My hand shoots out and grabs the side of Jett's truck because my legs just forgot how to work. My heart slams so hard against my ribs I can feel it in my throat, in my skull, in my fucking fingertips. The air leaves my lungs in one punch and doesn't come back.
Harper.
Harper is in that barn. Thirty feet from where I'm standing. Tied to a chair. Harper is the reporter.
"You let our cousin kidnap my ex-girlfriend as a surprise?" My voice doesn't sound like mine.
Am I entering into another universe?
"No. He was meant to bring her to Sterling Ranch later, for a family meeting. I did this in the name of romance, Ace. I wasn’t thinking Jett would kidnap her for you to save her. Although when I say it out loud, that kind of is romantic."
I press my forehead against the truck. The metal is hot from the sun. I don't care.
"Romance? Hunter. You have your own romance with Lola. Don't fuck with mine."
"I'm sorry, bro. I thought you'd be happy to see her."
I don’t know what I feel, other than sick. All I wanted was Harper back, but I didn’t want her to come back to me against her fuckin’ will, tied up in a barn, and be forced to come face toface with me. That isn’t how my fantasy plays out. She comes to me because she still loves me.
"Happy?" I hiss.
Happy. He thought I'd be happy.I tell him that I’ve been celibate for six years, and he thinks this makes me happy? As if the woman I've been in love with for a decade, the woman who ripped my heart out and drove it to California and hasn't answered a single text in years, being tied up in a barn by our cousin in a flamingo shirt is aromantic gesture.
"I do need her back at the ranch, Ace. She has information we need, and she's been investigating me for weeks. After Ashley's murder and the stories that almost leaked about that. I need this handled, romance or not. She knows about the Greeks. She knows what’s happening in LA. We need her. And I think for some reason, she needs us too."
I let his words settle. Each one heavier than the last.
Harper has been investigating my family. She left me. Built a career. And that career led her right back to us, to our dirt, our secrets, our blood. She's been digging into Ashley's murder. Into Hunter. Into the Sterlings.
"Is she trying to destroy us? Or helping us?" I ask.
I don't know if I want the answer.
"No. I don't believe so. The latter, actually."
The latter. She's protecting us. Even now. Even from hundreds of miles away, even while ignoring every message I send, she's still trying to keep my family safe.
And she didn't call me. Didn't ask for help. Didn't let me in. She went around me, through me, behind my back. Anything, everything, rather than pick up the phone and talk to me.
"What the hell do I do? Untie her and say sorry, but I need to kidnap you again so Hunter can speak to you?"
"Yeah. Worth a shot? You know her better than we do."
I scoff. The sound is bitter, and I don't try to hide it. "Not anymore, Hunter. I don't know her at all."
Because the woman I loved would have come to me. Would have knocked on my door, sat on my porch, and looked me in the eye and told me she needed help. The Harper I knew wasn't afraid of anything. She would have called. She would have fought to be let in, the way she fought for everything.
But that Harper was twenty years old. And six years is a very long time.
This Harper investigated me behind my back. Ignored every message. Every birthday. Every Christmas. Let me text into the void year after year while she was quietly working angles and making deals and building a life that didn’t include me. And today, of all the ways she could have come back to me, she got herself kidnapped by my cousin in a flamingo shirt rather than pick up the damn phone and call.
She wants nothing to do with me.
And the fantasy I've been carrying. The one I built with bare hands and protected with everything I had, the one where she comes back, where the stars align, where we get our second chance, it crumbles into a million pieces.
One year, I told Hunter. One more year of waiting for my soulmate to change her mind.
I didn't need it anymore. I got my answer today. Harper isn’t coming back to me.
