Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Harper
Song- Our Funeral, Billy Lockett
I hear his truck before I hear him. Then the front door opens. It’s all playing out in slow motion. My mom's voice. Him asking where I am. Her answer, muffled.
And then his footsteps on the stairs.
I sit up on the bed. Wipe my face one final time.
Press my palms against the mattress to stop them shaking.
I've rehearsed this in my head for the last three hours, running the words on a loop, testing them, breaking them, rebuilding them, trying to find a version that doesn't destroy the only person I've ever loved.
There isn't one. So I'll use the version that keeps him alive.
I plaster on a smile. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than the phone call with Hudson. Harder than watching those images on the screen. Harder than typing, I'll do it. Because those things happened to me. This is something I'm about to do to him.
The door opens. He flicks on the light, and I flinch, my eyes stinging, and he's across the room in three strides. His hands cup my face.
He's still in his gear. Dust on his jeans. His championship buckle isn't even on him yet.
I don’t have it in me to admit the truth. I can’t say those words out loud. That private images and videos of me and him are about to be shared with millions of people on the internet if I don’t do as I’m told.
The fear. The embarrassment. It’s swallowing me whole.
I fight back the tears with everything I have.
"You did it, Acey. Congratulations," I whisper.
He doesn't smile. He studies me. Those brown eyes moving across my face, reading every crack in the mask I'm wearing, seeing the swollen lids and the blotchy skin and the way my bottom lip won't stop trembling no matter how hard I bite down on it.
He knows. He can't name it yet. But he knows.
"Are you okay, baby? Tell me what's wrong." His thumbs stroke under my eyes. Catching tears I haven't let fall yet.
I shake my head. I can't speak. If I speak right now, the truth will pour out of me, and I'll tell him everything.
The video. The photos. Hudson's voice on the phone.
The list of women's names on a black screen.
And then Ace will get in his truck and drive to LA and kill Hudson with his bare hands, and I'll lose him to a prison cell instead of a lie.
Or, he will get himself killed stepping into LA.
I’m not just responsible for myself. The other girls, too. I have to stop all of the tapes from ever seeing the light of day.
So I pull him toward me, and I kiss him.
Maybe for the last time.
I kiss him with everything I am. Everything I ever was. Everything I'll spend the rest of my life trying to get back to. I pour ten years of love into his mouth, and I pray that some part of him stores it somewhere deep enough that he'll feel it on the days when he hates me.
Because he's going to hate me.
He pulls back. Strokes his thumb under my eyes again. Looking at me the way he always looks at me, like I'm the answer to a question he's been asking his whole life.
I'm about to become the question he never recovers from.
"Ace, I need you to sit down."
My voice holds. Something passes across his face. His body stiffens, just slightly.
He sits beside me. I lace my fingers through his and hold on, because once I say what I'm about to say, he'll never let me hold his hand again.
"I need you to listen. And I need you to understand. Okay?"
He swallows. Closes his eyes. Like he's making a deal with himself to hear me out before the walls go up.
"Some complications have come up in LA. I've got another part to play, and I can't back out of the deal."
His eyes open. "What do you mean? Complications?"
"I'm going to have to go back there for a while longer."
He squeezes my hand. "Okay. We can deal with that. We've already said we'll do long distance if we have to."
I take a breath. The deepest breath of my life. And I step off the edge.
"I'm marrying Hudson, Ace. I have to. It's the only way the company gets signed over to him. That's his father's deal."
He rips his hand from mine.
The absence of his touch is instant, like a door slamming in a room that was full of warmth a second ago. He's on his feet. Pacing. His fingers running through his hair, pulling at it, his breath coming fast.
"Can't he find another woman to marry? Why does it have to be you? Why do you give a fuck about his company?"
He's trying not to raise his voice. I can hear the strain.
"Because I told him I'd help him. I got Gianna her meeting with Hunter. I've protected the ranch with everything I have. And now I have to see it through, or it all falls apart."
He shakes his head. Back and forth. Like he can physically reject the words.
"We can protect the damn ranch, Harper. We don't need Hudson.
We don't need the Italians. We don't need Gianna or anyone else.
" He throws his arms wide. "This is what we've been doing our entire lives.
They murdered Paulie. You think we're not going to explode their world for that?
We're going to take Carson from Gianna. We're going to torture him until he signs over the land.
And then we'll burn every last piece of it to the ground with every single one of those fuckers inside and stand there and watch it turn to ash. "
His voice drops.
"We don't need help. I just need you, Harper. I just need you."
My heart splits clean down the center. Two halves. One that wants to tell him everything. One that knows telling him everything will get people killed.
"Please, baby." He turns to me, his eyes are red. "Don't marry him. I can deal with most things. I've dealt with the fake engagement. The business deal. The lying. Sleeping alone while you sleep under his roof. I've dealt with all of it."
He steps closer. His hand reaches for my face and then drops, like he's not sure he's allowed to touch me anymore.
"But marrying him? For real? Taking his name.
Walking down an aisle. Standing in front of people and saying vows to a man you don't love.
Him kissing you after you say I do." His voice breaks.
"Well, I fucking don't, baby. I don't. I can't give you permission for that.
I can't sit in this house and know that you belong to someone else, even on paper, even for a day.
Because it won't feel like paper to me. It'll feel like losing you. Again. For real this time."
Tears are streaming down my face. I can't stop them. I'm not even trying anymore.
“I’m begging you, don’t do this. Don’t marry him. Please let me be the only man you walk down the aisle to.”
"I'm annulling it the second the company is his," I say. But my voice is small, a whisper in a hurricane.
He visibly flinches at my words.
"I never thought I'd have to say this, Goldie." He stops and takes a breath so deep it fills the room. "But you just found my hard limit."
The words land and nearly choke me.
"If you marry Hudson, we're over. There is no coming back to me after that."
My mouth drops open. The floor disappears. The room tilts, and I'm falling through it, through every plan I made and every lie I told and every sacrifice I thought I was making to protect him.
"Please, Ace. Don't do this."
"It's not me doing this, Harper. It's you. You're choosing."
"I don't have a choice!"
"You do. You always have a choice. And every time, you choose the thing that isn't me."
That one stops me cold. Because it sounds true. From where he's standing, it is true. He doesn't know about the video. He doesn't know about the blackmail. He doesn't know that every word coming out of my mouth is a lie designed to protect him from something worse than heartbreak.
All he sees is the woman he loves choosing a deal over a future. Again. For the second time in their lives.
And I can't tell him otherwise. Not without putting a gun in his hand and pointing it at Hudson and watching everything burn.
Because right now, Hudson has the power over me.