Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Harper
The last few days have been a whirlwind of grief and chaos. I've never seen the Sterling brothers so angry. All of them. I know it's bad because Hunter has agreed to meet with Gianna.
She's got eyes on Carson and is sending her team to extract him today.
She still doesn't know the Sterlings have her brother's killer, and I'm not saying a word.
The deal is simple: if she can provide proof she has Carson, Hunter will allow her onto Sterling land with him and sit and talk to her.
One hour. He'll hear her case and decide.
But today is Ace's rodeo. The one that matters. The one that could give him back the world title or put him right in line for it. He and Jett headed out early, it’s about an hour's drive.
So I've come to my parents' house to pack up the last of the stuff I left here when I moved to LA.
The final pieces of a life I'm closing the door on.
My parents are happy I'm back with Ace. I had no doubt about that.
They've always loved him. My dad shook his hand on the porch yesterday and said, "Welcome back, son," like the last few years were a pause, not a break.
And Ace looked at my dad with something in his eyes that almost made me cry right there on the steps.
My phone pings on the bed. I grab it and see the notification that Ace has posted. I open it and bite my lip.
My man looks incredible. Even fully dressed. T-shirt on, hat low, standing by the chutes with that expression that melts my panties. The caption just says "Title day." No thirst trap. No shirtless shot. Just him, doing what he was born to do.
Me: My man is looking like a world champion right there. Love you, see you soon.
His reply comes almost instantly.
Acey: I need my good luck charm here. Love you always.
I'm still grinning at my phone like a teenage girl when my mom opens the bedroom door. I look up from the mess on the floor I'm sitting in.
"Hi, Mom."
She closes the door. There's something in her hands, held between her fingers.
"Look what I found," she says, walking over.
She holds up a gold chain with a sparkling letter A.
My heart stops.
"Oh my God!" I jump to my feet. "You found it!"
"I didn't find it." She presses it into my palm and curls my fingers around it. "I just had it someplace safe. Until you found your way back."
I stare at her. Tears fill my eyes so fast I can barely see.
"Why didn't you tell me? That LA was an awful plan? That Ace was it for me? Because you knew, didn't you?"
Dad was the one who was eager for me to see the world, my mom wasn’t. She strokes the hair from my face the way she's done since I was five years old and crying over something I can't remember.
"Harper, baby. You were twenty years old. It wasn't my place, even as your mom, to tell you how to live your life. Sometimes you have to make the mistakes. You have to walk the wrong path to learn where the right one is."
I sniffle. Turn the necklace over in my palm. The gold is warm from her hand, and the little A catches the light.
"I bought this when I was seventeen. Because I couldn't get a tattoo of his name."
She laughs. "I still wouldn't recommend that, Harper."
"I'm an adult, remember? Bad decisions and all that."
She stops and studies me the way only mothers can. That look that peels back every layer and sees the girl underneath the woman.
"What?" I ask.
"I feel like I've got my baby back." Her voice wavers. "I've been worried sick about you. Every time you called, I knew. I just knew you weren't yourself in LA."
I swallow the lump in my throat. "I was never going to be happy away from New Falls. Away from Ace."
"I know, sweetheart. I feel the same way about your father."
I clasp the chain around my neck. The A sits right below my collarbone. Right where it belongs.
My phone rings on the floor. I frown, glancing down.
Hudson.
The name on the screen turns my stomach cold in a way I can't explain.
"I need to get this," I say. "I'll meet you downstairs, then I can drive us to Ace's rodeo."
Mom nods. "Okay, honey."
As soon as she's gone, I pick up the phone and answer, but I can’t bring myself to speak.
"Ah, Harper." Hudson's voice is smooth.
My hand tightens around the phone.
"Everything okay?" I ask.
He clears his throat. "It will be. Look, there's been a change of plans."
I sit on the edge of the bed. My fingers find the A at my throat without thinking.
"Change of plans, how?"
"We're getting married on July Sixteenth."
My heart hammers so hard I feel it in my teeth. "No, Hudson. We are not. We talked about this. It's over."
There's a pause. Long enough that I can hear him breathing.
"I really didn't want to do this to you, Harper. But you've given me no choice."
The temperature in the room drops.
"My father will not sign over the company until he sees me get married. After the wedding, LA Press is mine. But I need a bride. And not just anyone." His voice hardens. "My bride. You."
I take a shaky breath. "Hudson, are you insane? You can't force someone to marry you. Trust me, you really don't want to push this."
If I tell Ace what he's doing, Ace will kill him. That's not a figure of speech. That is a factual statement about what will happen if these words reach Sterling Ranch.
Hudson laughs. "You're about to receive an email from a secure sender.
Open the link. Have a look. Then call me back.
" He pauses. "Because if you say no, if you refuse to marry me, I will publish that link.
You might have been running investigations, Harper, but so have I.
I have enough to ruin your boyfriend. His family.
Their entire operation. And I've got contacts who I can pay that won't just burn down Sterling Ranch.
They'll kill them. All of them. Wyatt included. "
The room tilts.
"Open the link," he says. "Call me back in five minutes."
He cuts the call.
My phone screen goes dark. I stare at it. My reflection stares back. A woman sitting on a childhood bed with a gold necklace around her neck and her hands shaking so badly she can barely hold the device.
The email arrives. I open it. A link. An encrypted passcode underneath. My fingers are trembling so violently that it takes me three attempts to type in the password.
The page loads. Black background. A list of women's names.
Abigail. Chloe. Sabrina.
I stop scrolling. Sabrina. That's the girl from accounts. The one who dated Hudson and then left crying. I keep scrolling. My throat is closing. My vision is narrowing to the screen in my hands and nothing else.
At the bottom. My name.
Harper Jones.
I tap it.
The headline loads first: "Cheating fiancée and professional bull rider, Ace Sterling, get steamy on a video call."
Photographs. Photographs of me. Screenshots taken from my phone. Images I sent to Ace and only Ace. Private. Intimate. My body, my face, my vulnerability captured in moments I shared with the man I love and no one else. Moments that were sacred. Moments that were ours.
They're all here. Organized. Timestamped. Annotated.
I scroll further. A video. The thumbnail is a still from the FaceTime call.
The night I was at Hudson's house. The night of the dinner with his parents, when I locked the bedroom door and called Ace, and let him see every part of me because I trusted that the distance between us was the only distance that existed. That no one else was watching.
The same day that Hudson borrowed my phone to print the documents for Gianna. That asshole.
I press play.
My own voice fills the room. My moans. Ace's voice coming through the speakers.
My mother is downstairs making coffee, and my father is reading the paper, and neither of them knows that their daughter's most intimate moments have been recorded and weaponized by a man she trusted enough to work for.
I throw the phone on the bed and run to the bathroom.
I barely make it to the toilet before my stomach empties. My knees hit the tile, and I'm retching, gripping the porcelain, sweat dripping down my forehead, and tears streaming down my cheeks, and the sound of the video still playing in the other room because I didn't pause it before I ran.
I can hear myself. I can hear Ace.
I throw up again. And again. Until there's nothing left and I'm just heaving over an empty stomach with my whole body shaking.
I press my forehead against the cold tile floor. Try to breathe. The air won't go in. It hits my throat and stops, trapped by the tightness in my chest, and I'm gasping, pulling at nothing, drowning in a room full of oxygen.
He was watching. The whole time. He was watching. He knows about Ace. He’s seen our conversations, probably heard them too.
I think of the other women. Abigail. Chloe. Sabrina. How many of them had no choice but to say yes?
Or did they say no? Are their videos live?
I crawl back to the bedroom on my hands and knees. Stop the video. Stop the noise. The screen is smeared with my fingerprints, and I can barely see it through the blur of tears and nausea.
A message.
Hudson: I'll send this to everyone you love.
Every person you've ever known. Every contact in your phone, every follower on your social media, every media outlet that covers your boyfriend's sport.
I will make this public. Right now it's secure. No one can view it until I choose to make it visible. Are you prepared to do this to yourself? To your family? To Ace? And the other girls? I’ll release theirs too. It will be all your fault.
I press my hand over my mouth to stop the sound that's coming out of me.
Hudson: Marry me, and I can make this go away. I won't release anything about him or his family's dealings. They will be safe. Their operation stays buried. These are the new terms of our deal. If you reject this, I will destroy everything you love, Harper. And I'll start with the video.
I pull my knees to my chest and shove my face against my thighs and try to silence the sobs ripping through me. My whole body convulses with it. The shame. The violation. The image of my parents seeing that video.
Of Ace seeing it. Knowing he’s on there too. It’s not just me.
Ace. He’s about to ride for a world title, not knowing that private moments between us have been captured and cataloged and are sitting on a server controlled by a man who will burn it all down if I don't walk into a church in four weeks.
The thought of telling Ace what I’ve done, what my decisions have done for us. He’ll lose respect. Everyone who watches him ride, who loves him, will know me. Will have seen things they shouldn’t.
If I say no, the video goes public. My parents see it. Ace's sponsors see it. The world sees the most intimate, vulnerable moments of my life turned into ammunition.
If I say no, Hudson will release whatever he’s learned from hacking me. It risks the Sterlings’ lives. I can’t risk hurting all those other women.
If I say yes, it all goes away. Hudson gets his company. His parents get their wedding. The video stays buried. The Sterlings stay safe. Ace stays free.
And I lose everything.
I look at the phone in my hands. At Hudson's message. At the little A around my neck, sitting against my chest like a heartbeat.
I think about Ace. About the way he looked at me this morning in the kitchen.
The way he tucked my hair behind my ear and said go pack, I'll see you at the arena, you better be screaming my name.
The way he grinned. The way he kissed me.
The way he has no idea that the woman he loves is sitting on her childhood bedroom floor, destroyed, holding a phone that contains the end of everything they've built.
I can't let him find out. Not today. Not before the biggest ride of his life. Not ever, if I can help it.
Because Ace would burn the world down for me. And I can't let him. Not when the world burning means losing his family, his freedom, his nephew, everything that makes him who he is.
So I'll burn instead.
I wipe my face. Stand up. Walk to the mirror. I look wrecked. Puffy eyes, blotchy skin, mascara down my cheeks. I run the tap. Splash cold water on my face. Again. Again. Until the redness fades enough to pass as allergies or tiredness or anything other than what it actually is.
I pick up the phone. Open the message thread.
My fingers hover over the keyboard for a long time.
Then I type three words.
Me: I'll do it.
I send it. Lock the phone. Press it face down on the bed.
Then I unclasp the gold chain from my neck. Hold the little A in my palm. Close my fingers around it until the edges bite into my skin.
I put it in the drawer beside my childhood bed and close it.
My phone is ringing, piercing into my skull. Over and over. Texts. Calls. I can’t move. I can’t physically open my eyes. I can’t stop crying.