Chapter 4 Nash
FOUR
NASH
By sundown, Valor Springs has us married with matching porch swings and a joint Costco membership.
I know because Crewe texts me a screenshot of the town Facebook group with the caption: brO, YOU MOVED FAST.
Mack responds with a GIF of a man fainting.
Sin sends a single skull emoji.
Bank’s message is worse: If you break her heart again, I’ll buy this town and pave your truck.
I stare at my phone with a slow, long blink and decide my brothers are a national security risk.
Delaney sits across the dinner table from me looking like my favorite kind of problem: quiet, guarded, and pretending she doesn’t notice the way her mother keeps smiling into her mashed potatoes like she’s already picking out wedding cake flavors.
Mr. Coleman talks fencing and feed and the weather like we didn’t just detonate the local rumor mill. Mrs. Coleman tells me to eat more brisket like she’s feeding me into compliance. Delaney spears a green bean with unnecessary violence.
This whole arrangement is supposed to be simple.
Lean into it. Sell it. Make me a normal reason to be around her all the time.
Normal is not a word I’ve worn comfortably since the war.
After dinner, Delaney escapes first.
I don’t give her long enough to think she won.
The back porch light throws a soft yellow pool onto the steps; everything beyond it is Texas dark—thick, alive, full of cricket song and the occasional restless shuffle of horses in the paddock.
The air smells like mesquite and cooling earth.
A breeze tugs at the brim of my hat and I let it.
I’ve been hiding under it since I pulled into this ranch.
Delaney stands at the fence line with her arms folded tight, staring out at the pasture like the grass might offer counsel.
“Hey,” I say.
She doesn’t move. “If you’re here to tell me my mom is planning a joint holiday card, I already know.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. It feels rusty. “I’d like your mother to not frame me for a crime I didn’t commit.”
“You committed it.” She finally turns a little. “You kissed my temple in public. That was the match. The town is the fireworks.”
“That was tactical.”
“That was reckless.”
“Both can be true.”
She huffs a breath that makes me want to step closer just to hear it again.
I do anyway.
I stop a safe distance away—close enough to talk, far enough not to make this a cage. “I need to apologize,” I say.
A pause. Her eyes narrow. “For what?”
“For the last time.” My throat goes rough on the words. “The last time we really saw each other.”
Her spine stiffens like I touched a bruise. “That’s not necessary.”
“It is.”
“It won’t change anything.”
“It might.”
She faces me fully now, moonlight catching the line of her cheekbone. She looks like a woman who has rebuilt herself with steel and hope and doesn’t appreciate anyone trying to walk through the scaffolding.
I take a breath I don’t feel like I earned.
“I was fresh back,” I say. “I was still… loud inside. Everything felt too close. Too bright. Like one wrong touch would set me off.”
She says nothing.
“I came looking for you because you were the only thing that ever felt like home without a cost.” My voice drops. “And then I heard you.”
Her brows draw together.
“I heard you talking,” I go on. “Out by the trucks. You were telling Sadie or Kaley—I don’t even remember who—that you wanted more than Valor Springs. That you wanted the city, the big job, the whole damn sky.”
Her face flickers.
“You did want that,” I add quickly, because the truth matters even if it stings. “And you deserved it.”
“I can want more than a town and still—”
“I know.” I lift a hand, stopping her gently. “Now I know.”
Back then, I didn’t.
Back then, all I had were instincts sharpened by grief and a mind that kept replaying a blast that took my best friend and left me breathing when I didn’t know what to do with the privilege of it.
“I didn’t want to be an anchor around your ankle,” I say. “I didn’t want you to look back in ten years and realize you traded half your life because I was too damaged to love you without bleeding on you.”
Her jaw clenches. “So you decided for me.”
The words are quiet.
“I made a call,” I admit. “I thought I was protecting you.”
“You were protecting yourself.” Her voice isn’t cruel, but it’s sharp enough to cut rope. “And maybe I would have left anyway. Maybe Austin was always going to happen. But you don’t get to rewrite our history into some noble sacrifice.”
I feel that truth in my bones. “I’m not trying to be noble,” I say. “I’m trying to be honest.”
“Honest would’ve been saying you were struggling.” Her eyes shine with frustration she refuses to let become tears. “Honest would’ve been letting me choose if I could handle your mess.”
“I didn’t know how to say it.”
“That’s your specialty.” She turns away like she’s done talking.
I should let her. I should respect the boundary.
But we’re standing in the dark with years between us and a fake relationship built on a real history, and I’m tired of letting the most important things in my life be decided by my worst moments.
I step closer, slow. “Laney.”
Her head tilts just enough to show me I’m not fully shut out.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight.” My voice drops, rougher. “I’m asking you to understand I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you. I left because I loved you and I was scared love wasn’t enough to keep me from ruining you.”
Her breath shudders.
For a heartbeat, the night goes still.
Then she turns.
We’re close now—close enough that I can see the freckles I used to count when we were kids, close enough that the heat in her gaze feels like a hand on my throat.
“This fake dating thing,” she says quietly, “is for the ranch.”
“I know.”
“Don’t turn it into closure.”
“I’m not trying to close anything.”
Her lips part, and that’s the end of my good sense.
I lean in. She doesn’t move away. The space between our mouths is a fragile, trembling inch.
“Tomorrow,” she whispers, and it sounds like a dare and a plea.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Tomorrow we’ll be believable.” My hand lifts on instinct, stopping just shy of her cheek.
Her eyes flick to it like she can feel the ghost of my touch already.
I tilt closer—
A horse neighs sharp and loud from the paddock.
We both freeze.
Then she lets out a breath that might be a laugh or might be surviving. “Even the horses are tired of our unresolved issues,” she mutters.
“Bossy animals,” I say, because my heart is trying to climb out of my chest and I need humor to nail it back down.
She shakes her head, but the tension in her shoulders eases. Just a fraction. It feels like winning a war over an inch of ground.
Then my phone vibrates. A sensor alert. South line. And my body switches gears so fast it’s almost violent.
Delaney sees it happen—the shift in my eyes, the way my posture goes hard. “What is it?”
“Fence alarm.”
Her face drains of color. “Again?”
“I’m going.” I’m already moving before the last syllable hits air.
“Wait—” she starts.
I stop long enough to catch her wrist—gentle but absolute. “Inside. Lock the door. If your dad asks, tell him I’ll call in two.”
Her chin lifts, stubborn and brave. “I’m not helpless.”
“I know.” My thumb presses once against her pulse. “That’s why I’m asking, not ordering.”
It lands. She nods once.
I release her and jog through the dark.
The ranch is a map in my head; my boots know the path without instructions. The night air turns colder as I hit the open stretch toward the south fence. A flashlight beam skims the ground—mine, low and red-lensed. The horses stamp and snort, because they feel trouble before people do.
I reach the damaged section we repaired this afternoon. My stomach goes tight. The new post is tilted. The wire is slack again. And someone has left a small pile of something at the base—glinting faintly in the light.
Metal shavings. A cut tool mark too clean to be careless. This isn’t random. This is a message.
I crouch, fingertips hovering, not touching yet. I check the lines and snag my finger along the wire.
Fuck.
Somebody is studying our patterns.
Somebody knows this ranch like the lines of their own hand.
Somebody is confident enough to come back after we put on a show in town.
I scan the tree line as blood drips from my fingers.
Behind me, the house light glows warm and unaware. Delaney is inside it. Her parents. The life she came back to save.
A low, hard rage settles into my ribs.
Not the reckless kind.
The focused kind.
“I don’t know who you are,” I murmur into the dark, voice so quiet it’s for me alone, “but you picked the wrong ranch.”
I rise, thumb my phone on, and call Gray.
“Second hit at the south line,” I say. “Clean cut. Deliberate. We’ve got a planner.”
A pause.
Then Gray’s voice comes cool and sharp. “Copy that.”
I stare out into the night, the wire humming soft as a warning.
Whoever is doing this thinks they can scare the Colemans into selling.
Thinks they can use this town’s kindness against it.
Thinks Nash Hawthorne is just an old heartbreak with a cowboy hat and a history.
They’re about to learn I came back different for a reason.
And this time?
I’m not leaving anything I love unprotected.