22. Tessa
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tessa
The storm finally breaks around seven AM, the snow letting up and the clouds retreating like a curtain being pulled back, revealing blue skies I didn’t even know we still had.
The world outside is different now. The snow came through and erased the sharp edges of everything. Except the part of me that’s still vibrating.
We sit in the truck for a while, both of us staring out the windshield, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
The journal sits in my bag on the floor between my boots, heavy as a confession.
Nash keeps his eyes on the windshield, avoiding both the journal and me, which is honestly impressive, given his usual inability to stop looking at anything that might ruin his life.
“Well,” he says eventually, like he’s casually commenting on the weather and not the fact that we just dug up the kind of family secret people build wars around. “We made it.”
“Technically,” I reply, because sarcasm is still the closest thing I have to oxygen. “Although none of this looks really real, does it?”
He lets out a breath that might be a laugh if it wasn’t so tired.
“You ready to go back to real life?”
The question lands oddly.
Real life.
As if what happened in Juniper House didn’t count because it was cold and isolated and no one was watching. As if the past stops existing when you leave the room where you found it.
“I have work this morning,” I say instead of answering, because that’s safer. “And a town full of people who think they’re entitled to my personal life now that I’m ‘engaged’.”
Nash’s mouth twitches. “Yeah. Buckhorn’s really consistent about that.”
I don’t look at him, because if I do, I’ll remember his voice in the dark. The way he said my name like it mattered, the way he held me without performing, like he wasn’t trying to win anything.
He just wanted me.
“I’m fine,” I add, more firmly. “We should go.”
“Okay,” he says, like he doesn’t believe me. He’s learned in approximately two weeks that my definition of fine means I’m currently holding myself together with thumbtacks and spite.
He starts driving.
The road back into Buckhorn is packed down with snow, the tires crunching over ice like the world is chewing on our choices. We pass fences buried to their lower rails. Trees heavy with white. The kind of winter postcard people from the city think is romantic.
It is not romantic.
It is cold, inconvenient, and a reminder that nature doesn’t care about family legacies.
The silence stretches long enough to start feeling like another person in the truck.
Nash glances at me once. “You gonna talk to your uncle?”
The question is quiet. Careful. He knows he’s stepping near something sharp.
“No,” I say immediately.
He nods. He expected that.
I look out the window. “Not yet.”
Because I don’t trust Thomas with the truth, mostly because he doesn’t want it. He wants ammunition.
And I’m not handing him a loaded gun.
When we pull into my grandmother’s driveway, I see the house sitting there like it always does. Solid. Calm. Built on old money and older control.
Safe, in the way cages can be safe.
Nash parks and cuts the engine, then sits there, his hand still resting on the steering wheel like he doesn’t want to let go yet.
I reach for the door handle.
“Tessa,” he says quietly.
I pause.
I don’t look at him right away because I already know his expression will be difficult.
“What?”
“You’ll be okay?”
It’s a simple question.
It shouldn’t make my throat tighten, but it does anyway.
“I will,” I say, because I can’t afford any other answer.
Nash’s gaze holds mine for a long beat, and I think he might say more. Instead, he leans over and kisses my cheek.
“Take care of yourself,” he murmurs.
I blink because I don’t know what to do with tenderness from him. It feels like being offered water in a place you didn’t know you were thirsty.
“I will,” I say.
Then, because I’m apparently committed to being emotionally reckless now, I add, “Thanks.”
His brows lift slightly. “For what?”
“For coming,” I say. “For… not leaving me there.”
Nash exhales slowly, eyes softening. “Yeah. Anytime.”
Which is an insane thing to say.
Anytime implies again. It implies always, like he thinks he’ll still be here when this burns down.
Before I can respond, I open the truck door and step out into the cold, as if it can reset me. It doesn’t, so I walk up the porch steps, bag heavy at my side, heart heavier in my chest.
Behind me, Nash’s truck starts up again. I hear it pull away, tires crunching down the drive.
I don’t turn around to watch him leave. If I do, I might do something stupid, like run after him.
Inside, the house is warm and quiet in that early afternoon way that feels too controlled to be natural.
The kind of quiet that means someone has been waiting.
Grandma Nell is in the kitchen, tea steaming, bread on the counter, a book open beside her like she’s been reading.
She looks up as I enter.
Her gaze drops immediately to my face.
“Tessa,” she says softly. “You’re home.”
I set my bag down on the chair and take off my gloves with fingers that feel clumsy. “We were snowed in.”
“I know,” she replies, calm as ever. “The roads were closed most of yesterday.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Grandma’s eyes sharpen. “Alright.”
I pull the journal from my bag and place it on the table, setting down something that might explode if handled wrong. The map follows, folded and brittle, pencil marks and old promises staring up at us.
“I’ve seen that book before,” she says quietly. “Your grandfather kept it in a drawer in this house when we were younger. He never let anyone read it. Said it was part of an old argument best left buried.”
My chest tightens. “You knew?”
She exhales slowly. “I knew there were stories. The land was never meant to be stolen,” she says quietly. “Not by anyone.”
I sit down across from her, the chair suddenly feeling too stiff, too formal, like this conversation should be happening in a courtroom.
“I read it,” I say. “The agreement. The winter pasture. The creek access. The fences. The profit share. All of it.”
Grandma nods once. “Yes.”
I swallow. “So what happened?”
The question is heavier than it looks.
It’s not just what happened between the Longs and the McCoys.
It’s what happened to me.
To the story I was raised on.
To the bitterness that shaped my whole life, like it was an inheritance.
Grandma folds her hands on the table, fingers still strong despite her age.
“Fear happened,” she says.
And because she is Nell Long, she says it like fear is a disease and she’s naming it clinically.
“The land was supposed to be shared,” she continues. “Worked together, settled properly later. It was survival. It was practical. It was… human.”
I stare down at the journal, the ink faded, the handwriting pressed hard into paper like the man writing it had been trying to hold everything together.
“But later never came,” I whisper.
Grandma’s eyes soften. “No.”
I lift my gaze to hers. “Why?”
She’s quiet, as if choosing between kindness and truth.
She chooses truth.
“After Jonah Long died, the family panicked,” she says. “Debt was pressing in. The Long name wasn’t enough to keep the roof up, not always. And grief… grief makes people feral, Tessa. It makes them cling.”
My throat tightens.
“The McCoys were terrified too,” she adds. “They had cattle. They had mouths to feed. Another winter like that one could have ruined them. They took the option that protected them fastest.”
“Not the one that was fair?”
Grandma nods. “Not the one that was fair.”
I’ve lived in the aftermath of that unfairness my whole life without knowing it.
“And then bitterness hardened the story,” Grandma says. “People needed an enemy to feel righteous. It’s easier to say they stole from us than it is to admit we were afraid and made choices we regret.”
I stare at the map, at the signatures. McCoy. Long. Two names at the bottom with a promise.
“Silence became easier than compromise,” Grandma adds.
“And pride kept everyone locked in place,” I finish, because the truth is settling into my bones as cold.
Grandma’s eyes lift to mine. “Yes.”
My hands curl into fists on my lap, nails digging into my palms.
All this time, I thought I was protecting my family’s legacy.
But maybe I’ve just been protecting an old lie because it was easier than untangling it.
I swallow hard. “Thomas is going to burn Buckhorn down if he finds out I know about this.”
Grandma’s expression tightens. “Thomas believes the past is something you can weaponize if you hold it tightly enough.”
“And he thinks control is the same thing as safety,” I say, the words coming out flat because they’re too true.
Grandma nods once. “Yes.”
I lean back in the chair, exhaling slowly.
My chest feels… strange. Terribly unsettled. The foundation under my life shifted, and I’m still waiting for the rest of the house to creak.
“So what do I do?” I ask quietly, even though I already know the answer.
Grandma’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“History doesn’t need protecting,” she says. “It needs correcting.”
The words land like a bell tolling.
I glance down at the journal again, then at my grandmother, then toward the doorway leading to my uncle’s office.
And I realize something with a kind of quiet clarity that scares me:
Choosing nothing is still choosing harm.
“I have work,” I say suddenly, standing.
Grandma watches me closely. “You’re going to Town Hall?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because if I sit here and think too long, I’ll start rationalizing again.”
A small smile tugs at Grandma’s mouth. “That’s my girl.”
I pick up the journal and map and slide them back into my bag carefully, like I’m carrying a fragile truth.
At the door, I pause.
Grandma’s voice stops me.
“Tessa.”
I turn.
Her eyes are soft, but direct. “Be careful with your heart.”
My pulse stutters.
She doesn’t say be careful with Thomas or the land. She says, “heart”.
She knows there’s a McCoy-shaped complication standing in the middle of my chest and making it hard to breathe.
“I’m always careful,” I say automatically.
Grandma’s smile turns knowing. “No. You’re always controlled. Those aren’t the same thing.”