17. Nash #2
I reach for the map.
“Wait,” she says sharply.
I freeze.
She stares at me, eyes hard. “If that tears—”
“I won’t,” I promise, and I mean it. “And actually, before we even touch anything, we should photograph it, right? For evidence or whatever?”
And, to be fair, in case it does tear.
We both grab out our phones and snap photos. A selection of everything as backup.
Then Tessa nods once and opens the journal more carefully to read.
The pages whisper as they part. Handwriting fills them. A tight, slanted script, ink faded but still legible.
Tessa’s eyes flick across the first page.
Then she stills.
“What?”
She swallows. “It’s… your family name.”
I lean closer, and I see it.
Elias McCoy.
My stomach drops, because that name is in our family stories. In my mom’s stories. In the ones Boone told Ellie when she asked why the ranch mattered.
One of the originals.
One of the ones Buckhorn still talks about as if he’s a legend instead of a man who probably smelled of sweat and fear.
Tessa flips a page.
And another.
Her brows knit, her face shifting from guarded to confused.
Then disbelief.
“What does it say?”
Tessa hands it to me without looking away. She can’t hold it and breathe at the same time.
I take it with both hands carefully.
The words swim because my brain is loud.
Then I force myself to focus.
November 19th, 19— The year is smudged. Old.
The winter came early. Lost two head to the creek. Lost three more to sickness. The range is bare where it shouldn’t be. Snow sets in thick, and there’s not enough feed if we don’t move them.
I swallow hard.
Tessa leans close, her shoulder brushing mine, and my whole body goes still because that’s not fake. That’s not for the town. That’s just her being here.
I keep reading.
Elias McCoy came to the line near dusk. Didn’t ride up like a man asking a favor. Rode up like a man who hated that he needed it. Pride’s a foolish thing when cattle are dying, but it’s a powerful one. It keeps a man warm until it burns his house down.
He didn’t beg.
He didn’t have to.
I could see the hunger in the herd. I could see it in his face.
I told him, “You don’t have to beg, Elias. But you do have to be honest.”
My throat tightens.
We shook on it at the fence post by the creek bend. My winter pasture for his herd until thaw. Water access along the line. McCoy men will mend fence, clear brush, keep trespassers off, and we’ll split profit on any cattle run off that range.
And if that land is ever sold or developed, if money ever comes sniffing around what used to be just survival, then the Long name is included. Not as charity. As what’s fair.
We agreed we’d make it official later. Paper and county stamps, clean and proper, once the storm season broke.
“Later”, I told him.
Tessa makes a sound. Half scoff, half strangled breath.
I glance at her. Her eyes are glassy, fixed on the words as they shift the ground under her feet.
“This is…” I whisper.
“It’s not what I was told,” she says.
I keep reading because I’m afraid to stop.
I didn’t want the paper now. Paper can be used like a knife. Men with money love paper. Men without it bleed on it.
But Elias swore to me. On his children. On the ground he works. He said he meant it.
I believed him.
My chest feels tight. As if someone’s wrapped a rope around my ribs and started pulling.
I flip more pages. The journal goes on. Winter storms, cattle numbers, fence repairs. Notes about sharing the range. Mentions of Elias as an ally, not an enemy.
Then, months later, there’s a line that makes my stomach turn.
I have been sick for days. Chest tight. Breath shorter. I can’t shake the cold out of my bones. If this ink looks darker, it’s because my hand won’t stop shaking.
The page after that is different. Not Jonah’s hand. Sharper. Angrier.
Father is dead.
The ink is darker there, pressed harder. Grief with teeth.
Heart, they said. Sudden. Like the Lord reached down and took him before he could fix what he started.
Air sticks in my throat.
I flip to the map now, because my fingers can’t not.
It’s hand-drawn, lines sketched with care. The creek marked. The winter pasture shaded. Fence posts numbered. Notes in the margin, some in Jonah’s hand, some in Elias’s. Two scripts. Two men marking the same ground.
Two families.
And at the bottom, a promise that never got the chance to become law:
McCoy and Long signed in pencil, side by side.
My head swims.
Tessa’s breathing is shallow. Her fingers hover over the map without touching it, afraid it’ll burn.
“This is the agreement,” she whispers.
“Handshake on paper,” I murmur.
“And it says…” She swallows. “It says you weren’t thieves.”
The words land wrong.
Because they also say we weren’t clean.
They say we weren’t villains, and neither were they.
They say it was survival.
Fear.
And then pride hardened it into a story both sides could live with.
I close my eyes because shame comes in hot and heavy.
My dad’s notes. Mom’s silence. Virgil’s warning.
They knew.
They all knew fragments.
And I’ve been walking around town thinking the land was clean because the deed said so.
Tessa’s voice is tight. “My uncle—”
“Your uncle’s been pushing this,” I finish, because the anger in my chest needs a place to go. “He’s been trying to stop my project because he knew there was a fault line.”
Tessa snaps her gaze to mine, eyes flashing. “You think this is my fault?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No. I’m saying he’s been waiting for the right moment.”
“And your family wasn’t?” she shoots back.
I blink. “What?”
“You just read it,” she says, stepping closer, heat rising. “Your ancestor literally wrote that he filed a claim to protect himself. While the Longs were grieving. While they were in upheaval.”
“Because they were starving.”
“And my family wasn’t?” Tessa’s voice sharpens. “You think grief doesn’t starve you too?”
My stomach twists. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you implied,” she snaps. “That the Longs were just bitter, just proud, just… dramatic about paperwork.”
I feel the anger flare because shame is a nasty fuel.
“My family told me we worked the land,” I snap. “That we built this ranch from nothing. That the Longs were always trying to take it back.”
“And my family told me you took it,” she fires back. “That you smiled in our faces and stole behind our backs.”
The words ring in the office loud as a gunshot.
We stare at each other, both breathing hard.
This isn’t banter. It’s the old thing… the feud that existed before we did and now sits between us.
“Neither story is full,” I remind her.
Tessa’s eyes glint. “Yours is convenient.”
“So is yours,” I snap.
Her hands curl into fists at her sides. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make it charming,” she spits. “Make it light, make it easy, make it like nothing matters as long as you smile through it.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, because it’s too close to true.
Tessa steps toward me. “You think you can build cabins and fix Buckhorn and play the golden boy and none of it has consequences?”
My pulse pounds. “And you think you can hide behind legacy and control everything and never risk getting hurt?”
Tessa flinches because I’ve struck a raw part of her.
Good.
Because I’m bleeding too.
We’re too close now, the air between us hot in the cold room.
Her eyes are dark, furious, shining with more under it. Something I don’t want to name because naming it makes it real.
“Don’t pretend you understand me.”