Page 5 of Unleashed
I look at her, and despite everything, I almost laugh. One thing moving to a city has taught me is that life is a fucking mess.
"I have to go on a date with our boss."
Her jaw hits the floor.
“I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to you,” she whispers, glancing around to make sure no one is in earshot.
I frown. “What thing?”
Her cheeks turn red. “You know Sabrina, from accounts?”
I nod. “Yeah. The new girl? Isn’t she like nineteen?”
“Yeah. Rumor is, she went on a date with Hudson a couple of weeks ago, and the next day, she’s clearing her desk into a box in floods of tears. Gone,” she tells me, throwing her hands in the air as she reclines in her seat.
An emptiness forms in the pit of my stomach.
“I take it the date didn’t go well?”
She shrugs. “No clue. Nobody knows anything about it. Whether or not it’s even true, you know what it’s like here, gossip central.”
I rub my hand across my chest. I can’t lose this job, not before I kill every story about the Sterlings. But I won’t let that man walk all over me either.
“I’ll be fine. I can handle him,” I tell her.
“You'd better. You’re the only one I like here. If you go, I’ll leave too,” she says with a smile.
I turn back to my screen, and Ace Sterling's name is still there, waiting in the minimized tab at the bottom. Like he's always been. Waiting.
I lost everything to pursue this dream, and I can’t take that back. I can’t rewrite my decisions. I came here to investigate crime stories because I thought it was my calling. And now I’m burying stories for him that I know could take him down.
And the worst part? He'll never know.
I pull up the tip line database and start scrolling, because if I sit still for one more second, I'm going to do something stupid, like call the only number I ever memorized by heart, just to hear him breathe. To tell him happy birthday.
The same way he texts me every year for mine. But I won’t call. Because I’ve seen how successful he is. I know he loves that ranch. And I won’t let him choose me over that again.
Three hundred and sixty-five days since a man touched me.
Two thousand and thirty-seven since one made it matter.
And tomorrow night, I'm wearing a black dress for the wrong one.
CHAPTER TWO
ACE
Song- Bones For The Crows, Nickelback.
Riding a mechanical bull in a packed bar on my twenty-seventh birthday wasn't really the plan.
The plan was steaks at the ranch, and a few cold ones on the porch. But Jett got involved. And when Jett gets involved, plans don't just change, they catch fire and roll downhill into oncoming traffic.
So here I am. Shirtless and now drenched in sweat, straddling a mechanical bull in Rosie's Roadhouse while two hundred drunk idiots scream my name like I'm performing in the damn ring. The bull bucks left, hard, and my stomach lurches. Ten beers and a fuck ton of whiskey will do that to a man. Even a man who's made a career out of staying on things that don't want him there.
The buzzer sounds. Eight seconds. Done. I might throw up.
I swing my leg over and stumble off, boots hitting the floor, and the room tilts about fifteen degrees before it decides to staystill. I run my hand over my sweaty abs and blink under the neon. Someone's thrown a cowboy hat at the bull. Two girls in the corner are filming me on their phones, and the old rancher at the end of the bar is either clapping or having a cardiac event; it’s hard to tell from here when the room is mildly spinning.
