20. Olivia
OLIVIA
“The investor’s offer puts everything at risk—I may lose both my dream and Ace.” I glance at the steam curling from my coffee.
Serena watches me, her calm eyes holding a patience I envy. She’s always been like this, steadfast and sure, a light in the uncertain darkness I can’t quite banish. “You need to tell him. Don’t let fear decide for you.”
I shake my head, the doubt as thick and bitter as the coffee cooling between us. “It’s not just about fear. It’s about everything I’ve worked for.” My words tangle, tripping over ambition and affection, each chasing the other in an exhausting loop.
“You won’t lose what matters most,” Serena insists, leaning forward, her hand reaching across the table, not touching, but close enough to offer a lifeline. “But if you don’t talk to him, you might.”
I let her words hang there, let them sink into the quiet. The brochures scattered on the table blur together, promises of success and security that now feel like threats. “He thinks I’m choosing the ranch over him,” I say, a whisper of desperation, a plea for understanding. “Maybe he’s right.”
“He’s not,” Serena counters. “You have to trust that he loves you enough to understand.”
Her certainty is disarming, as steady as the beat of my own heart. I want to believe her, want to believe that love isn’t just another risk. “What if it’s not enough?” I ask, the question hanging like a storm cloud ready to burst.
Serena smiles, that gentle, knowing smile that sees through to the core of things. “What if it is?” she replies, tapping her fingers lightly on the table to punctuate her point. Her optimism should annoy me, but it doesn’t. It never does.
The weight of decisions pressing down, relentless and real. “I’m scared, Serena. Scared that I’ll lose him, lose everything.”
“We all are,” she admits, and there’s something freeing in her words, in the shared fear. “But you have to try. You have to be honest with him—and yourself.”
Her encouragement is relentless, as relentless as the dreams I’ve chased, as relentless as the love I pretend isn’t my greatest ambition.
“You think I’m doing this all wrong,” I say, trying to find lightness, trying to find a way back to myself.
“I think you’re doing it all right,” Serena assures, reaching for her cup. “You just need to remember why you’re doing it. We’re all behind you.”
I meet her gaze, finally letting the warmth of it thaw the parts of me frozen with doubt. “Even Ace?” I ask, the question more a statement, more a dare to the universe that I will make this work.
“Especially Ace.”
The noise of the café rises around us. I feel it then, the lift in my heart, the delicate, daring belief that I can have it all, that I won’t have to choose.
“I’m going to find him.” I pick up my things and head to my truck, dialing Ace’s phone, but get no answer so I head toward Gavin’s.
The route to Gavin’s Ranch is muscle memory, a path I could drive with my eyes closed, though I never do.
The old truck handles like the veteran it is, rough and rattling but somehow holding together, a metaphor I’d laugh at if the stakes weren’t so high.
It’s all I have to get me to him. He is what I want.
That I am the only one holding myself back from him.
I catch sight of the ranch and press harder, faster, as though I can speed through the years we’ve wasted.
I pull up just shy of the house, barely registering the crew gathered nearby, their faces serious.
My foot hits the ground before the dust can settle.
The ranch hand steps toward me, face shaded by the brim of his sweat-stained hat.
“Olivia,” he calls out, voice gravelly and urgent. “Ace had himself an accident.”
The world pauses, freezes, and then slams back into motion with the force of his words. “What happened?”
“Fell off the horse, out by the corral,” he says, wiping sweat from his brow. “Doc’s with him now.”
I see their concerned looks, feel their whispers more than I hear them, but nothing registers except the direction he points and the thunder of my pulse.
My feet fly, my thoughts a jumbled mess of panic and want and love.
I push past the crew, past the calm they expect me to hold, out to where this is no longer just a test of my resolve but a test of my heart.
I step inside and stop. Breath suspended.
He’s here. Bruised, silent, and so terribly still.
The sight of him is a hard punch to the gut.
“Ace.” Bandages trail up his arm. He’s always been the picture of strength, sculpted muscles, hard hands—untouchable.
Now, he looks breakable, a porcelain version of the Cowboy I’ve been chasing.
“You’re a damn fool, Ace Montgomery.” His eyes flutter open. My heart collapses, falters, then finds a rhythm in the faint upturn of his lips. It is a small and delicate smile, and it breaks me.
His hand brushes my hair, shaky but trying to be strong. I sit up, wipe my eyes, force myself to be steady. “I can’t lose you.”
He squeezes my fingers. “I’m right here.”
“I was this close to signing. The investor.” He knows what it means. Knows how hard I’ve fought to build something on my own.
“You gonna do it?”
I lean in close, close enough to see the hurt that swims beneath his words. “I turned him down.” His eyebrows raise in surprise, almost enough to make me laugh. Almost. “None of it means anything. Not if I lose you.”
He blinks, swallows, and his body shifts beneath the sheets.
“Olivia, I—” He stops, hesitates, like the truth is a word he can’t quite pronounce.
“It scares me. Jumping into this with you, but I don’t want to lose you.
I spent too many years fighting what my heart was trying to tell me. I’m done being like my father.”
I sit beside him, afraid to touch, afraid not to.
My heart does a strange and clumsy dance in my chest, trying to keep up with the hope I have kept hidden for so long.
Ace watches me, sees right through me, sees the old fears wrapped up in new dreams. The Cowboy is fragile.
He is breakable, and I have never seen him stronger.
“We can build something real. You and me and the life we have always wanted,” he says it with the confidence of someone who has known the hardest truths, who has looked fear in the eyes and walked away unscathed.
He has been waiting a long time to say those words. I have been waiting a long time to hear them. He squeezes my fingers, tender and deliberate and right. I don’t let go. I hold on, even when it hurts.
“I’m all in, Ace.”