The word shouldn’t do what it does to me. It should be harmless.
Instead it lands like a warm hand in a cold storm.
We return to work with the kind of careful distance that fools everyone except the two people standing in it.
And while the sun sinks a fraction toward late afternoon, I realize something that makes my stomach go tight.
Saving this ranch is simple compared to surviving this slow, inevitable proximity to Nash Hawthorne.
Because the fence isn’t the only thing that’s going to snap if we keep pulling this hard.
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.”
