Page 178 of Tessa and Nash

The thought creeps in before I can stop it.

Clay left.

He chased rodeos halfway across the country and is way happier for it.

Buckhorn never expected him to stay.

Maybe they don’t expect me to either.

And suddenly I’m thinking about Old Mill Road.

About standing in the cold with Tessa while the barn dance music faded behind us, the way the words came out of me before I could stop them.

I love you.

I see it again as if it’s happening right now, her face going still, her eyes widening just a little before all that careful control snapped back into place.

The way she kissed me because she meant it.

The way she ran afterward as if she didn’t.

I haven’t heard from her since.

No message. No explanation. Nothing.

The land is a mess. The council doesn’t trust me. Half the town thinks this engagement is a stunt.

And the one person who made any of it feel like it might work took off the second things got real.

Maybe that’s the answer.

The problem isn’t the ranch or the council.

It’s Buckhorn.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Tessa

February 9th

The fluorescent lights in the Town Hall records office hum softly overhead as I turn another page in the Juniper Creek property file. The thin paper whispers against my fingertips while survey notes, boundary maps, and decades-old amendments spread across the desk in front of me as the scattered evidence of an argument no one has fully examined in half a century.

My eyes burn, though I continue reading.

The clock on the wall says 8:47 p.m., which means the rest of the building emptied hours ago. The cleaning crew has already passed through, and the hallway outside sits so quiet that the old structure occasionally creaks as it settles into the cold night.

I should go home.

Instead, I flip to the next page.

Juniper Creek. Boundary adjustments. Easements granted and amended, and quietly forgotten.

For years, I believed that if a person studied something carefully enough, the truth would eventually emerge in a clear and orderly shape. Information, after all, is supposed to produce clarity.

Tonight, it produces little more than a growing pile of unanswered questions.

I lean back slightly in the chair and press my fingers against my temples, realizing with a dull sense of recognition that for the past eight days I have been extremely productive while accomplishing almost nothing.