35. Nash
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Nash
I wake before the sun, though it has very little to do with feeling rested. My brain simply refuses to settle long enough for sleep to count.
The ranch house is quiet enough that every small sound carries. Rusty shifts somewhere in the hallway, the wind brushes lightly against the windows, and the old boards in the floor creak as the house settles into the cold.
I lie there staring at the ceiling, hoping that staying still long enough might trick my body into feeling rested.
It doesn’t.
Eventually, I give up.
The floorboards feel icy under my feet as I head down the hallway toward the kitchen, rubbing a hand over my face and trying to shake off the dull pressure that’s been sitting in my chest for weeks.
Halfway there, I hear voices.
My brothers.
They’re speaking quietly, the way people do when they think someone else is asleep.
“…I’m telling you something’s wrong,” Boone mutters.
Dallas sighs. “I know.”
“You seen him lately?” Boone continues. “He looks like he’s carrying a damn boulder around.”
A humorless smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
That’s one way to put it.
“Yeah,” Dallas says.
“And he won’t talk about it.”
The scrape of a chair drags softly across the kitchen floor. Dallas lowers his voice. “The council thing shook him.”
“Maybe,” Boone replies.
He pauses, and I can almost picture the way he rubs the back of his neck when something doesn’t sit right with him.
“I don’t like the way this whole situation with the Longs is going,” he says finally. “Feels like we walked straight into a trap.”
My stomach tightens.
Dallas hesitates before speaking again. “You think Tessa’s using him?”
My chest goes tight, the air catching halfway through a breath as my brain scrambles to decide which reaction comes first.
Anger.
Defensiveness.
Or the quiet, ugly flicker of doubt that slips in before I can shut it down.
Boone exhales slowly. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But her family sure benefits from him being tied up in this mess.”
The words hit me hard as a slap.
My first instinct is to storm in there and rip that idea to shreds, tell them they’re wrong, that they don’t know her, that they don’t know anything. They’re talking about her like she’s some kind of puppet, and it pisses me off more than it should.
But then something else digs at me… something small, ugly, and entirely irrational.
A voice I don’t want to hear that’s whispering, What if they’re right?
I hate it.
I hate that voice.
It makes everything feel so... out of control. It makes me question myself in ways I can’t stand.
And yet, I stay where I am, frozen, like I’m scared to move. Because, damn it, I know what it looks like from the outside.
I know how it must feel to see the McCoy brother, me, suddenly engaged to Tessa Long right when the whole damn town is falling apart. The land dispute. The delays. The leverage. I’ve become a pawn in a game I don’t even understand, and it makes me feel small.
I’m losing something that should have been mine.
I hate how small it makes me feel.
I step into the doorway before I can talk myself out of it. “I’m right here, you know.”
I can feel the anger bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, just waiting to spill over. Both of them look up immediately, like I’ve caught them off guard, like they didn’t think I’d hear their bullshit.
Boone recovers first. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Dallas adds.
Boone clears his throat. “We weren’t—”
“You were talking about me,” I snap.
“Yeah.”
Dallas leans back in his chair, studying me. “You want to tell us what’s going on?”
The question hangs in the air.
I could.
I could tell them everything—about the fake engagement, the land records, and how this whole situation spiraled because I thought faking confidence would make people take me seriously.
Instead, I shrug. “Nothing’s going on.”
Boone stares at me. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m a tired liar.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
I hate that line. That voice. The way he talks down to me like he knows better. The anger flares up again, hot and fast.
Dallas folds his arms. “Nash. If something’s wrong, we’d rather hear it from you than from the town.”
My jaw tightens.
“Well,” I say with a thin smile, “good luck with that.”
Boone’s patience snaps. “Damn it, Nash.”
I flinch slightly.
“You’re shutting us out,” he says. “And we can all see this council mess is eating you alive.”
“It’s handled.”
“No,” Boone replies flatly. “It isn’t. If this whole thing with the Longs is some kind of setup—”
“It isn’t,” I snap as I grab my jacket from the chair.
“Where are you going?” Boone asks.
“Town Hall.”
Dallas frowns. “Why?”
I pull the door open, not even thinking about what’s next. “Because I’m done pretending.”
I walk into Town Hall, already simmering with frustration, and it hits me all at once.
Word travels fast in Buckhorn, and now I’m standing in a room full of people who don’t care about my life, my plans, my family. They just want a show. And that’s what I’ve given them, isn’t it?
A show. A damn spectacle. The thought of it makes my skin crawl, but it’s too late now. There’s no taking it back.
But right now, I have no rationality to halt my impulsiveness at all.
I’m not thinking, just doing. The way I have done a lot in my life, even if it doesn’t ever turn out well…
Mayor Caldwell sits at the front table with the rest of the council, a stack of folders neatly arranged in front of her.
Sheriff Carson leans against the back wall with his arms folded, scanning the room with the calm patience of a man used to watching other people make bad decisions.
Virgil Tucker and Clara Jenkins sit in the second row, whispering to each other while what feels half the town settles in behind them.
They all look curious.
Some look annoyed.
A few look downright excited.
Buckhorn loves a spectacle.
Tessa isn’t in the room again. I wonder if that’s on purpose.
She’s probably working somewhere down the hall, buried in paperwork the way she’s been all week, pretending none of this mess exists.
My chest tightens at the thought.
That used to be my strategy too.
I walk toward the front of the room while the murmur of voices slowly fades. Boone and Dallas take seats near the side wall, both watching me with the cautious expressions of men who have absolutely no idea what I’m about to do.
Mayor Caldwell clears her throat.
“Mr. McCoy,” she says carefully. “You requested this meeting.”
“I did.”
Inside, everything feels wound tight enough to snap.
For the last few weeks, I’ve watched this town turn my life into a story that barely resembles reality.
Every conversation on Main Street has become another theory about the land dispute, another guess about the engagement, another quiet judgment about what the McCoys or the Longs are trying to get away with.
The longer it drags on, the worse it gets.
And somewhere in the middle of all that noise sits the truth.
Ugly.
Complicated.
And entirely my fault.
I glance around the chamber.
Faces stare back at me… curious, skeptical, impatient.
The eyes on me feel like daggers. Every single one of them. They’ve already made up their minds about me. I can see the judgment in their stares. They think they know who I am. They think they know what’s been going on.
And I’m so damn angry that they don’t.
They have no idea how much I’ve screwed up. No idea how hard I’ve tried to keep this damn town from swallowing me whole.
“Well?” the mayor prompts.
I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, the anger surging in waves. I open my mouth, but the words don’t come out the way I want them to. It’s like the pressure in my head is building and building until it explodes, and I have to spit it out before it chokes me.
“The engagement,” I say, my voice cutting through the air like a blade.
I don’t even care that I’m about to drag everyone into this mess with me. It’s too late. The damage is already done.
The reaction is immediate. People lean forward. Chairs creak. Someone whispers Tessa’s name.
“The one between me and Tessa Long.”
Behind the crowd, the door to the hallway opens.
I don’t see her at first.
Then, movement at the back of the room catches my eye.
Tessa slips through the doorway quietly because she’s not supposed to be here. She stops just inside, her coat still on, braid falling over one shoulder, anxiety dancing over her face.
I see the room stiffen. The silence hits like a slap to the face, and I can’t breathe for a second. Every single person in this room is waiting for the bomb to drop. And here I am, just handing it to them on a silver platter. My hands are shaking as I force myself to speak.
“That engagement,” I force out, my teeth clenched so hard it feels like they might shatter, “started as a lie.”
The room erupts.
“What?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I knew something was off…”
Mayor Caldwell bangs the gavel hard enough to echo. “Order!”
The sound cuts through the noise, but the tension stays thick in the air. I keep going before I lose my nerve.
“I panicked,” I say, forcing the words out before doubt can catch up to me. “The council wasn’t taking my plans seriously, and I thought if people believed that I was engaged and settling down in life, and if the McCoys and Longs were working together, maybe they’d finally listen.”
The admission burns on the way out.
“So I asked her to pretend.”
Silence spreads through the chamber as a shockwave. Even the whispering stops.
But then her eyes lock on mine, and everything in me freezes. Her face is pale, like she’s been slapped. That’s when it hits me, cold as ice…what the hell did I just do?
This wasn’t supposed to be about her. I never meant for this to come back to her, but here we are. And I’ve just dragged her into it. She looks like I’ve betrayed her, and maybe I have.
But it’s too late. I can’t take it back.
“You’re saying,” Mayor Caldwell begins slowly, “that this engagement was fabricated. Which is why the Long and McCoys cannot agree on the land for the proposed ranch.”