everything Paulie said.
He used to eat lunch on the east fence. Alone.
Every day. Said he liked the quiet. Said the view reminded him that the world was bigger than whatever problem was sitting on your chest. I used to think he was being philosophical.
Now I think he just needed a place where nobody asked him for anything.
Where he could sit and eat his sandwich and watch the light change and be still for twenty minutes before the ranch needed him again.
He never got married. Never had kids. When I asked him about it once, years ago, he just shrugged and said the ranch was enough.
I should have told him he was enough, too. I should have said it more than I did.
My phone buzzes. Harper.
Goldie: ten minutes out. See you soon, baby.
I type back with a thumb that doesn't feel connected to my hand.
ME: See you soon, pretty girl.
I set the phone down. Lean my head back against the couch and stare at the ceiling.
The minutes stretch, and I just don’t move. I’m not sure what I even feel right now. Sadness? Emptiness? Every time I grieve, the weight of others I’ve lost weighs even heavier on me.
Then I hear her car.
The engine. The tires on the gravel. The crunch of her pulling in beside my truck, and the slam of the door before the engine's even fully off.
Footsteps on the porch. Running.
The front door opens, and Harper is standing in my living room, purse dropped on the floor, keys still in her hand, hair a mess from driving with the windows down, and she's looking at me with an expression that cracks something open in my chest that I've been holding shut all day.
“Hi, Acey,” she whispers.
She crosses the room, and I'm on my feet before I know I'm standing, and she crashes into me so hard it knocks us both back a step.
Her arms go around my neck. Her face buries into my chest. She holds on with everything she has, and the force of it, the way her whole body presses into mine, and her hands grip the back of my shirt.
I wrap my arms around her. Pull her in. Tighter than I should. Tight enough that she probably can't breathe properly, but she doesn't pull back. She just sinks deeper.
"I'm here," she whispers. "I'm right here, Ace."
Something breaks.
My face drops into her hair, and I breathe her in, and my shoulders shake once. A sound comes out of me that I've never made before, and she doesn't flinch. She holds tighter.
"I've got you," she says. "I've got you, baby. Let go. I'm not going anywhere."
So I do. I let go.
Not all of it. Not the rage. Not the cold, sharp need to find whoever did this and put them in the ground.
That stays locked in the part of me that will deal with it when the time comes.
But the grief. The sadness of losing someone who shaped me into the man I am.
Knowing that the east fence will be empty tomorrow morning and every morning after.
That I give to her. All of it. Because she's the only person in the world I trust to hold it without breaking.
We stand in my living room for a long time. Her arms around me. My face in her hair. The clock ticking in the hallway.
Harper doesn't try to fix it. She doesn't tell me it'll be okay. She doesn't ask questions or offer solutions or say any of the things people say when they don't know what else to do. She just holds me.
After a while, she pulls back just enough to take my face in her hands. Wipes the wet from under my eyes with her thumbs. She studies me with a look so tender it almost starts the whole thing over again.
"When did you last eat?" she asks.
I don't remember, so I don’t answer.
"That's what I thought. Sit down."
She presses a kiss to my forehead. Then she lets go and walks into my kitchen and starts opening cupboards.
I sit back down. Listening to Harper move through my kitchen. The fridge opening. A cupboard closing. The sound of her pulling the cast-iron skillet from the rack where it hangs, because she knows this kitchen now. She knows where everything lives.
The smell hits me before I see it. Butter in a hot pan. Garlic. Rosemary. The sear of a steak hitting cast iron, that hiss and spit that fills a kitchen.
She's cooking my favorite meal.
She comes back thirty minutes later, carrying a plate that nearly makes me lose it all over again.
Ribeye, seared hard on the outside, pink and bloody in the middle.
Creamed mashed potatoes, loaded with butter and cracked pepper.
Roasted asparagus with garlic. A pile of caramelized onions on top of the steak that she knows I'd eat straight from the pan if she let me.
She sets it on the coffee table with a glass of water and a cold beer. Then she sits beside me, tucks her legs under her, and puts her head on my shoulder.
"Eat," she says. "Then tell me about him."
I look at the plate. At the steak cooked exactly how I'd cook it. At the care in every detail. She walked into a kitchen she's only cooked in a handful of times, and made this from memory. Because she knows me. Because food is how you tell someone you love them when words aren't big enough.
So I eat. And then I tell her about Paulie.
The bloody nose at twelve. The four-hour drive to the rodeo. The way he ate lunch on the east fence every single day. The way he cleaned his scope. The way he called every horse "darlin'" regardless of gender and never once explained why.
She listens to every word, laughs at the parts that are funny, and goes quiet at the parts that aren't. Her hand rests on my chest the whole time, right over my heart, feeling it beat, reminding us both that it's still going.
When I'm done, she leans up and presses her lips to my jaw.
"He sounds like he was the best kind of man," she says.
"He was."
"Then we honor that. Whatever comes next, however we handle this, we do it in a way that makes him proud."
I turn my head and look at her.
"I love you, Harper."
"I love you, Ace. I never stopped and never will."
She takes my hand and threads her fingers through mine. She squeezes once.
I squeeze back.
And for the first time all day, the house doesn't feel quiet anymore. It feels full. It feels the way it's supposed to.
I'm choosing her. Every single day. For as long as I've got.
Whatever comes next, we face it together.