I know it the way I know when a bull is about to turn. The way I know when a storm is coming before the sky changes. The way I knew the first time, that she was leaving before she said a word.
I drive faster.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Harper
Song- Our Funeral, Billy Lockett
I hear his truck before I hear him. Then the front door opens. It’s all playing out in slow motion. My mom's voice. Him asking where I am. Her answer, muffled.
And then his footsteps on the stairs.
I sit up on the bed. Wipe my face one final time. Press my palms against the mattress to stop them shaking. I've rehearsed this in my head for the last three hours, running the words on a loop, testing them, breaking them, rebuilding them, trying to find a version that doesn't destroy the only person I've ever loved.
There isn't one. So I'll use the version that keeps him alive.
I plaster on a smile. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than the phone call with Hudson. Harder than watching those images on the screen. Harder than typing,I'll do it.Because those things happened to me. This is something I'm about to do to him.
The door opens. He flicks on the light, and I flinch, my eyes stinging, and he's across the room in three strides. His hands cup my face.
He's still in his gear. Dust on his jeans. His championship buckle isn't even on him yet.
I don’t have it in me to admit the truth. I can’t say those words out loud. That private images and videos of me and him are about to be shared with millions of people on the internet if I don’t do as I’m told.
The fear. The embarrassment. It’s swallowing me whole.
I fight back the tears with everything I have.
"You did it, Acey. Congratulations," I whisper.
He doesn't smile. He studies me. Those brown eyes moving across my face, reading every crack in the mask I'm wearing, seeing the swollen lids and the blotchy skin and the way my bottom lip won't stop trembling no matter how hard I bite down on it.
He knows. He can't name it yet. But he knows.
"Are you okay, baby? Tell me what's wrong." His thumbs stroke under my eyes. Catching tears I haven't let fall yet.
I shake my head. I can't speak. If I speak right now, the truth will pour out of me, and I'll tell him everything. The video. The photos. Hudson's voice on the phone. The list of women's names on a black screen. And then Ace will get in his truck and drive to LA and kill Hudson with his bare hands, and I'll lose him to a prison cell instead of a lie.
Or, he will get himself killed stepping into LA.
I’m not just responsible for myself. The other girls, too. I have to stop all of the tapes from ever seeing the light of day.
So I pull him toward me, and I kiss him.
Maybe for the last time.
I kiss him with everything I am. Everything I ever was. Everything I'll spend the rest of my life trying to get back to. Ipour ten years of love into his mouth, and I pray that some part of him stores it somewhere deep enough that he'll feel it on the days when he hates me.
Because he's going to hate me.
He pulls back. Strokes his thumb under my eyes again. Looking at me the way he always looks at me, like I'm the answer to a question he's been asking his whole life.
I'm about to become the question he never recovers from.
"Ace, I need you to sit down."
My voice holds. Something passes across his face. His body stiffens, just slightly.
