Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
Ace
Everything crashes over me at once.
The image of Harper in a white dress. Walking down an aisle toward a man she doesn't love.
Saying words that should be mine. A ring on her finger that isn't the one I've been carrying since I was seventeen, sketching it in the margins of notebooks, planning how I'd get down on one knee on the ranch where we grew up and ask her to be mine forever.
Instead, she will become Harper Blake.
And the dream I've held on to, the one that kept me alive through years of silence and the grief of losing my father and the loneliness of sleeping alone, becomes a joke.
A punchline to a story that was never funny.
Because she will have done all of it with another man first. The dress. The vows. The kiss. The name.
First times that were supposed to be ours.
I can't cope with that. The knowledge sits in my chest like a blade turned sideways, and every breath pushes it deeper.
I don't need her to do this for my family. We don’t need Gianna's favors or whatever deal she's convinced herself will save us. I just need her. I need her beside me so I can breathe again.
After Paulie. After Dad. After nearly losing Wyatt a few months ago. I am hanging on by a thread so thin I can feel it fraying every time the wind changes.
And every time I get close to something that feels like happiness, something rips it away. She did this to me before, just left me standing in this same town with my heart in my hands and nothing to do with it but bleed.
I can't live on a tightrope anymore, waiting for the stars to align. They aren't going to. And maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe the universe keeps pulling her away because keeping her close to me means keeping her close to the danger. The war we're about to start.
Maybe keeping her safe means keeping her away from me.
And maybe that's the thing I have to accept, even if it kills me.
"Your choice, Goldie." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "It's me or him. You walk down that aisle, there is no turning back. If you do that, I won’t let you back into my heart."
The tears cascade down her cheeks, falling freely. Her whole body is trembling. It takes every piece of strength left in me not to cross this room and kiss them away the way I always have. The way I thought I always would.
The silence hangs in the air. The longest silence of my life. Longer than eight seconds on the back of any bull. Longer than the years she was gone.
"I have to marry Hudson, Ace. That's my answer. But it doesn’t need to be the end of us."
The words hit me square in the center of my chest. A bullet I didn't dodge. The air leaves my lungs and doesn't come back. My vision blurs. My knees almost go, right there, in her childhood bedroom, standing in front of the woman I've loved since I was sixteen years old.
"That's your choice?" My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Your business deal is more important than our future?"
She shakes her head. "I told you. I'm coming back."
"No, Harper." I take a step back. "You are not coming back to me. Not this time."
Her face crumbles. I watch it happen. Watch the hope drain out of her eyes and something darker flood in.
And I keep going, because if I stop, I'll fold.
I'll take it back. I'll tell her it's okay, that I'll wait, that I'll always wait, and then I'll spend the rest of my life dying slowly in a house that smells like her coconut shampoo.
"If you can't understand how much this kills me. If you expect me to stand there while the love of my life marries another man. Kisses another man in front of a crowd of people. Lives in his house, plays pretend, while I'm just a good fuck she comes home to when it's convenient."
"That's not what you are, Ace."
"Then what am I, Harper? Because from where I'm standing, I'm the man you love when it's easy and leave when it gets hard. And I'm done being that. I'm done being something you can put down and pick back up when you decide you want it again."
She presses her hand against my chest, and I remove it. Gently. Because if her skin stays on mine for one more second, I'll break.
"No. Harper."
I step back to create a distance. Put air between us that feels like a wall.
"We tried. We had our second chance. And second chances don't come around twice."
She lets out a sound. Not a word. Something underneath words. The sound of a heart actually breaking, and I should know what it sounds like because mine is making the same noise.
"So if that's your final answer, then I'm sorry." I take a breath. The shakiest breath of my life. "I'm sorry I wasn't enough to make you stay. To make you choose me. To let me be the man who marries you."
"Please, Ace." She's sobbing now. Her whole body is folding in on itself. "Don't do this. Please let me come back to you. I promise I'll—"
I hold up my hand. She stops.
"I needed you today, Goldie. I really needed you.
Not for the championship. Not for the cameras.
I needed you because I'm grieving a man who was a father to me when mine couldn't be, and I was about to climb onto the back of a bull that could have killed me, and all I wanted was a text.
One text. To let me know you were okay."
My voice cracks. I let it.
"And where were you? Lying to your parents. Telling them you were sick. Lying to me. You couldn't even check in. Do you understand how crazy that sends me? Not knowing if you're safe? How much of my life have I built around loving you?"
I look at her. Really look at her. One last time.
"I didn't touch another woman in six years, Harper. Six goddamn years. Because you were all I could think about. Every night. Every morning. Every second in between. You were the only woman who existed in my world, and you weren't even in it."
Her hand slams over her mouth as she stumbles backward. The pain in her green eyes will haunt me forever. But we can’t keep doing this to each other. This has to end.
"I'll always love you, Harper Jones. Always. But I can't be with you. Not like this."
I walk toward the door. My legs move. My hand finds the handle.
My body does the mechanical work of leaving because my mind has shut down, and my heart has stopped contributing, and all that's left is the muscle memory of a man who knows how to walk away from things that hurt, because the Sterling brothers learned that skill before they learned anything else.
"I'm sorry," she whispers behind me.
I stop. Don't turn around. If I turn around, I'm done. I'll let her marry someone else, and I'll sit in that house, and I'll wait, and it will kill me, but I'll do it because I can't exist in a world where I'm not loving Harper Jones.
But I can't exist in a world where loving her means watching her choose someone else.
"Yeah," I say. "So am I."
I open the door and step through, closing it behind me.
The hallway is dark. The house is quiet. Her mother is standing at the bottom of the stairs with her hand over her mouth and tears on her cheeks, because she heard everything, and the look she gives me is the worst thing I've seen today.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," I say as I pass.
She doesn't try to stop me. She just watches me walk through the front door of the house where Harper grew up. Where I used to sit on that porch and plan a future with her daughter. Where I was supposed to ask her father for permission one day.
I make it to the truck. Close the door. Sit in the dark.
Then I slam my fists against the dashboard. Over and over. Until my knuckles split and blood smears across the leather, and the pain in my hands finally matches the pain in my chest.
I press my forehead against the steering wheel, and I let it come. All of it. The grief. The rage. The love that won't leave, no matter how hard I try to tear it out.
Because I know. I already know.
I'll never get over her. Not in ten years. Not in sixty. She's woven into every part of who I am, every memory, every plan, every version of the future I've ever imagined. Removing her would mean removing myself.
But I found my limit. And she crossed it.
Harper is not a deal. She's not a role to play. She's not a thing you put down and pick up when the timing is better.
She is the love of my life. And the love of my life just chose someone else.
And this time, I have to choose myself, for my own sanity.
My brothers can’t lose me. Wyatt can’t either.
I start the truck. Pull out of the driveway and don't look at the house in the mirror.
I drive home in silence. No radio. No phone. Just the dark road and the empty seat beside me and the championship buckle sitting in the cup holder, catching the moonlight.
I won the world title today.
It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Because I just lost the only thing I’ve ever wanted.
My Goldie.