6. Meg
CHAPTER 6
MEG
T he first three days on Nash’s ranch were the longest days of Meg’s life. Even though she’d hated being on the industrial farm, even though she’d despised Mitch with every fiber of her being, it had still been less painful than this. Even the hellscape that had been high school and the academic nightmare of college seemed preferable to all of this. At least back at the industrial yards she hadn’t cared. She could stomp around the place all she liked; being grumpy was kind of part of the job towards the end. But here… God, it was just so awkward . She could see Nash’s shoulders tense up whenever she was within sight of him. Not to mention her own body turned to ice whenever he was close.
On the lots she was still someone with power. No matter how much Mitch liked to grandstand, the farm hands knew who to go to if they wanted anything actually done and their questions properly answered. Meg held her own perfectly well against all of those men for all of those years, climbing her way to the top. But here, as soon as she saw Nash, she was turned into that anxious teenager all over again. It was a sickening mixture of nerves, dread, embarrassment and anger. It wasn’t even a red- hot anger she could use as fuel; it was just a sad sort of hurt that didn’t help her one bit.
She thought she had dealt with all of her feelings about him long ago. Apparently not. Apparently she had just stuffed them away, deep down, and ignored them. Now they were back after festering away in the dark for a decade.
At least Nash was just as determined to avoid her as she was to avoid him. That made it a bit easier. They made a dance of it over those first few days.
And thank God she had a job to do. Meg was able to bury her nose in her checklist from dawn till dusk, barely setting foot inside until she absolutely had to. Determined to give an unbiased review of the property because she was a professional , Meg was pleasantly surprised by what she found on the Callahan Ranch. It was a little run-down, sure. There were windows and walls patched together with duct tape for a quick fix. Anywhere the cattle and horses hadn’t grazed lately was overgrown and wild. But overall, the place was annoyingly perfect for what Midwest Ag Solutions was looking for. She managed to tick off a whole page with nothing but positive answers. Compared to some of the horror stories she’d heard from previous evaluations, she could see why the company had been so desperate to get their hands on the place.
The horses were clearly spoiled rotten. The two geldings were friendly, curious creatures who approached her with ears pricked forward. Meg hadn’t gotten around to giving them a full vet check yet, but just from a glance she knew they were healthy and happy. There was a pregnant mare too, and despite looking like she hated the world, she still looked healthy. Though all mares seemed to hate the world just a little bit, even when they weren’t pregnant. So that was nothing out of the ordinary. She did not approach Meg with open curiosity, and Meg was smart enough to leave her be. She’d rather not get bitten, thank you very much.
The small herd of cattle here were just as well-kept. Their coats were just as glossy as the horses, and from what she could tell, all their feet were in better condition than even the cattle on the industrial lot. And that was saying something. Meg hadn’t known what to expect when she realized Nash was the one running the place, but it hadn’t been this . He had always been a slapdash sort of person, doing things halfway more often than not. To see all of these animals in immaculate condition was astounding. And Meg absolutely refused to let it defrost her attitude towards him, even in the slightest.
But still… a tiny, traitorous part of her wanted to be happy that he’d clearly found something he was good at. Or at least passionate enough about that he had been willing to put in the hard work to learn. Not that she had any intention of asking him how he ended up doing this for a living. For three days she had managed not to say a word to him, and he hadn’t said anything to her either. That was how she preferred they carry on.
Unfortunately, she was a human being and had to eat. Eating meant going to the kitchen. Going to the kitchen meant a much higher likelihood of being in a room with Nash Callahan. The thought crossed her mind to buy a bar fridge and a camp stove and keep them in her room so she wouldn’t have to venture into the kitchen at all. Then she slapped that thought down like she was swatting at a mosquito. She wasn’t going to be so ridiculous. She certainly wasn’t going to shrink and hide every time she needed to eat. She had to set herself some sort of standards.
Still… Meg usually tried to time her visits to the kitchen so that their paths wouldn’t cross. She even listened at the door of her room for a solid minute, trying to decipher if there was anyone else on the ground floor, but heard nothing. Which was still as ridiculous as thinking about buying a bar fridge, but whatever. She was the only one who had to know how wound up she was being.
So in the privacy of her own room and her own head, Meg listened at the door like a weirdo and made sure that she didn’t hear any trace of Nash before leaving, venturing out to make herself some dinner. Well, she’d heard wrong. She waltzed into the kitchen, starving and looking forward to food, to find Nash already there. Meg stopped with one foot in the air, like some sort of cartoon character. At least Nash was equally caught off guard, looking at her with raised eyebrows as he stood at the stove.
It was the first time since she’d arrived at the ranch that they’d been this close. Meg briefly debated if turning around and leaving without a word was an option. But she stood there too long, staring at Nash because he looked more than a little bit ridiculous. He was just so big now, and here he was, standing over the tiny little stove, stirring a pot with his wooden spoon.
They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. It was still just so strange to be back together like this, seeing Nash as an adult and seeing him making dinner like everything in the world was normal. This time, Nash was the first one to break the awkward quiet with a question.
“Do you want some?” he asked, pointing his spoon at the pot. It was some sort of beef chili, the steam puffing out of the pot in fragrant clouds. Yes was the first thought her stupid, hungry brain threw out. It smelled amazing. It would probably taste even better, especially spooned onto the buttered bread rolls that Nash had ready on the counter.
“No,” she said, praying that her stomach didn’t rumble and give her away. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”
God, why did she say that? First of all she didn’t want a sandwich, not really. She had been about to fry up some hash browns or something, maybe some sausage and eggs too. Instead, she was going to make a sandwich for dinner. Why didn’t she just say she was getting a glass of water? Then she could have headed straight back to her room until he was done. Now she had to stay in the kitchen and make the stupid sandwich because her pride was absolutely not going to let her back out of that one. Apparently setting foot on this ranch meant that she’d lost all ability to even think straight.
Her whole brain was scrambled, and it was all this idiot’s fault. A decade later and he was sending her into a spin all over again.
With neither of them saying anything else, Meg went to the cabinets and started preparing the sandwich that she didn’t really want. Nash had told her, in one of their microscopic interactions on her first day, to help herself to whatever was in the kitchen, and she hadn’t been shy about it. She wasn’t going to starve for this idiot, so she pulled out bread and cheese and was determined to set the world record for how fast someone could make a sandwich.
Nash, meanwhile, kept his back turned to her, poking at his chili at random intervals, his shoulders perfectly square and perfectly still. Meg slapped her sandwich onto a plate, put the bread and cheese away, and promptly walked out of the kitchen without another word from either of them. Crisis averted. But next time she was going to be listening at her door much more carefully to check if Nash was downstairs, and she didn’t care one bit how much of a lunatic that made her.
Meg dozed for a bit, waking up with her phone face down on her chest, the open window dark, and her stomach grumbling in protest.
She was starving, which wasn’t at all a surprise. She’d eaten the cheese sandwich out of spite and determination, but it really hadn’t hit the spot after a full day’s work. Checking more carefully this time, she was certain that the house was quiet and there hadn’t been any footsteps through the hallway. Taking extra measures, Meg peeked her head out to check if the coast was clear. She felt like a meerkat, surveying for predators before she tiptoed down the hall.
At this point she couldn’t even be bothered to cook; she was just going to make three more sandwiches and take them back to her room. She didn’t care what she ate as long as she wasn’t hungry anymore and could fall back asleep with a full belly. She’d certainly filled up on worse throughout college.
Back in the kitchen she flicked on the light and froze. Sitting on the kitchen counter was a dish covered in aluminum foil with a bright yellow sticky note on top.
Help yourself , it read in chunky block letters.
Meg peeled back the foil, half expecting some sort of booby trap to jump out at her. Instead, it was the leftovers from the dinner Nash had cooked, complete with a bread roll on the side.
Meg thought about whether to eat it way longer than she probably should have. Because if Nash thought that this was some sort of olive branch, then it wasn’t going to work. Absolutely not. Except it was working, just a little bit, even though Meg wouldn’t admit it under torture. He didn’t have to do this, leave food out for her. But he’d done it anyway.
It was Meg’s hunger that made the decision for her. She reheated it in the microwave and sat at the table, alone, to eat. It was annoying how good it was, and she wiped the plate clean with the roll, enjoying every last morsel despite herself. With the dish washed and the note in the trash, she scurried back to her room before she was caught accepting Nash’s offering of leftovers. If she left no evidence, then at least she could deny this ever happened.
She fell into bed with sleep, as always, acting as the perfect way to escape for just a few hours.
“Meg?”
She had been so deeply asleep that there hadn’t even been space to dream. There had just been a deep blackness, empty and silent. But even then, the voice calling out her name cut through all of it.
“Meg?”
“What? What’s up?”
Meg blinked and rubbed her eyes, trying to get them to open. Her feet were tangled in the blankets and there was a weird cramp in her arm from lying on it, but so many years of being on call overnight left her no choice but to wake up. It was pure instinct at this point.
Nash was standing a few feet from her bed, fully dressed, boots and all. He was using the flashlight on his phone, pointing it at the ground instead of turning on the big light.
“It’s Tilly,” he said, voice soft.
“Who?” The name rang a bell, but all of Meg’s brainpower was focused on sitting up and pulling her hair out of her face.
“My mare,” Nash said patiently.
“Oh yeah. Gray, grumpy. Got it.”
“I think she’s giving birth. She’s all out of sorts. I’m worried…”
His face was all wrinkled up in a frown, making him look ten years older and also childlike at the same time. Meg rolled her shoulders and stood up.
“All righty, let’s go check on her.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. It’s what I’m here for. C’mon.”
It seemed to surprise him that she was so willing, but there was a big streak of relief there as well. She might want to avoid him at all costs, but that was when everything was running smoothly and she could afford to ignore his existence. Hearing there was an animal that needed care instantly switched Meg’s brain into work mode. Personal grudges didn’t count in work mode. So she hit pause on all those emotions, shoving them back into the corners of her brain. She’d follow him out and check on the horse because she’d meant what she’d said. It was what she was here to do.
There was no real point in changing out of her pajamas, so she pulled on her socks and boots, grabbed her coat and trailed after Nash out of the house towards the stables. They followed the bob and sway of the phone’s flashlight in silence. But for the first time since Meg had arrived here, the silence wasn’t awkward.
Nash was clearly worried; that certainly wasn’t hard to figure out. His footsteps were quick as they walked through the dark. It was quiet here, with the rest of the world asleep around them. When Meg was called out on the industrial farms, there was always noise: fences rattling and cattle lowing, the crunch of footsteps, both animal and human. Out here there was a sort of peace that Meg hadn’t felt for a very, very long time. So, no, she couldn’t find it in herself to be cranky about being woken up in the middle of the night.
Even if she was going to be grumpy about it, it was her literal job while she was here as part of the evaluation. No amount of sleep deprivation or decades-long grudges was going to keep her from doing her job. Not to mention, seeing a newborn baby foal? She’d wade through volcanic ash if she had to. A stroll through a field at two in the morning was hardly a challenge.
As Meg walked in, she noticed that Nash had left some solar lamps on in the stables, illuminating the space with soft, warm light. Tilly was in her stall and was, indeed, out of sorts.
“Hey, girl,” Meg said in a quiet voice. She got an angry snort in return, which was honestly fair. The mare was pacing in circles around her stall, so much so that she had made a track through her sawdust bedding. She would huff and snort, her ears back, pausing to think about lying down, deciding not to and then starting to pace all over again. So she was definitely uncomfortable, but nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that rang any alarm bells in Meg’s mind. The mare’s eyes weren’t rolling around, and they were still bright and alert. She wasn’t foaming at the mouth or anything, just snorting out of discomfort. She wasn’t happy, but she was fine.
Nash, however, watched his horse with a laser-like focus, taking in every twitch. The two geldings were in their own stalls, heads over the gates and their ears pointed forward in curiosity as they watched Tilly walk in circles. They obviously knew better than to make a ruckus, keeping quiet so that Tilly didn’t snort at them. Wise boys.
“She’s all right,” Meg said to Nash, who had his hands shoved into his pockets.
“She doesn’t seem all right,” he said. There was no trace of an argument in his voice, just pure concern. His frosty demeanor had vanished, and instead he was just a big ball of anxious concern.
“She’s not having fun, I’ll give you that,” said Meg. “But this is all normal, I promise.”
“Hmm.”
Not once did his eyes leave Tilly, his gaze circling with her as she paced. How long had it been since Meg had seen someone this engaged with their animals? This concerned?
People got worried about the cattle on the industrial lots, sure, but at the end of the day, it was all about business. And it was big business too. Efficiency and numbers were king, and there wasn’t room for emotions in that mix. So looking at Nash now, well, it was just a little bit heartbreaking.
Meg still had no idea how he’d ended up running a whole ranch by himself. It wasn’t like they’d had a proper conversation since she’d arrived, let alone delved into each other’s lives. She’d just assumed he was doing all of this begrudgingly, that he wasn’t actually invested. But he looked nothing if not invested right now. He looked like it was the most important thing in the world.
“I guess we’re having a sleepover in the stable, then?” she asked. Nash finally tore his eyes away from the mare.
“You don’t have to,” he started to say, already pushing her away again, already closing himself off and hunching his shoulders. Meg rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, I do. You’ll just come running to get me again. And as far as stables go, this is way nicer than where most of my campouts have been lately.”
Nash was still looking at her skeptically. When did he get so closed off to everything? Closed off to help, even? It started an itch in Meg’s brain, a desire to find out more instead of just ignoring him. He was still a major jerk, that much was true, but… but now curiosity was biting at her ankles, suddenly more powerful than her desire to avoid him. How did the carefree boy she once knew grow into someone so shielded and cautious? Meg buried a sigh. Her curiosity was going to be the death of her one of these days.
“Nash,” she said firmly. “I want to, so chill. Besides, I think Tilly’s happier with both of us here.”
Nash’s skeptical look stayed firmly on his face, but they both looked over at Tilly, and Meg’s words seemed to be proven true. She was still pacing and still pretty unhappy with the whole ordeal, but she had stopped snorting and constantly stamping her feet.
“Okay,” Nash said, giving in. “Thanks.”
Meg just shrugged, not knowing what to say in return. The awkwardness between them had returned, both of them watching Tilly to avoid looking at one another. Since they were going to be stuck here for a while, Meg was trying to decide whether she should try to break the tension or let the silence linger when she felt a nibble on the end of her ponytail.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning around and pulling her hair free from Gadget’s mouth. “That doesn’t belong to you.” She gave him a pat along the snout anyway. “You’re a troublemaker then, huh?”
“Yep,” Nash said, answering for the horse. He wasn’t smiling; he hadn’t even relaxed his hunched-up shoulders. But he was looking at Gadget with the same fondness he’d shown Tilly.
“He’s the reason I have this,” Nash said, pointing to the scar that sliced through his eyebrow. “Flung me into a fence for no good reason.”
So that solved at least one mystery. Meg’s curiosity came roaring back like a forest fire. If they were going to be out in the stable for the rest of the night, surely talking would be better than stilted silence? Her vow to interact with Nash as little as possible wasn’t some contract written in blood. She could break it whenever she pleased. Right?
“I was wondering about that,” she said, taking the opening she’d been offered. “Looks like it would have needed a fair few stitches.”
Nash kept his eyes firmly on Tilly, his arms crossed against his chest. Now Meg was just waiting for the conversation to falter, for him to grunt a half answer and the silence to come crashing back down. But to her surprise, Nash actually answered, even if his voice was cautious.
“My neighbor superglued it shut and then drove me to the hospital,” he said. “Didn’t break anything, so I got sent home with an ice pack and some painkillers.”
“Your neighbor seems very… neighborly, then,” she said, even though she wasn’t all that sure about the super glue part. A smile made Nash’s mouth twitch.
“He is. If you see some crazy old guy named August wandering around, that’d be him. You probably won’t. He only emerges, like, twice a year.”
“Crazy old guy, noted.”
Now that they were talking, actually talking, Meg was desperate not to lose momentum.
“I’ve got a pretty gnarly scar on my thigh from a steer,” she said. It wasn’t a pleasant story to latch onto, but it was better than letting them drift back to cold silence.
“Yeah?” Nash asked. He even looked a little interested, his scarred eyebrow raised and looking at her, rather than Tilly. “What happened?”
“The steer got injured on the lot, no idea how. I was watching him from a distance because, you know, I’m not a complete idiot…”
A quick grin flashed across Nash’s face so fast that Meg wasn’t sure if she imagined it. She licked her lips and carried on.
“Anyway, some absolutely brain-dead farm hand started yelling and banging around to move it into a different pen because… well, I don’t even know why. Anyway, it was stressed, and then it was spooked. And then I had a steer horn halfway through my leg before I had a chance to fully clear the fence.”
Her hand reached down to her thigh instinctively. Meanwhile, Nash grimaced and shook his head.
“I hope you tore a chunk out of the guy,” he said.
“Unfortunately, he’d been fired before I was able to.”
“They could have waited to sack him until you’d been let loose on him, maybe let you kick him real hard in the leg. Seems only fair.”
Was that… a joke? Did Nash make a joke? Well, this was progress, at least.
“Do you need to sit down?” he asked.
“What?”
“Because of your leg? Do you need to sit down?”
Meg smiled, and it felt a little foreign on her face.
“I’m fine. Honest.”
“Mmm.”
He let it drop and went back to watching Tilly with eagle eyes.
Her pacing had stopped altogether, and with a huff, she managed to lay down on the sawdust, rolling onto her side and breathing heavily.
Nash took a couple of steps forward.
“Nash,” Meg said quietly but firmly. “Leave her be.”
Nash looked back at her, his face all crumpled up again.
“What if she needs me though?”
“She has you. She knows you’re here. But it’s better to give them space. She’s calm. That means everything is going okay.”
Nash took one begrudging step backwards, and Meg saw it as the sign of trust that it was. He was listening to her advice even though it looked like he wanted nothing more than to be in the stall with the mare.
“I get that you’re not just relaxing, you know,” Nash said.
Meg looked over at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, you’re all calm and collected, but I know you’re keeping an eye on her. I know you’re not just brushing me off. If there were anything to be concerned about, you would jump to it. Whatever you think about me, I know you wouldn’t neglect an animal, any animal, over it. Just so you know.”
All of the ice that had been held in Meg’s chest over the last couple of days melted in an instant. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling, the melting inside her. But at least it wasn’t cold anymore.
“I know,” she said. “Yeah, I know.”
The conversation finally stalled because what do you say after that? The silence that filled the space between them wasn’t hostile, at least. It was just both of them waiting patiently, keeping an eye on Tilly and trying to be quiet for her sake.
Because Meg couldn’t sit still for more than ten minutes without going insane, she gave both Gadget and Nickel a once-over just for something to do. She had to admit again , mostly to herself, that she was immensely impressed with the care Nash had taken with his animals. Without doing literal blood work, as far as she could tell, the horses were in perfect health. The same could be said for all the cattle that she’d been looking over since she’d arrived. So often on these evaluations, the assessors came back with, at best, ranchers trying their hardest to keep up and falling a little short. At worst there were horror stories of straight-up neglect, with animal welfare getting called in before the land was even bought out. But these horses were perfect . Their stalls were immaculate, they were bright-eyed and curious, and Meg had noticed several bags of vitamins and supplements while snooping around.
So maybe, maybe , Nash wasn’t being a closed-off, acidic blockhead just for the hell of it. Maybe the guy was just tired . And if he was that exhausted because his animals were this well taken care of, then Meg couldn’t find it in herself to keep hating him. She wanted to keep hating him because that would be way easier. Hatred and anger weren’t pleasant emotions, but they were easy. Being forgiving and being kind, those feelings took effort. She could still think he was an idiot, sure, but it looked like hate was out the window for now.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he sat on a bale, fiddling with a strand of hay, oblivious.
Eventually, Tilly’s breathing grew quicker and shallower. There was more snorting and huffing of discomfort with every passing minute. As the birth got closer, she made even more noise. A couple of times Nash went to enter the stall, but Meg shook her head at him. He would frown and look even more concerned about his horse, but he would obey Meg’s silent command and sit back down.
Slowly, Meg stood up and sidled into a position where she could watch what was happening without Tilly taking notice of her. Her policy was to only interfere if something was going wrong. So far, being all up in Tilly’s business would only stress the mare out. She was doing just fine on her own.
Then Nash was beside Meg like he’d appeared out of thin air. For such a big guy, he could apparently move in perfect silence. He stood beside her, taking Meg’s lead and staying silent and still. They hadn’t stood this close together since she’d arrived. Nash was close enough that Meg could feel the warmth from his arm, so close to hers but not touching. She’d been so careful to avoid him that now being this close was overwhelming. It shocked her that he still smelled the same, a smell that had always been distinctly Nash . So many memories came rushing back to her, but this time they were all the good ones. She thought about all of the hours they had spent together in that treehouse until the days towards the end of high school when they’d grown too big but still squeezed inside. With a sudden rush of realization, Meg didn’t want to ignore him anymore. She didn’t want that icy feeling to come back to her chest whenever she thought about him. In fact she’d very much like to reach out and touch his arm, just to know what the soft flannel of his shirt felt like under her fingertips. Just to properly feel the warmth of him.
Then it all happened in a gush of fluid like a dam breaking, and Meg was thrown back into reality. Tilly whinnied, jumping to her feet with a surprising amount of agility, snorting and huffing once again, head low to the ground. At her feet was a foal, still folded up in a ball, looking around like it was surprised to be there. It was hard to tell what color it was, considering it was still soaking wet, but it looked to be gray, just like its mother. Its tangle of spindly legs immediately tried to unfurl themselves, but its whole body was so off balance just sitting that it wobbled back and forth like a spinning top.
Meg felt herself grinning ear to ear. She looked up and Nash was smiling just as wide. It was probably that she was just overtired, had a long week, and was running on empty, but the sight of it took her breath away. There he was, the old Nash shining through, bright and exuberant. Seeing that smile threw Meg back in time, and she had to fight hard to clamber back to the present.
Nash, for the millionth time, made to step forward as if to enter the stall.
Before she could stop herself, Meg grabbed his arm, her fingers gripping softly.
“Wait,” she said, her voice still soft so as not to startle Tilly or the foal. “Let them bond. She’s doing her job perfectly. You don’t want to distract her from that.”
Nash obeyed, just as he had every time before, stepping back beside Meg. She dropped her hand from his arm like it had been burned and decided to promptly forget that she’d ever touched him.
She focused her entire being on watching Tilly and the foal. She’d been right that Tilly was doing her job perfectly. She was sniffing and licking at her baby, cleaning it up, whickering softly to it. The foal let out a high-pitched whinny, and the geldings started getting restless in their own stalls, wanting to see what was going on. Tilly, of course, just snorted her disdain at them.
Meg and Nash watched, completely transfixed, for over an hour as the foal found its feet. After many wobbly and unsuccessful attempts, it was able to stand, legs spread wide and then began to nurse from Tilly with gusto. Meg was also finally able to tell that the foal was a female.
“She’s going to have just as bad an attitude as her mother,” Nash drawled when Meg told him it was a filly. “I can already tell.”
The thought didn’t seem to upset him all that much though. There was still a smile hovering around his mouth, softening his whole face.
“Have you got a name for her?” Meg asked, determined not to think about the possible softness of Nash Callahan’s mouth. God, a few sleep-deprived hours in a stable with the guy, and suddenly she was thinking about his mouth. Maybe she needed to get her head checked because this wasn’t sane behavior.
“Opal,” he said without missing a beat.
Meg raised an amused eyebrow. “Did you have that locked and loaded, ready to go?”
Nash shrugged. “Opal and Tilly, it fits nice.”
“Yeah, it does.”
As Opal started wobbling around on tiny hooves, the sun started to peek over the horizon. They’d been out in the barn all night, but Meg didn’t mind, not when everything had gone so smoothly. Not having to jump in and interfere was always the best possible outcome.
“I’m starving,” Nash said. “Let’s go get breakfast.”
With that, he finally tore his eyes away from the horses and wandered off back towards the house. As Meg followed behind him, suddenly starving, she couldn’t help but notice how his shoulders were no longer hunched up like a protective wall. Maybe she wasn’t the only one whose defenses had crumbled.