Chapter 76
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Harper
Song- FINE PLACE TO DIE, Alex Warren
"What about..." He pauses, tapping the steering wheel. "Ace Junior?"
I cackle. "No. What makes you so sure it's a boy?"
He shrugs.
"What if I told you I secretly would love to be a girl dad?"
I rest my hand on his thigh. We're nearing the border of Arizona. One more hour until home soil.
I glance down at the A in my hands. "I was thinking, April."
He smiles. "Yeah, I think I like that too, April. Are we going to find out?"
"I'm not sure I can wait."
"Phew. I was hopin' you'd say that."
And then he grins, and every worry I have melts away. He's happy. Even with my husband's dead body in the trunk. Even with everything behind us and everything ahead. He's happy because I'm beside him, and that's always been enough for Ace Sterling.
I look down at the rings on my left hand. The blood dried in the setting of the diamond. Hudson's blood. Hudson's rings. Hudson's life, stamped onto my finger.
I pull them off. Open the window. And toss them into the desert.
"Did that feel freeing?" He squeezes my thigh.
"Very."
The weight of the world, gone in a glint of metal and dust.
"Ace... I need to explain to you why I married him. No more lies. No more secrets. The past behind us."
He nods. "I'm listening."
There it is. That ache in my stomach. That embarrassment coiled so deep it's fused to my bones.
"He was blackmailing me, Ace. He has a website. Sex tapes of women." I pause, reading his reaction.
His jaw goes tight.
"You and him?" He almost forces himself to say.
"God, no."
He blows out a breath.
"He hacked my phone, Ace. He had the FaceTime of us. That night I stayed at his house. All the pictures I'd sent you. A whole collection of me and you."
His hands squeeze the wheel so hard his arms shake.
"He threatened to leak it to everyone I know. And everything he had on your family. All I had to do was marry him. Once the company's papers were signed, I was free to go. But he kept moving the date." I stop. Swallow. "And then he found out I was pregnant."
I think about his smug face when I found him in the lobby after the scan. The way he wanted to pretend to be the father. How happy his parents were.
"He wanted to adopt our baby and become the father. That's when I snapped, Ace. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't let him do this to our baby. To you. He grabbed me, so I hit him with that damn award." My voice cracks. "I didn't want to kill him. I'm not that person."
Ace's hand finds my thigh and squeezes.
"I know, baby. I know. But even if you did want to kill him—even if you stabbed him through the heart—it wouldn't change how I see you."
I wipe my tears.
"Does it change how you see me? Knowing I do this? I killed a man yesterday who tried to stab me in an alley."
My mouth drops open. "What?! Someone tried to stab you? Ace!"
He chuckles. "He didn't even get fuckin' close, baby."
"You're crazy, Ace. You drove into LA knowing Gianna's family had said they'd kill you, and you still did that for me."
"I'd walk through flames for you, Harper. There isn't a line I wouldn't cross to save you."
I smile. "No. Knowing what you do doesn't change how I feel about you, Ace."
"Good girl," he murmurs.
"I'll have Romeo clear out everything of Hudson's, all the stuff he held over you. Those videos won't exist in a few days. Okay?"
"Thank you," I whisper.
"Why didn't you tell me?" He keeps his eyes on the road.
I swallow. "I was embarrassed, Ace. It was a horror film playing out, and I panicked. He used my fears against me, and I didn't fight it. I wanted to protect you. My family. Our future kids from ever seeing their mom like that. And I couldn't bring myself to admit how stupid I was."
"You aren't stupid, Harper. Don't say that."
"I am. I keep making stupid decisions. Leaving you the first time. Letting Hudson blackmail me. Walking down the aisle."
"He blackmailed you, Harper. That isn't stupid. That is you protecting people you love."
I sigh. "I'm not the only woman on his website, Ace. There are loads of them."
"We'll shut the whole thing down, baby. I promise. Easy work for our guys."
My lip trembles. Easy as that. Just shut it down.
"So everything I did was useless?"
He shakes his head. "No, baby. You didn't know. The threat was real, and you did what you thought was best. It's done. He's dead, which is lucky for him because I would have skinned that motherfucker alive for this."
I take his hand and rest it on my stomach. "Stop swearing in front of our unborn baby."
He snaps his lips shut. "Shit. My bad."
My eyes go wide. "Ace Trent Sterling."
He bites his lip, looking at me with all the love he has in his eyes. "I love it when you call me by my government name," he mutters, taking my hand and placing it over him. Letting me feel him hardening.
"You know... we could pull over?" I bat my lashes.
He lets out a groan. "When we hit Arizona, yes. Fuck yes. So much yes."
Everything is starting to get prettier the closer we get to home. The desert stretches out on either side, red and gold in the late light. Cars pass on the other side of the road every now and then, but it's quiet. Just us and the road and the hum of the engine and the future unfolding ahead of us.
I settle back in my seat. Rest my head against the window. His hand stays on my thigh. My hand stays on the little gold A.
For the first time in months, I can breathe.
We're going home.
"I was thinking," Ace says, adjusting his hat. "If it's a girl and we name her April, her initials would be A.S. Same as mine."
I smile. "April Sterling."
"Sounds like a rodeo queen."
"Sounds like our daughter."
He glances at me. Those dark eyes. That grin. The man I fell in love with all those years ago is still here beside me.
“I'm going to be insufferable, Harper. Just want to prepare you. I'm going to be one of those dads. Matching outfits. Little cowboy boots. Teaching her to ride before she can walk."
"I'd expect nothing less."
"She's never dating, though. Not until she's forty."
"Ace."
"Thirty-five. Final offer."
I laugh, and it fills the car, and it's the best sound in the world because it's us. Just us. No Hudson. No Gianna. No secrets between us. Just a cowboy and a journalist and a baby who doesn't know yet how loved they already are.
The road bends ahead. A long, sweeping curve through a canyon cut where the rock walls rise on either side, and the asphalt narrows to two lanes. Ace takes it easy, one hand on the wheel, the other still on my leg.
I see the headlights first.
Coming around the bend. On our side of the road.
"Ace—"
He sees them the same second I do. High beams. Blinding. A dark SUV, crossing the center line, accelerating, eating up the distance between us at a speed that isn't accidental.
"Hold on!" Ace yanks the wheel.
Time fractures.
The SUV clips the front driver's side. The impact is a sound I'll hear for the rest of my life.
The metal screaming against metal, glass exploding inward, the steering wheel ripping from Ace's hands.
My seatbelt locks across my chest, and the force slams me sideways. My head cracks against the window.
The car lifts.
We're airborne. There’s a sickening weightlessness of a vehicle leaving the ground.
Then we flip.
The roof hits first. The crunch of metal. The shower of glass. My body slams against the seatbelt and then the door and then the roof, and I'm screaming, but I can't hear anything except the grinding of steel and the explosion of the airbags and Ace's voice shouting my name.
"HARPER!"
We roll. Once. Twice. The world spins. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground. Everything that was inside the car becomes a projectile.
"HARPER!"
His hand reaches for me. I feel his fingers graze mine.
Then we hit something. Something solid and final that stops the rolling with a jolt so violent my teeth crack together and every thought in my head goes white.
Silence.
Not real silence. The ringing kind. I'm upside down. Hanging from my seatbelt. Blood in my hair. Glass in my lap. The car is crumpled around us, the roof caved in, the windshield gone.
I try to turn my head. Try to find him. Try to say his name.
"Ace..."
Nothing comes out.
My hand reaches across the wreckage. Finds his arm. His skin. "Ace..."
The darkness comes in from the edges, a curtain closing around me. My fingers tighten on his arm, but they're getting weaker. Everything is getting weaker. The ringing in my ears is fading to something softer.
My other hand finds my belly.
Please. Please be okay. Please.
The last thing I see before the black takes me is his hand, hanging limp beside mine. His knuckles split. His hat is gone.
And then nothing.