Chapter 74
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Harper
I killed a man.
I thought he was just unconscious. I thought I had minutes to figure this out, to run, to call someone. But then he let out this sound, and I just knew.
I checked his pulse. Pressed my fingers to his neck the way they teach you in first aid courses you take and never think you'll need. Nothing. No beat. No rhythm. I killed my husband.
And as part of our prenup, I still get a million-dollar house in LA that I didn't even want. I demanded it because I wanted something out of this hellish agreement. And the beach house was the first thing I could think of.
A house. For a murder.
No one will believe it was self-defense.
No one will believe he blackmailed me for months.
Forced me into a marriage. Controlled every aspect of my life.
They'll see the pregnant wife. The other man's baby.
The billionaire's son dead on his own kitchen floor with his own award embedded in his skull.
They'll see a killer trying to grab her money. I don’t want any of it.
I can't go to jail. I can't have this baby in a cell. I can't—
I stare at the phone in my hand. Ace is coming. He told me he loves me. He's getting on a jet and flying into a city he was told never to enter, for me.
I throw the blanket from the couch over Hudson's body because I can't look at the blood anymore. Can't look at the way his hand is still reaching toward me on the tile.
And then I sit on the floor. My back against the kitchen island. My hands on my stomach.
And I wait.
Wait for the man who would burn down the world for me, just like Gianna said he would.
Wait for him to walk through that door and tell me it's going to be alright, even when it isn't. Wait for the moment I have to look him in the eye and tell him the truth—all of it, every piece I've been hiding—and hope he doesn't hate me.
That somewhere in Hudson's files is our sex tape. Pictures of me he stole from my phone. That he used them to trap me. That he wanted to be the legal father of Ace's baby. That I married a monster to protect a man who didn't know he needed protecting.
I have to tell him he’s going to be a father because Hudson switched my birth control out.
The tears keep falling. I've stopped trying to wipe them. They drip off my jaw and land on my shirt, and I don't care. I just stare at the blanket on the floor and the shape underneath it and try to understand how this is my life.
I don't move. I lose track of time. The clock on the wall ticks, and the refrigerator hums, and the sun shifts across the kitchen floor, moving the shadows, and I just sit here rubbing small circles on my belly.
"It's going to be okay, baby," I whisper.
I don't know if I'm talking to the baby or to myself. Doesn't matter. Neither of us believes it.
I glance to my left. The A from my necklace is on the tile where it fell when Hudson ripped it from my neck. The chain is broken, but the little gold letter caught on a groove in the floor instead of sliding under the cabinet.
I pick it up. Hold it between my fingers. Press it against my lips.
"Daddy's coming to save us," I tell our baby.
And I sit. Minutes pass. Maybe hours. The world continues outside these walls, and I stand still. Frozen in this kitchen with a dead man under a blanket and a baby in my tummy and the wreckage of every choice I've ever made scattered on the floor around me.
All of it stems back to one decision. The night I looked at the boy I loved more than breathing and told him I didn't love him enough.
I was scared. Scared that he loved me too much. That he'd throw away his career, his family, his future to follow me to LA. I couldn't let him do that. So I became the villain. I said the words I knew would hurt enough to make him stop chasing me.
And it worked. He stayed. He rode. He became a champion.
And I became this. A woman on a kitchen floor in a city she hates, married to a man she killed, hiding a pregnancy from the only man she's ever loved.
My decision when I was twenty will always be the worst thing I've ever done.
But sitting here, with the A pressed between my fingers and Ace's voice still echoing in my head, I know one thing.
I'm done making those mistakes.
No more running. No more letting people hold power over me. No more sacrificing myself on the altar of someone else's plan.
I'm going to build a future for this baby. On a ranch in Arizona, under a sky full of stars, with the man who rides bulls and fights in bars and has never once stopped loving me, even when I gave him every reason to.
If he'll still have me after he sees what I've done.
If he doesn't hate me when he walks through that door.
I hold the little gold A against my chest and close my eyes.
And I wait in silence until time doesn’t feel like it’s passing anymore.
The front door bursts open.
"Harper!"
His voice fills the house. It fills every corner of my chest that's been hollow for weeks.
"In here," I try to say, but it comes out as nothing. It doesn't matter. He finds me anyway. He always finds me.
He rounds the corner into the kitchen and stops. He doesn't look at Hudson's body.
He looks at me.
And whatever he sees, it breaks something in him. I see it happen. The jaw that was clenched goes slack. The shoulders that were braced drop.
The man who kicked down the door, ready for war, dissolves into the boy who used to hold me on his porch and promise me the stars.
I never wanted the stars; I just wanted him. I always will.
He doesn't say a word.
He crosses the kitchen, drops to his knees in front of me, and pulls me into his arms.
I shatter.
The sobs that come out of me are inhuman. I grab fistfuls of his shirt and bury my face in his chest and scream into the fabric because I can't hold it anymore. None of it. Not the fear, not the guilt, not the grief, not the months of silence and loneliness and pretending to be someone I'm not.
He doesn't shush me. Doesn't tell me to calm down.
He just holds me.
His arms wrap around me so tight I can feel every muscle in his body. His cheek presses against the top of my head. One hand cradles the back of my neck. The other spreads across my lower back, pulling me into him, closing every gap until there isn't a millimeter of space between us.
His heartbeat hammers against my ear. Fast and strong, just like the one I heard on the ultrasound screen.
"I've got you," he murmurs against my hair. His voice is rough. "I've got you, sweetheart. I'm here. I'm right here."
I cry harder. Because he is. He's here. After everything I've done, he's on a kitchen floor in Los Angeles, holding me like I'm the most important thing in the world. Like I've always been worth the risk.
"I'm sorry," I choke out. "I'm so sorry, Ace. I—"
"Shh." He presses his lips to my forehead and holds them there. "Don't. Not right now. Right now, you just breathe. That's all you gotta do, baby. Just breathe."
So I do. I breathe. In and out. Matching the rise and fall of his chest. Letting his arms hold the weight I've been carrying alone for weeks. Letting the sound of his heartbeat replace the silence that's been eating me alive.
He rocks me. Gently. The way you rock a child. Back and forth on the kitchen floor. His hand moves to my belly, just drifting, settling there the way his hands always settle on the parts of me that need him most.
He stills.
His hand presses flat.
I feel him stop breathing.
"Harper." He chokes out.
I pull back. Look up at him through swollen eyes. His face is inches from mine. Those dark eyes with the amber flecks. That jaw. That mouth. Everything I've been missing, right here.
His hand is still there. But his fingers are trembling.
"Is there something you need to tell me?" he whispers.