8. Nash
CHAPTER 8
NASH
T he air was clear in more ways than one. The morning itself was fresh and clean, the way it always was at this time of year. But more importantly, the ice between him and Meg seemed to have melted away over the past two days. Sure, it was still a little awkward when they interacted. But that was more to do with not knowing each other very well these days. There was going to be some sort of awkwardness with anyone staying on his ranch, settling into new routines and whatnot. But it was so much easier now, interacting with Meg. There was no longer a wall between them, and Nash’s stomach didn’t twist itself into knots at the sight of her. It wasn’t like they were suddenly best friends again, and it hurt to think that they probably never would be. But Meg didn’t seem to actively hate him anymore, and that was all Nash could ask for really.
He had no clue what had caused such a massive shift between them; all he knew was that it had started with Tilly giving birth to Opal, the forced proximity between them working wonders. Either way, he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at a gift from the universe. Nash was determined to just go about his day as usual so as not to jinx anything.
He had no clue where Meg was right now, and he wasn’t about to go snooping for her. She didn’t need to think that he was creeping around and spying on her. Not when their newfound truce was so fragile. So he was in the kitchen, by himself, drinking coffee that you could no longer call hot. For a handful of seconds, he could pretend that everything was back to normal. Pretend the ranch was running smoothly, or smoothly enough. Pretend an evaluation wasn’t taking place, and he wasn’t really thinking of selling up and moving on. But if he pretended life was normal again, that would mean pretending that Meg wasn’t really there. Not all these new changes were bad, he supposed. Meg blasting back into his life was nowhere near bad.
The rumble of an engine snapped him back to reality. So much for having a few minutes to himself. It would be Will, because no one else ever came out this way. Nash would know the rattle of that truck’s engine anywhere. Will and his family popped over on the weekends a couple of times a month. Nash checked his phone, because surely it wasn’t the weekend already? But there it was, written out plain as day on the screen. With all of the madness that had been going on all week, Saturday had snuck up on him.
Well… guess he was entertaining Will and his wife today. He hoped they weren’t expecting any sort of lunch fancier than sandwiches, because grocery shopping certainly hadn’t been on his to-do list lately.
Nash drained the last of his coffee — grimacing because it was now the complete opposite of hot — and went out to talk to them.
Will climbed out of the truck along with his wife, Lucy. They spent a minute getting their baby girl, Sammy, out of her car seat before greeting Nash, who took his time ambling up to them.
“What’s up?” Will asked, aggressively casual as always. He was a skinnier, quicker version of Nash and usually reminded people of a jackrabbit. Lucy, meanwhile, was all soft edges and pale skin. People didn’t tend to give her a lot of credit at first glance, but she could more than take care of herself.
“You guys must be bored to drive out all this way.”
“Heaven forbid we actually like you,” Lucy said with a grin, wrangling Sammy onto her hip.
“Thought we better pop in and see how everything was going with the evaluation,” Will said. He sounded kind of serious, which was so out of character that it took Nash by surprise.
Oh, yeah… the evaluation . He’d been so focused on Meg being the one to arrive that the whole concept of the ranch being looked over had taken a back burner.
“Uh…” Oh, God. He hadn’t even told Will that it was Meg that had turned up on his doorstep. Will was painfully aware of how badly things had ended between the two of them; he’d watched Nash descend into a pit of dread over the whole fiasco. So how was Nash even supposed to start explaining how the evaluation was going? His tongue froze, not knowing what to say.
“Aw, man. That bad, huh?” Will said, rubbing the back of his neck in just the same way that Nash did. While Lucy got distracted with Sammy, who was fussing over nothing in particular, Will grabbed Nash’s arm and pulled him a little way away.
“Come on, tell me. What’s happened? Is it going awful?”
“Well… no. Not awful. It’s going good. I think. Uh, it’s Meg.”
Will blinked a couple of times before he responded. “Who’s Meg? What are you talking about?”
“The person who’s staying here, the one the corporate folks said they were going to send out to look over the place…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Meg. Meg Whitmore. From school.”
Will looked like he was short-circuiting as he absorbed what Nash had just said. It took a full ten seconds and felt remarkably similar to when Nash had looked up to find Meg standing right in front of him. The whole thing was too much to compute all at once.
“Wait,” Will said, waving his hands about as if it would help to clear his thoughts better. “Like, Meg, Meg? Meg who you were head over heels for to the point it had you acting stupid? That Meg?”
“Shut up ,” Nash hissed, because he still didn’t know where Meg was right this second, and if she happened to walk in on this conversation, he might actually self-combust.
Will gave him a dry look.
“What?” he said. “Don’t want everyone knowing about the torch you carried for her? Even though it was visible from space?”
“No. I don’t. Because it was forever ago.”
Yeah, he definitely didn’t feel anything towards her now. God, he couldn’t even lie to himself. Will, unsurprisingly, saw right through him.
“Ah-huh. So she still doesn’t know how bad the puppy love really was?”
“No. And she’s not going to know, because you are going to keep it to yourself.”
Will rolled his eyes. “Seriously? Isn’t that going to make things awkward while she’s here, you know, working .”
If only he knew. But their truce was so fragile right now that a mild wind could blow it all to pieces. There was no way on earth Nash was going to risk it by digging up the past.
“Things are fine,” Nash insisted. “We’ve been civil, getting to know each other again. It’s all good.”
“Ah-huh.”
“But like I said, you’re not going to breathe a word about it and then things will continue to be good.”
Will looked supremely unconvinced. “So you’re going for the whole ‘burying your feelings and hoping for the best’ strategy, are you? Because it’s worked out so well before.”
“There are no feelings ,” Nash insisted, and they both knew it was a bald-faced lie. “Feelings are non-existent. She’s here for work, like you said. She’s a big fancy vet for a mega corporation. This is an entirely professional relationship. Any feelings are in the distant past. Very distant.”
“Ah-huh.”
“Yeah, ah-huh . Swear. Not a word.”
Will rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, fine. Whatever makes you feel better, bud.”
“Thanks for the sincerity. It’s touching.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Hey, Nash!”
Lucy was making her way over from the truck, Sammy swaddled up tight in her arms, pouting but content for the moment.
“Hey, Lucy,” Nash said. “How’s things?”
“Aw, you know,” she said with a shrug, her short dark hair getting blown about by the breeze as she handed Sammy off to Will. “Same old, same old. How’s the evaluation going?”
She looked worried as she asked.
“Stroke of luck,” Will announced cheerfully, and Nash was immediately on alert. “The evaluator is a veterinarian who turned out to be an old school friend.”
Nash glared daggers at his brother while Will just smiled sweetly. Oblivious to their silent feud, Lucy’s face brightened a little.
“That’s good news,” she said. “Takes the formality of it all away, I guess. What’s his name?”
“ Her name,” Nash corrected. “Meg.”
“Wow, jeez,” Lucy said, looking impressed. “Being a female livestock vet is nothing to sneeze at.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty impressive.”
“ Is she ?” Will said, eyes wide with mock innocence. Nash was getting ready to duct tape his mouth shut when they were interrupted.
“You guys talking about me?”
Meg had finally made an appearance, and it took all of Nash’s self-control to remain standing upright. Ever since she’d got to the ranch, she’d been wearing any combination of jeans, boots and her thick leather jacket. But here she was, walking towards them, wearing a bright yellow sundress, her boots shined up and her auburn hair loose down her back instead of rolled up into a knot on top of her head. Nash felt like he needed someone to do CPR on him, his heart needing to be reminded how to do its job.
Thank God for Lucy, who spoke first and saved him from embarrassing himself.
“I love your dress,” she said as a way of greeting. “I’m Lucy, hi.”
Meg stopped mid-step and looked down at herself, as if she had no clue about how otherworldly she looked.
“I’m Meg,” she said with a small laugh. “And thanks. I saw other people here and thought I better look halfway presentable.”
“Please,” Lucy scoffed. “I probably have baby spit-up on me somewhere.”
“Same,” Will said, catching Meg’s attention. “How you doing, Meg? Been a while, huh?”
It took a moment, but then Meg realized who it was she was looking at.
“Will,” she said warmly. “Long time, no see.”
“I hear you’re a ‘big fancy vet’ now?” Will said, innocent as anything.
“A vet, anyway, I don’t know about the big and fancy part.”
“Don’t you guys earn, like, crazy money?” Lucy asked.
Nash sighed internally. He loved Lucy; he really did. She was great. But she had never had a filter between her brain and her mouth. Luckily, Meg seemed to take it in stride.
“Uh, well, yeah… can’t deny that. I’ve worked my way up to two hundred thousand, so, you know, I’m pretty comfortable.”
Will let out a low whistle. “I should have studied harder,” he said with a shake of his head.
“But if you had done something with your life, you would have never met me,” said Lucy with a fond smile.
“True. The world needs degenerates like us.”
“You’re not a degenerate,” Meg tutted.
“Yeah, I am,” Will said, accepting his lot in life.
“He is,” agreed Lucy with a roll of her eyes. “How this man hasn’t died of salmonella yet, I have no idea.”
“Will,” said Meg, looking slightly horrified. “You’re not still eating food beyond its expiration date, are you?”
“It’s just a guide!” he exclaimed, throwing his free hand up in the air. “The supermarkets bump those numbers up because they want you coming back sooner to buy more food. I’ve read all about it.”
“Oh, my God.” Lucy sighed under her breath. Even Sammy gurgled in dismay at her father.
“You’re quiet,” Meg said suddenly, pointing a glance at Nash.
“I’ve got nothing to say.”
It was true. It was also true that he had nothing to say because he still hadn’t recovered from seeing Meg in her yellow sun dress. He’d tried to avoid looking at her altogether, because the second he laid eyes on her freckled shoulders, he was ready to go into cardiac arrest all over again.
“At least tell me you don’t eat expired food like this idiot,” Meg said good-naturedly, jabbing a thumb at Will.
“It’s a guide ,” Will snipped.
“No,” said Nash, because despite joking around, Meg seemed to expect an answer, like she cared if he was part of the conversation or not. “I’ve got enough problems without getting food poisoning or whatever it is Will is going to end up with.”
“Sammy,” said Will, talking to his baby. “Your mama and your uncle are very dramatic. Did you know that?”
“Anyways,” said Lucy, steering them away from the path that probably led to Will talking about more of his crackpot conspiracy theories. “We were going to come here, and I was going to make some tea because I stick to expiration dates…”
“It’s a guide .”
“And we were going to snoop on this whole inspection thing under the guise of being polite. But we can just drop the guise and you can tell me all about it. How’s that sound?”
“Oh,” Meg said, still getting used to Lucy’s forthright attitude. “Yeah, sure. That sounds good.”
“Great! So what does a farm vet actually do? Because I get cats and dogs, but what do you do for cows? Do cows get sick?”
Lucy rattled off questions faster than Meg could answer them, linking an arm through Meg’s and dragging her off towards the house.
Nash watched them go. Meg seemed… happy. The whole time she’d been here, she’d been like a stone wall. It was only in the last forty-eight hours that she had even talked to him in full sentences. But she’d just met Lucy and was acting like they were best friends. It made it a thousand times clearer how much she had really hated him upon arriving.
He looked back over at his brother, and Will was side-eyeing him something fierce.
“Yeah,” Will said, quiet enough that only the two of them could hear. “Distant past. Long gone. Definitely no feelings lingering or nothing.”
“Don’t you dare go there,” Nash hissed out the side of his mouth. Nash and Will continued to stand there, staring at each other.
“Boys?”
Lucy and Meg were watching them having their staring contest with raised eyebrows and faint smirks.
“Everything all right?” Lucy finished.
“Fine,” Nash said, sounding a little too chipper to be believable. “It’s nothing. Just brother stuff, you know how it is.”
“Yeah. I remember,” Meg said, with a sly lilt in her voice. “Nothing changes, does it? You two are still exactly the same.”
“They’re never going to grow out of it, are they?” Lucy asked Meg, with a long-suffering shake of her head.
“I doubt it,” Meg drawled, as if they were both lost causes. “I think I read a study somewhere that said your personality is set in stone by the age of eight or something…”
“Then there’s no hope, is there?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Can you stop talking about us like we’re not here?” Will said while the ladies giggled at themselves.
“If you’re feeling left out, stop bickering and come and join the grown-up conversation,” Lucy said, continuing her way to the house without a backwards glance. Will followed obediently, giving Nash one last pointed look over his shoulder. It took all his self-control to not mime a “you’re dead if you say anything” motion at Will. Nash shoved his hands in his pockets to resist the urge.
Meg waited for him. “Are you okay?” she asked when he caught up to her.
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know, you went all quiet. Is Will being mean to you?”
She said it with a sly grin. The joy of having her willing to talk to him again was enough to get Nash to smile.
“I’m fine.”
That was enough for her. She nodded and followed the others up to the house while he tagged along behind.
He wasn’t fine, not really, not when he was experiencing a whole new wave of realizations.
Meg had been here all week, and in roughly two minutes she’d shown more warmth and sweetness to Will and Lucy than she had to Nash at all. When he had been standing in the kitchen, he had been thinking how grateful he was that she didn’t seem to actively hate him anymore. He’d thought that maybe this cool, closed-off demeanor that she had was closer to who she was these days, that he was finally getting to see who Meg had grown up to be.
But on hearing guests arrive, with no idea of who it might be, Meg had come out with a megawatt smile and an excess of hospitality.
Eighteen-year-old Nash had thought it best to push her away, all for the greater good. He’d always assumed, or maybe hoped, that any pain he had caused had been fleeting. But now… well, seeing the difference between how she acted around him versus other people, how bad had it really been? How much hurt had he put her through?