Page 170 of Tessa and Nash

I can feel the line I’m standing on. Thin. Sharp.

Thomas reaches for his coffee again, though the motion is more calculated now. “You’re spending too much time with the McCoys.”

I fold my hands in my lap so he won’t see how tense they are. “I’m engaged to one.”

His mouth tightens immediately. “Spare me.” He points lightly with one finger. “Whatever this performance is, don’t let it confuse you.”

Too late.

Catastrophically late.

“I’m not confused,” I lie.

His eyes hold mine for a long moment. “Good.”

I pick up the spoon and force myself to take a bite of soup I cannot taste.

Thomas watches me eat, checking whether I’ve absorbed the lesson.

Finally, he says, “The council won’t want scandal wrapped around a development proposal. Not now. Not with questions already circling.”

I look at him sharply. “Scandal.”

He shrugs. “Perception matters.”

My stomach twists.

There it is, stripped bare. He doesn’t only want the land issue raised. He wants suspicion. He wants the engagement viewed as manipulation. He wants Nash’s project to be contaminated by doubt until no one can touch it without feeling uneasy.

He wants Buckhorn to flinch.

Suddenly, I see Nash again, standing in the bakery window light, looking wrung out as he said they stared at him like he’d lost his mind. He laughed when he said it, but something underneath that laugh had already begun to fray.

I was supposed to help him hold the line.

Instead, at least in my uncle’s mind, I have become one more weapon pointed his way.

The thought makes me nauseous.

“Tessa.”

I look up.

His expression softens, or tries to. On him, it always looks a little rehearsed.

“You did the right thing.”

I recoil, because he still believes that.

He believes proximity equals loyalty and that whatever I learned or saw can be folded neatly back into obedience.

I stand before I can stop myself.

The chair legs scrape sharply against the floor.

Thomas’s brows lift. “Where are you going?”

“Back to work.”