Chapter 62
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Harper
Three weeks later. July Sixteenth.
"Harper, let's just go. Turn around, get an Uber, and stop this fucking circus," Emma hisses beside me in the back of the limo.
I clutch the bouquet of red roses tighter. The stems are digging into my palms, and I welcome the sting because it gives me something to focus on other than the fact that I will legally become someone else's wife.
Not just any wedding. Hudson wanted a spectacle.
A performance piece for his dying father.
Every family friend, every business associate, every name that matters in LA society, packed into a country club.
A three-tier cake I didn't choose. A guest list I've never seen.
An entire wedding designed by a man who is blackmailing me into attending my own ceremony.
All I have is Emma. My parents refused to come.
My mother cried on the phone for forty minutes and then said she couldn't watch her daughter marry a man she didn't love and pretend to be happy about it. My father just went quiet. That silence was worse than any words he could have said. Again, I had to lie to Hudson’s father and pretend it was branding season and my parents couldn’t possibly leave their ranch.
I know they're disappointed in me. I know Ace is beyond disappointed.
And I'd rather have every single one of them hate me for a fake wedding than have them see my body on a screen. Have them hear the sounds I made. Have them know that the most intimate moments of my life were stolen by a man I trusted enough to work for. And then I think about that list of other women, who will have their lives trashed because of me. I can’t live with myself knowing that.
Another hot flash crashes over me. I suck in a shaky breath and hit the button to lower the window. The LA air hits my face, and it does nothing.
"I can't, Emma," I whisper.
She's been the only thing keeping me upright these last three weeks.
Calling every morning. Sitting with me every evening.
Holding my hair back when the nausea gets bad enough to send me to the bathroom floor.
She is not okay with this wedding, and I hate that I can't tell her the real reason I'm walking into it.
"I know it's not real," she says carefully. "But it kind of feels it, doesn't it?"
I nod. It does. Sickeningly so.
"Is there something else going on, Harper?" She turns to face me. "You can tell me. I know you're torn up about Ace. And honestly, I kind of see where he's coming from. But this wedding isn't real. Right?"
"It's not. Just business."
"And you swear this will be over soon?"
"I swear."
The words taste like ash.
The driver pulls the limo up to the entrance. I swallow down the bile rising in my throat. I think it's stress and the fact that I haven't eaten a proper meal since Ace walked out of my parents' house and slammed his fists into the dashboard.
I can't eat. I can't sleep. My life has been derailed, and I can’t figure out a way to fix it yet.
I'm living in one of Hudson's spare rooms. I change in the bathroom with the lights off because I don’t trust he’s watching me. I've got my old job back, sitting at the same desk, smiling at the same people, pretending nothing has changed when everything has.
Ace ignored my text. Which I suppose is karma, because this is exactly what I did to him for six years. Silence. Distance. Letting someone who loves you wonder if you're alive or dead because it's easier than telling them the truth.
I deserve this. I did this to myself.
The driver opens my door, and the heat hits me, making my head swim.
He holds out a hand and helps me up. I smooth down the dress.
It’s simple and boring. Emma and I bought it in twenty minutes in the first shop we walked into, on Hudson's card, because I refused to spend more than twenty minutes on a dress for a wedding that is a crime scene.
Emma's in red. A bridesmaid dress she picked because I told her I didn't care. She looks beautiful. I look like a woman walking toward something she can't escape.
This is not my real wedding. I keep telling myself that. I'm in a drama class. A simulation. A really elaborate, deeply fucked-up simulation that ends with a signature and an annulment and a new life somewhere far away from everyone I've ever loved.
Once this is over, I'm leaving California. A fresh start. Maybe New York. Maybe Montana. Somewhere nobody knows my name or my face or the fact that Harper Jones sold her future.
I don't know who I want to be anymore. I just know I can't be this.
Emma laces her fingers through mine and squeezes as we walk toward the entrance.
"Last chance," she says quietly. "We can still run, Harper."
The doors open ahead of us. Through them, I can see the foyer. White marble. Flowers everywhere. People in expensive clothes turning to look.
I glance down at the engagement ring on my finger. The diamond that Ace once threaded onto the bar of his piercing because he couldn't stand the sight of another man's claim on me. The memory hits so hard I nearly buckle on the steps.
The man behind those doors is blackmailing me into a wedding.
Karma got me good.
But one day, it's going to come for him too. I just have to survive long enough to see it.
A tear slips down my cheek. I let it fall.
I think about Ace. How I wish he were the man waiting at the end of an aisle for me.
How I wish I were in Arizona, on Sterling Ranch, barefoot on the porch, wearing something simple, with my parents in the front row and Penny saddled up with flowers in her mane and Ace standing there in his hat with that grin that turns my knees to water.
That's the wedding we talked about once. Ten years ago, lying in the back of his truck, staring at the stars. I said I wanted Venice for a honeymoon, and he remembered it for a decade.
But that wedding doesn't exist anymore. And the look on his face the day he walked out of my parents' house tells me it never will.
"I can't run," I say. "I have to fight this."
Emma frowns. I don't explain. I just pull her up the stairs, and with each step, I bury another piece of myself. Numb the emotions. Plaster on a smile.
But I keep the tears. They make this believable. They sell the lie. When really, I'm crying for everything I've lost.
For the man I left behind and let believe I was choosing someone else. When the truth is, Ace Sterling is the only man I will ever want.