CHAPTER ONE
Harper
Song- Dry Spell, Kacey Musgraves
Three hundred and sixty-five days.
That's how long it's been since a man put his hands on me. One full rotation around the sun since I let some guy from a bar fumble around on top of me for seven disappointing minutes while we both pretended the tequila wasn't doing all the heavy lifting.
I faked it. He bought it.
Before he'd even caught his breath, I got dressed, ordered an Uber, and decided right there in the back of a Prius that I was done. Done trying to find something that even remotely resembled what I used to have.
But that isn't even the pathetic part.
Two thousand and thirty-seven days.
That's how long it's been since a man gave me an orgasm I didn't have to manufacture myself.
Six years of handling my own business, because apparently no one in this city of four million people can figure out what one cowboy from New Falls, Arizona, knew how to do when he was twenty years old.
And right now, at eight forty-seven on a Friday morning, that cowboy's name is staring back at me from my computer screen.
Ace Sterling.
My cursor blinks against his name in the case file. I’m investigating my ex-boyfriend and his family for links to organized crime, and today, of all days, is his birthday.
The guy I fell in love with at fifteen, when I was stupid enough to think love was simple. The man who loved me so completely, so recklessly, that he would've burned his entire future to the ground just to follow me to LA.
I couldn't let him do that, so I became the villain in our story instead. I broke his heart so clean he'd have no choice but to stay, to climb onto the back of a bull the way he was born to, to become the champion I always knew he'd be.
I did that.
And if I close my eyes and think hard enough, I can still feel him. The way his calloused hands used to grip my neck like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. I can hear him breathing my name against my cheek.
Goldie.
My cheeks catch fire. I press my palms flat against them, willing the heat away, and blink until the sting behind my eyes retreats.
That was a long time ago. A different Harper. A different life. Maybe the last time I was truly happy was on Sterling Ranch in the arms of my crazy bull-riding ex.
I ran here to chase stories. To find a whole new world outside of the small town gossip. I thought back then, I could have it all.The career and the man. Ace had to stay back in New Falls; it was where his family was. Where his own career was taking off.
And it turns out, long distance couldn’t work for us. We tried. And every time we had to leave each other, a part of him died. I saw it happen. When he offered to give up everything to move with me, I bolted. I couldn’t let him give up his own happiness for me to chase this job. A job that six years later doesn’t bring me the joy I thought it would.
Because nothing except Ace can bring me that happiness in life. And now I’m too damn embarrassed to admit I fucked up to even face him.
Now, his older brother's baby mama is dead. I stumbled onto the Sterling’s name on a tipline a few weeks back, and I took the story. I had to be the only person with eyes on that information to report it in the way it’s meant to. To protect that family.
The case file in front of me has Hunter Sterling's name circled in red as the primary suspect. He’s cleared now, but only barely. And the real story? The one any decent journalist would kill to crack open? It reeks of something deeper. It’s the kind of story that builds careers and wins awards.
The kind of story I've been burying.
Because the thread doesn't stop at Hunter. It winds through the entire Sterling family, through the ranch, through the money, through the maze of connections that link a small-town rodeo dynasty to something that looks an awful lot like organized crime. And if I pull that thread, if I do my job the way I was trained to, it leads straight to Ace.
So I won't pull it. I'll lie. I'll downplay. I'll write the most boring, forgettable report this online newspaper has ever published, and I'll sleep just fine knowing I chose him.
I always will. I knew back then his family had their hands in some bad things; they never admitted it, and I looked the otherway. So, I can’t say I’m shocked to find out my suspicions were right all along.
