Page 59 of Unleashed
"You're the journalist who's been investigating us. Right?"
"Sort of. Ish. More like burying your secrets, Ace." She says it with a fire that sparks something in me.
I nod. And I owe her for that. Even though I have no clue what she’s really been burying. Or how or why. I guess Hunter can fill me in on that.
"Without telling me," I say.
"You weren't part of the plan, Ace. The plan was to keep you all out of trouble, and that was it."
I laugh. It comes out bitter, and I don't bother stopping. "No. I never am, am I, Harper? Not when you left. Not when you came back in secret. Not when you let my cousin throw you in a barn rather than pick up the damn phone and call me."
Her eyes flash. There she is. That fire I've been missing.
"I didn't let him do anything. I agreed to the terms because Hunter?—"
"Hunter isn't the Sterling you should've called, Harper. You know I’m the one man you can call no matter fucking what. Heartbroken or not. I’d walk through fire to help you. I still would die for you. Even after all this time. But you didn’t call. You don’t even want my help."
Fuck. I run my hand over my face and take a breath, trying to calm myself.
That lands. I see it hit. She takes a breath, holds it, and I watch her rebuild her composure in real time. She's gotten better at that. At locking things down, at hiding what she feels.The Harper I knew couldn't hide anything. Her face was an open book, and every page was about us.
This Harper has walls. I wonder who taught her that. I wonder if it was me.
"You're right," she says quietly. "But I had my reasons."
"You always do."
We stare at each other. The barn is quiet. Just the sound of a horse shifting in its stall, the creak of the timber above us, and the blood roaring in my ears.
She's so fucking beautiful it makes me angry. That's the part nobody tells you about heartbreak. You expect the pain, the missing, the emptiness. You don't expect to be furious that she's still the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen and that nothing has come close. Not even in the same goddamn league.
Her hair's longer. Blonder. Sun-bleached in a way that tells me LA has been good to her in at least one way. The freckles across her nose are still there. I used to kiss every one of them, and she'd squirm and laugh and shove my face away and then pull it right back.
The nose ring. Still there. My chest does something stupid when I look at it.
"You need to come with me," I tell her. "Hunter wants to see you. At the ranch."
"Sterling Ranch?"
I can’t help but chuckle. "That's the one."
She shakes her head. "I told Hunter I wouldn't go to the ranch. That was the agreement."
"Well, the agreement changed when my cousin showed up in a flamingo shirt and tied you to a chair, Harper. Plans are fluid."
"I'm not going to your ranch, Ace."
"Why not?"
She doesn't answer. But I know why. The same reason I can't stop looking at her mouth. The same reason my hands areshaking in my pockets. The same reason neither of us has taken a single step back, even though we're standing close enough that I can see the gold flecks in her green eyes.
Because Sterling Ranch is where we happened. Every first. Every last. Every moment in between that made us who we are. And walking back onto that land together is either going to heal us or destroy us, and she's not ready to find out which one.
Neither am I. But I don't have a choice.
"Get in my truck, Harper," I say, my voice low. Just how she always liked it.
"No."
