Page 68 of Tessa and Nash

“You’re always writing,” she says, but there’s a curiosity in her tone now instead of annoyance.

“I need to remember what he said.”

“Because you don’t trust your own brain?”

“Because my brain is currently full of chili smoke and impending doom.”

I scribble in my shorthand. It’s a mess of arrows and half words, the kind only I can read.

V. Tucker

HS ≠ paper

land ≠ simple

before building → dig

Tessa leans closer, trying to see.

Then she frowns. “That’s not English.”

“It is,” I say defensively. “It’s just… advanced.”

“It looks like a chicken had a panic attack.”

“It’s annotation,” I say as if that explains anything.

“That explains nothing.”

I close the notebook before she can decipher it through sheer spite, then immediately flip to the back where I keep the only neat thing about me: my sketch pages.

Tessa’s gaze drops, and her whole face changes.

It’s subtle, but I catch it. The way her mouth relaxes. The way her eyes focus.

Because the drawings are there. Rough outlines of the guest ranch buildings, the way I want the cabins to sit against the treeline, the idea of the restored barn turned into a common room. Notes in the margins about water conservation, solar panels, horse trails that won’t cut through grazing areas.

The future I keep trying to build.

Tessa stares at it with wise, inquisitive eyes.

“You drew these,” she says, quieter.

“Yeah.”

Her finger hovers over the page without touching it. “This is… actually good.”

I blink. “That sounded like a compliment.”

“It was,” she admits, then narrows her eyes at me. She regrets the slip. “Don’t get smug.”

A laugh cracks out of me, startled and real.

It’s the first time all day I’ve felt my shoulders weren’t up around my ears.

“You’re not wrong about diversifying,” she says finally. “Buckhorn’s been bleeding kids for years. People leave. They don’t come back. If you give them a reason…”

I stare because I’ve heard skepticism and teasing and threats from her. I have not heard this.