Chapter 6 Nash
SIX
NASH
I walk the perimeter twice because once isn’t enough when someone’s trying to bleed a ranch to death a cut at a time.
The night is cool by Texas standards—meaning the air only feels like a warm hand instead of a furnace. The stars are sharp. The horses are restless. The south line hums in my head like an unfinished sentence.
I check the gates, touch every latch, scan the fence posts with a light that doesn’t announce itself. Whoever did this is bold. Familiar. Confident enough to come back after we made noise in town.
Which means they’re either stupid… or they think they’re untouchable. That thought lodges under my skin.
When I finally step inside, the house has gone quiet in the way old homes do when they’re holding their breath. Mr. and Mrs. Coleman have turned in. Delaney’s bedroom door is closed across the hallway, a small rectangle of safety I’m not going to take for granted.
I stop outside it.
Not to be dramatic. Not to be a creep.
To listen.
War teaches you to read the rhythm of a place. The little sounds that mean normal. The lack of them that means wrong.
I hear movement—soft, human, safe. The faint rustle of sheets. A quiet exhale.
My chest loosens a fraction. “Goodnight, Laney,” I murmur under my breath, and step into my room. I lock the door, then unlock it again.
Locked doors make people feel safe. Unlocked doors make me useful.
I shower fast, keeping my ears tuned for anything that doesn’t belong—footsteps that hesitate, a creak that shifts direction, a sound that doesn’t have an explanation. The water doesn’t help with the thoughts. It never does.
When I’m dressed down in sweatpants and a worn tee, I cross the room and stare at the bed.
It’s positioned with the headboard against the far wall. It’s comfortable. It’s normal.
Normal won’t protect her if someone decides to turn this house into the next message.
So I grab the frame and drag it.
The legs scrape across the floor with a low groan. I reposition it closer to the door, closer to the hall, close enough that I’ll hear if Delaney’s door opens fast—or if it opens because somebody else opened it for her.
I pull the nightstand with it.
Then I lay down.
And I don’t sleep.
Not right away. Because my brain has decided tonight is the perfect time to replay two images that shouldn’t share the same space:
Delaney’s hands on my arm in the bathroom—steady, warm, familiar.
The clean cut wire at the south line—cold, deliberate, malicious.
I close my eyes and run through lists.
Who benefits from pressuring the Colemans to sell?
Who knows the ranch’s layout well enough to hit the most vulnerable points?
Who has access to tools and the nerve to use them?
Who’s watched this place long enough to understand the rhythm?
A developer. A neighbor with old grudges. Someone on payroll with debts. A local official with a backroom handshake.
Or someone who hates the idea of a Coleman ranch surviving without bowing to money.
The careful one isn’t a random vandal.
The careful one is strategic.
I roll onto my side and stare at the dark.
The last time I lived in the same town as Delaney Coleman, we were teenagers sneaking soda out to the creek and swearing we’d never let the world turn us into strangers.
Life is funny like that.
Life keeps the words and changes the people.
Eventually, exhaustion wins a narrow battle.
I drift off to sleep with memories of the red-haired girl who would meet me at the creek, and that I almost kissed once upon a time.
Morning comes soft and early. I wake before the house does, the way my body always insists on doing. The hallway is quiet. I listen at Delaney’s door again—more subtle this time.
Nothing wrong.
That’s my favorite report.
Downstairs, the kitchen smells like strong coffee and home-cooked intention. Mrs. Coleman is already up, moving in the quiet way women do when they’ve carried families through storms and learned how to make calm out of pure will.
“Mornin’, Nash,” she says.
“Ma’am.” I take a mug she slides over like it’s a contract and a blessing.
“Delaney’ll be down in a minute. She’s mad at the universe today.”
“Any reason in particular?”
She smiles without showing teeth. “You’ll figure that out on your own.”
Yes, ma’am.
I step onto the back porch with my coffee and let my eyes sweep the ranch.
Work trucks. The barn. The paddock. The repaired fence line that is now a bruise we’re pretending is healed. I want whoever is doing this to understand that a threat against this ranch is a threat against her—and that will never end well for them.
Behind me, boots tap the wooden floorboards.
Delaney appears in the doorway wearing a fitted tank under a flannel she’s tied at the waist, jeans that look like they were made for her, and that stubborn early-morning look that says sleep did not win.
She’s also carrying a toolbox.
I take a slow, careful sip of coffee, because my mouth has gone dry for reasons that are not caffeine-related.
“You gonna stare or you gonna help?” she asks.
“I’m evaluating the threat landscape.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying you’re stalling.”
“Maybe I am.”
She steps closer, and I catch the faint scent of her shampoo—clean and citrusy, like sunshine that learned to punch.
I shouldn’t notice.
I do.
“Fence first,” she says briskly. “Before the crew gets here and throws us into the town engagement photo session.”
I follow her across the yard, the early light turning the ranch gold. Birds cut arcs over the pasture. A horse tosses its head like it disapproves of our modern relationship status.
We reach the south line where the cut happened.
The wire has been temporarily secured overnight. It’s ugly but functional.
Delaney squats, runs her fingers along the post, checks the tension with practiced hands.
“There’s intention here,” she says quietly. “This isn’t a kid with bolt cutters trying to scare us for fun.”
“No.”
She doesn’t look up. “You think someone wants the north pasture.”
“I think someone wants leverage.”
She sits back on her heels. “We’ve said no to developers every year. Even when the numbers made Daddy swallow hard. Even when the roof needed replacing. Even when the co-op offered us a loan that felt like a trap.”
“That’s motive.”
She nods slowly. “And we had that water rights dispute with the Keenes three years back.”
“Keenes have tools and ego.”
“And the Stroud group sent a rep last spring.”
“Strouds have cash and patience.”
She blows out a breath. “This list is not comforting.”
“No one said it would be.”
We work in parallel for a few minutes—me bracing the new post, her stretching the wire. The physical rhythm helps. It’s harder for your emotions to drag you under when your hands are busy keeping something upright.
“You left for the city fast,” I say before I can talk myself out of it. “After…”
Her shoulders go still.
I’m not trying to pick at the past for sport. I’m trying to understand the timeline. The pressure points. The shape of anything that could tie our personal history to the current threat.
But I can hear the edge in my own voice.
She sets her pliers down carefully. “I left because I needed to,” she says. “Not because I wanted to punish you.”
I nod once. “I wasn’t asking for a confession.”
“Good.” She meets my eyes, chin high. “Because you don’t get to audit my survival strategies now that you’ve decided to come home again.”
That one lands.
Fair shot.
I respect it. “Alright,” I say. “Then answer this instead.”
She raises a brow.
“Who’s got the most to gain from your dad being forced to sell in the next sixty days?”
She thinks, visibly. The strategist in her is as real as the ranch girl.
“Anyone who wants the rodeo grounds tied into that expansion corridor. That north pasture has the cleanest access to the highway. And we’re sitting on land that isn’t just valuable—it's symbolic. The last big family spread still refusing to be bought.”
“Symbolic is a trigger word for egomaniacs.”
“That’s Texas,” she says dryly.
I snort.
She flips the wire tensioner and tests it again. It holds.
Then she stands.
I’m already upright, but she’s close now—close enough that the sun catches the tiny freckles across her nose and my brain goes profoundly unhelpful.
There’s still a smudge of grease at her temple from where she pushed hair back with dirty fingers. The urge to wipe it away is overwhelming.
I don’t touch her.
I want to.
Want is a dangerous animal.
“You slept okay?” she asks, voice casual.
I hesitate a beat too long.
Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t?”
“I slept,” I breathe out.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I almost smile. This version of her is the same as the old one—sharp as a tack, soft underneath when she chooses to be.
“I’m fine,” I say.
She hums like she doesn’t buy it.
Then she steps even closer and reaches up with the rag in her hand.
Before I can ask what she’s doing, she wipes the grease off my cheek.
I freeze.
It’s nothing.
It’s everything.
Her fingers graze my skin for half a second. A half-second too long. Her breath hitches. Mine does too. We stare at each other like we’re both remembering a life where this kind of touch wasn’t loaded with land mines.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispers.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
I keep my voice level. “We’re already in it.”
“Don’t make it harder.”
I step back—barely—giving her the space she’s asking for without saying it outright.
“Copy that,” I say.
She looks relieved. She also looks disappointed. That’s the kind of contradiction that makes a man lose religion.
A truck crunches over gravel in the distance—one of the hands arriving early. The spell breaks like a thin sheet of ice.
Delaney clears her throat and turns toward the tool kit. “Alright,” she says briskly. “Let’s finish this before the town files a formal petition for our wedding venue.”
I pick up the staple gun. “Deal.”
But as we work, my gaze keeps sliding to her profile, and the question stays anchored in my head like a hook I can’t shake: If someone is willing to hurt this ranch to get what they want…
how far will they go once they realize Delaney Coleman is the real leverage point?
I glance toward the house, toward the barn, toward every stretch of land that belongs to the Colemans and now—by proximity, by promise, by some old rope swing vow that never fully died—belongs to me too.
I will find who is responsible.
And I will end this before Delaney ever has to learn what it looks like when the war in my head decides to fight for something worth keeping.