4. Tessa
CHAPTER FOUR
Tessa
The hallway outside the council chamber feels too small for what just happened.
Too loud. Too bright. Too full of opinions.
People spill out in clusters, voices bouncing off the walls, already shaping the story into something dramatic that will be repeated at the diner by lunchtime and embroidered beyond recognition by dinner.
Engaged.
The word skitters through the air.
I stand to the side with my uncle, notebook tucked under my arm, pen still warm in my hand even though the meeting is technically over. My posture stays straight out of habit.
My uncle, on the other hand, might combust.
His jaw is locked. His shoulders are rigid. His coat is still on like he never really settled into the room to begin with. He hasn’t said a word since the gavel came down, but I know the signs. I’ve lived with them long enough.
This is a simmer, not a cool.
“That,” he says finally, low and sharp, “was a stunt.”
I don’t answer. Not because I agree, but because I’m busy replaying the moment in my head. The exact second Nash McCoy said the word ‘engaged’ as if it surprised him as much as everyone else.
“That boy panicked,” Thomas continues. “You could see it. He was cornered, so he performed.”
I glance sideways at him. “Performed how, exactly?”
He scoffs. “Please. Settling down. Building a family. It’s calculated. And it worked,” he adds bitterly. “Did you see them? The way they softened? Stability makes people feel safe. Marriage makes men look responsible.”
Around us, Buckhorn digests the news in real time.
“Did you hear—”
“Engaged, apparently—”
“Never even knew he was dating—”
“Well, good for him—”
“Do you think it’s real?”
Someone brushes past me, nearly clipping my shoulder. I step back automatically, spine stiffening. I hate this part. The communal ownership. The way private lives become public puzzles everyone feels entitled to solve.
Thomas leans closer. “He’s been spreading the idea that he’s responsible now. Grown. As if a ring fixes years of half-finished ideas.”
My lips press together.
Then the front doors open.
Nash McCoy steps back into the hallway, and the atmosphere changes. Conversations falter. Eyes track him openly now. He looks rattled, the grin he usually wears as armor gone.
Good, I think, immediately annoyed at myself for thinking anything at all.
He moves quickly, boots striking the tile with more force than necessary, trying to outrun what he just did.
For one brief, inconvenient second, his eyes flick toward me.
We lock gazes.
And my body betrays me.
It’s subtle, but I feel it anyway. The sharp hitch in my breath, the way my shoulders tense like I’ve been braced for impact without realizing it. Heat curls low in my stomach, unwelcome and immediate, as if some traitorous part of me has been waiting for this exact second.
Ridiculous.
I tell my spine to stay straight. Tell my face to remain neutral. Tell my pulse to calm the hell down.
It doesn’t listen.
His eyes are the same hazel they’ve always been, too expressive for his own good.
They flick over me fast… too fast to be polite, too slow to be accidental.
I’m suddenly acutely aware of my coat, my braid, the fact that I’ve been sitting upright for two hours, and my back aches faintly between my shoulder blades.
Awareness sharpens, as if someone turned the volume up on my skin.
There’s a strange pull in my chest, a tight, twisting sensation that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with proximity. With history. With the fact that Nash McCoy has always had a way of occupying space like it belongs to him, even mine.
I hate that my body remembers him.
Hate that it reacts before my brain can file him neatly under irritating, reckless, not my problem.
For half a second, a sizzle passes between us. Surprise, maybe. Or challenge. Or that old, familiar spark of competition that used to light me up in classrooms and hallways.
That spark is old.
Ancient, really. Polished smooth by repetition.
It takes me back to Buckhorn High, senior year, AP English. The classroom always smelled faintly of chalk dust and burnt coffee from the teacher’s mug that had World’s Best Educator printed on it in fading blue.
Essay grades were posted on the board.
I got there early, same as I always did. Stood perfectly still while my eyes scanned the list, neat columns of last names and numbers. Ninety-eight. Top of the class. Exactly where I intended to be.
I was still letting the satisfaction settle when Nash McCoy slid in beside me, too close, backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder.
“Well,” he said, peering at the board. “Looks like you beat me.”
I turned slowly. “By three points.”
He grinned, unfazed. “Still hurts.”
“You didn’t cite your secondary sources,” I said automatically. “You lost points in analysis.”
“Details,” he replied. “Besides, you only won because you rewrite everything like five times.”
I looked him dead in the eye. “I rewrite until it’s right.”
That grin sharpened. “Yeah. That tracks.”
He wasn’t wrong, and I hated that he knew it.
We stood there a moment longer, shoulder to shoulder, both pretending not to care while absolutely caring. Competing in a way no one else seemed to notice, or understand. He thrived on improvisation. I thrived on control. Somehow, we always landed close enough to make it infuriating.
Later that semester, we were paired for a debate.
Pure academic cruelty.
Topic: Tradition versus Progress.
Of course it was.
He argued for progress as if it were something alive, his hands moving as he pulled the room along with him. He didn’t stick to the outline. He didn’t need to. People leaned forward anyway.
I countered with structure, precedent, and precision, my voice calm and my points measured. I took his argument apart one piece at a time.
We tied.
Again.
Afterward, he leaned across the table and said quietly, “You ever think you’d be less stressed if you stopped trying to win everything?”
I smiled thinly. “You ever think you’d win more if you tried harder?”
Respect flickered across his face before he masked it with humor.
That was always the problem.
Nash McCoy never looked like he was trying, which made it impossible to tell how much of him was an act.
Standing here now, years later, with the town buzzing and my pulse doing things it has no right to do, I realize something uncomfortable.
He still gets under my skin the same way.
Not because he’s impressive, but because he refuses to stay where I put him.
Then his jaw tightens.
He looks away first.
The reaction is instant and deeply annoying. My breath leaves me in a slow exhale.
Good.
He turns and pushes through the front doors, cold rushing in behind him.
I don’t move right away.
My fingers curl slightly around the edge of my notebook, grounding myself in the familiar texture of paper and leather. My pulse is still too fast. My skin feels overly alert, like I’ve brushed up against static.
Get a grip, Tessa.
He’s nothing.
Just a man who talks too much, promises too easily, and now apparently invents fiancées under pressure.
I exhale slowly, realizing only then that I’d been holding my breath.
“Well,” Thomas says grimly. “That confirms it.”
“Confirms what?” I ask.
“That he’s lying,” he says without hesitation. “And I want to know why.”
He turns fully toward me now, blocking my path in a way that is uncomfortably familiar.
“Tessa,” he says. “You need to find out who he’s engaged to.”
I blink. “I’m sorry?”
“You work here,” he says. “You hear things. You know how people talk.”
“So you want me to gossip,” I say flatly.
“I want you to gather information,” he snaps. “There’s a difference.”
I shift my weight, irritation flaring. “You want leverage.”
“I want clarity,” he corrects. “If there’s a fiancée, there’s influence. Another family. Another angle we need to consider.”
“And if there isn’t?”
His mouth thins. “Then the council deserves to know what kind of man they’re dealing with.”
“I’ve never been impressed by Nash McCoy,” I say coolly.
Thomas’s expression sharpens. “Exactly. You won’t be distracted by his charm.”
I almost laugh at that.
Charm.
“Fine,” I say after a moment. “I’ll hear things whether I want to or not. This town leaks like a sieve.”
“Good,” he says, already satisfied. “Then pay attention.”
He turns and walks away before I can say anything else, coat swinging behind him.
I stand there a beat longer, surrounded by speculation and whispers and the echo of a word that refuses to settle.
Engaged.
I open my notebook and write it down before I can stop myself. Not because it belongs in the official record, it doesn’t, but because I need to anchor it somewhere.
Arrogant. Reckless. Unreliable.
That’s who Nash McCoy has always been.
So why does this feel less like a lie and more like a complication?
I snap the notebook shut and step back into the flow of people, listening carefully now.
If Nash McCoy is engaged, Buckhorn will tell me soon enough.
And if he isn’t?
Then I have a feeling this is about to get very interesting.