Page 144 of Tessa and Nash

That’s a lie.

“You’re sure?” I say.

“Yes.”

I keep my face neutral even as my hands curl into fists at my sides.

“Then why are there promises that were supposed to be made official later?”

“You’re getting too close to them,” he finally snarls.

My throat tightens. “I’m doing what you asked. I’m staying close.”

“Not like that.”

“You’re asking me to lie.”

“I’m asking you to protect your family,” he corrects coldly.

“And if the truth doesn’t match what you want,” I press, “then what?”

Thomas’s gaze hardens into an expression I don’t recognize.

“Then we do what we have to,” he says.

The room feels suddenly too small.

I stare at him, at the man who raised his voice at me once when I was fourteen, and I cried for an hour because I thought I’d disappointed him. I stare at the man who took me under his wing after my mother died, who paid for my schooling, who taught me to file deeds and keep my spine straight and never let Buckhorn see me bend.

I stare at him and realize I don’t know where loyalty ends, and control begins.

“You want to know why now?” He throws his hands in the air in frustration. “Because if the McCoys build that guest ranch, they cement themselves. They become untouchable. They bring money. Tourists. Attention. The town will wrap itself around them like it always does, and then anything the Longs say will be dismissed as bitterness.”

His chest rises with his breath. He’s worked up now.

“And because,” he continues, “I am tired of swallowing it. I am tired of watching them thrive on what was built from our loss.”

My throat tightens.

Because there it is. Resentment.

A long, festering ache that has become his identity.

“And you,” he says, gaze sharp, “are a Long. Do you understand me?”

I swallow hard.

“Yes,” I say, because I do understand him.

That’s what scares me.

Because I also understand Nash.

And those two understandings are tearing me in half.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Nash