23. Nash
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nash
The ranch looks the same when I get back, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Land doesn’t rearrange itself just because you found a century-old journal that makes your stomach feel full of barbed wire.
The pasture is still white in patches where the snow didn’t melt. The fence line is still straight where Dallas fixed it last fall. The barn still leans a little to the left because Grandpa McCoy built it when “level” was more of a suggestion than a rule.
Rusty is on the porch as if he’s been waiting to judge me specifically.
He stands when I park, stretches, and trots down the steps with that grouchy little huff he does when he’s decided you’ve caused a problem and now it’s his problem too.
“Yeah,” I mutter as I shut the truck door. “Same.”
Tessa isn’t sitting beside me anymore, and Juniper House isn’t behind my ribs.
I only have the ranch.
And I have new information, the photographs Tessa and I took of the journal pages and the map.
Rusty follows me up the porch steps as a shadow.
The screen door squeaks when I push it open, that same tired hinge sound I’ve heard since I was a kid.
Inside, the house smells of coffee and lemon cleaner and something savory simmering.
Mom’s version of comfort, which usually translates to I’m feeding you before I yell at you.
Mom’s voice carries from the kitchen. “Take your boots off before you track half the county in here.”
Rusty pads after me, nails clicking, and flops down by the doorway where he can watch me.
Mom is at the table with her glasses on, hair pinned back, sleeves rolled up. There’s a stack of paperwork beside her because the ranch is constantly trying to drown her in forms, and she keeps beating it back with a pen.
She looks up when I enter.
“You good?”
I sit.
“I went to Juniper House,” I say, because I don’t know how to ease into this, and I don’t think easing is something my family does well anyway.
“Why,” she says slowly, “were you at Long property in the middle of a snowstorm with Thomas Long’s niece?”
I clear my throat. “Mayor Caldwell mentioned the property. The creek line. The east parcel. You showed me Dad’s note—”
“I remember what I showed you,” she snaps, then exhales. “Go on.”
I unlock my phone and slide it across the table instead.
The screen lights up with old ink and uneven handwriting. Brittle pages captured in bad winter light. The map zoomed in close enough to see smudges and eraser marks.
I swipe.
Mom leans in without being asked.
Her eyes track the screen.
Then they stop.
She goes very still.
And that’s when I realize I didn’t actually know what I was afraid of until this moment.
It isn’t the council, Thomas Long, or Hank Lawson running his mouth.
I’m afraid of my mother confirming the thing I can’t unsee.
Afraid of her saying, Yes. We knew. We just didn’t want you to.
“Mom,” I say quietly.
She scrolls back with her finger.
Zooms in.
Her thumb pauses over the signatures.
McCoy. Long.
She can feel them through the glass.
Rusty sighs, bored, which is impressive given my heart is trying to climb out of my chest.
Mom steps back and pauses. It’s quiet for longer than I expected. Long enough that the kitchen clock starts sounding loud. Tick. Tick. Tick, counting down to… something.
I swallow hard. “Say something.”
“Your father used to call it the creek story,” she says finally. “Like it was folklore. Like if he named it small enough, it couldn’t bite us.”
My throat tightens. “So you knew.”
Mom exhales slowly. “I knew fragments.”
“Fragments,” I repeat, bitter.
“Nash.”
I hold her stare. “We’ve hated the Longs my whole life.”
“That goes both ways.”
“Yeah, and now I find out it started because two men were scared and made a handshake deal they didn’t put on paper, and then everybody after them just… dug in and sharpened it into a weapon.”
“Fear,” she says quietly. “Fear has a way of disguising itself as certainty.”
I blink. “What does that mean?”
“It means people convince themselves they’re right,” she says, “because it’s easier than admitting they’re afraid.”
My mind flashes to Dad’s note in the margin. Check access rights before development.
He knew.
He knew, and he still let us grow up believing the version that made us clean.
I swallow hard. “Why didn’t Dad fix it?”
Mom’s gaze goes distant, remembering a version of my father that isn’t here anymore.
“Because fixing it would mean reopening it,” she says. “And your father…” She pauses, the word carefully chosen. “He didn’t like wounds that wouldn’t stop bleeding.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Well. That worked out great.”
Mom’s eyes flash. “Watch your tone.”
I press my lips together, then look down at the papers again because if I keep meeting her stare, I might say something I can’t take back.
“You heard fragments,” I say, quieter. “What fragments?”
Mom’s fingers tap the edge of the map once, absent.
“That the Longs had an understanding with your great-grandfather,” she says. “That the creek pasture wasn’t as simple as the deed lines. That there were winters the McCoys wouldn’t have survived without help.”
Help.
And pride turned it into war.
Mom continues, “Your father heard it from his father, and his father heard it from his. But every time someone got close to digging, someone else said leave it alone.”
“Because they were afraid,” I whisper.
Mom nods once.
Fear disguised as certainty.
I feel it now, a cold truth settling into the bones of this ranch.
“I need to know,” I half whisper. “Did we… take it?”
Mom’s gaze pins me.
She doesn’t answer fast.
“Nash,” she says slowly, “land isn’t just paper. It’s work. It’s use. It’s survival. It’s… time.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Mom’s jaw tightens again. “Fine. Here’s what I believe.
I believe your great-grandfather didn’t set out to steal.
I believe he set out to keep his cattle alive.
And then when the Longs lost Jonah…” She glances at my phone once more, “…everything got twisted. Grief turned into suspicion. Pride turned into a wall. And at some point, paperwork got filed that protected us.”
My throat goes dry. “So we benefited.”
“Yes,” she says bluntly. “We benefited.
My breath stutters because hearing it from my mother makes it real.
And because my guest ranch plan is sitting right on top of those old lines like a match over dry grass.
I stare at the map again.
I see the creek and the shaded winter pasture, and I see the cabins in my head. The neat little rectangles on my sketch page, the porches, the lights, the promise.
“Mayor Caldwell’s going to ask for surveys,” I say, mostly to myself.
Mom’s gaze sharpens. “She should.”
“And if Thomas Long pushes this into a full dispute—”
“Then the council will freeze your project.”
I look up at her. “You sound certain.”
Mom’s mouth tightens. “I’m being realistic.”
My chest aches. “So what do I do?”
Mom holds my stare.
Then, because she is my mother and she doesn’t soften things unless she has to, she says, “You learn exactly what you’re standing on before you build anything on it.”
I rub a hand over my face. “Tessa’s going to be dragged into this.”
“The Longs have always been in it, Nash. That’s the point.”
Rusty grunts in agreement.
“Boone and Dallas don’t know,” I say.
Mom’s gaze goes to the doorway, toward the rest of the house. Toward my brothers’ rooms. Toward the place where our family history lives in silence and routine.
“Then you decide whether they should,” she replies.
I swallow hard. “If I tell them, Boone’s going to want to handle it.”
“Boone always wants to handle it.”
“And Dallas will try to fix it with paperwork until his eyes bleed.”
“That’s why you have them,” she says quietly.
I stare at her.
Because for a long time, I’ve been convinced I’m the extra piece. The one who makes the room lighter, not the one who carries the weight.
And Mom saying that’s why you have them is permission to not do this alone.
But then the other thought crawls up, cold and sharp:
Tessa did this with me.
She drove me into that house.
She opened the drawer.
She put the truth on the table.
And when it cracked open under us, she didn’t run.
At least, not then.
“I should go,” I say.
“Be careful,” Mom reminds me. “This isn’t just about land.”
I swallow. “I know.”
Do I?
I grab my phone and head down the hall before she can say anything else that makes me feel seen in a way I don’t know how to handle.
Rusty follows me closely.
Outside is sharp, winter clean, the sky bright, mocking me.
I walk toward the barn because it’s the only place that makes sense when my head doesn’t.
The barn smells of hay and old wood and animal warmth. Familiar. Solid. Honest.
I lean my forehead against a stall door and breathe.
Then I pull my phone out and stare at Tessa’s name in my contacts as if it might start talking if I glare hard enough.
I don’t text her.
I don’t call.
I don’t know what I’d even say.
Hey, just checking in after we uncovered the origin story of a generational feud and also had sex in your creepy family house.
No.
I shove my phone back in my pocket.
Because what happens when this becomes a fight again?
What happens when her uncle turns this into a weapon?
What happens when my family reacts as McCoys and her family reacts as Longs, and we end up on opposite sides of a line that was drawn by dead men who never bothered to write things down properly?
I swallow hard.
Because I don’t want to fight her.
I don’t even want to pretend I do.
And that’s a problem.
I’ve known Tessa Long for most of my life. She’s been a thorn in my side since we were kids, sharp and relentless, always two steps ahead and absolutely incapable of letting me get away with anything.
And somehow, somewhere between a fake engagement and a winter storm and a dusty drawer in a haunted house, she stopped being my rival and started being…
More.
But if the feud resurfaces, if the town divides, if my family circles the wagons and her uncle pushes for blood… more might mean losing the dream.