Happy birthday to me.
I shove through the crowd toward the bar where my brothers are leaning against the counter, taking up the space like they own the place. Which, technically, we do. Dad bought Rosie's Roadhouse twelve years ago when old Rosie drank herself into bankruptcy. It's been a Sterling bar ever since, even if we let the locals pretend otherwise.
Colten hands me a beer before I've even stopped walking. I drink it in four swallows, slam the bottle on the bar, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Every birthday since I turned twenty-one, I do the same thing. Get wasted and forget.
"Remind me never to let you loose on a real bull when you're drunk," Colten jokes.
I scoff. "Didn't fall off, though, did I?"
Hunter laughs. "No. But fuck me, you were all over the place."
I blow out a breath, bracing my hands on the bar. The room's still spinning, but in a fun way. The kind of spinning that means you're alive and surrounded by people who'd die for you, and the whiskey hasn't quite turned mean yet.
"Yeah. Yeah. You get on it then, big bro."
Hunter shakes his head. "Not a fuckin' chance."
I grin. Hunter's a lot of things, the oldest brother, head of the family since Dad passed, the kind of man that makes grown men cross the street, but a bull rider he is not. That's my department. Colten handles the horses. Hunter handles… everything else.
And our other brother? The one I let bleed out on the ground. His name was Beau. He was fuckin’ useless at everything, and I can’t say any of us miss him.
Colten nudges my side. "That blonde over there has been watching you for half an hour now. Why don't you go buy her a drink?"
I chew on my lip and follow his gaze across the bar. And he's right. She's leaned up against a high-top near the pool tables, and her eyes are locked onto me like I'm her next fuckin' meal. Tight jean shorts. Little black top. Cowgirl boots that have actually seen dirt, not the costume-shop kind they sell to tourists in Scottsdale. She's hot. Objectively, undeniably hot.
And all it does is blow up a picture of Harper in the front of my brain.
I pull out my phone from my back pocket. The screen's cracked from when I dropped it in the paddock last week. No notifications. No messages. Nothing.
I don't know why I still check. Force of habit, maybe. Or maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment. I text her every birthday. Every Christmas. Short messages. Never desperate—at least I hope not. Just enough to say I'm still here. I'm still thinking about you. The door's still open if you ever wanna walk through it.
She never replies.
The last time I heard from Harper was when Dad died. Just over two years ago. One message. Four words.
I'm so sorry, Ace.
And those four words held me together when everything else was falling apart. When Hunter went cold. When Colten went quiet. Those four words from a girl hundreds of miles away were the rope I grabbed onto, and I held on so tight my knuckles turned white.
I'm a fuckin' pussy when it comes to Harper Jones, and my heart can't help it. Never could. And that’s pretty much why she left me. For my own good. I was so obsessed and in love with her that I was going to throw away my career, my ranch, my family, to follow her to LA. Where we both knew I’d be miserable, but I was prepared to do that anyway.
She wouldn’t let me do that. So she dumped me. Brutally. And stupidly, my twenty-year-old brain took it as a hit to the ego, and I let her go. I didn’t fight. And I’ll regret that until the day I die.
But I’ve never given up hope. I keep tabs on my girl. She looks like she’s living it up in LA, definitely not thinking about me or our teenage love. I just live on the delusion that social media is a lie, and there is still a part of her that’s as obsessed with me as I am with her.
"Earth to Ace. Go talk to the girl."
I shove my phone back in my pocket. "Nah. I'm here to party with my brothers."
"And cousins!" Jett announces behind me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder with the subtlety of a freight train and nearly stumbling headfirst into the bar.
"And cousins," I laugh, steadying him.
"What are we talkin' about?" Jett asks, snatching a shot of whiskey from the bar like it was put there specifically for him. It wasn't. It belonged to the guy two stools down, who takes one look at Jett's huge six-foot-three frame and decides he didn't want it anyway.
"We're telling Ace he should go talk to that smokin' hot blonde that's been watching him," Colten tells him.
Jett's green eyes light up the way they do right before something goes sideways. He claps me on the shoulder hard enough to rattle my teeth and says, "I have a plan that involves no talking. Do. Not. Move."
