Page 98 of Tessa and Nash

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s the crack. That’s the shift.

This rivalry has been a story. A script.

And now we’re looking at the original pages and realizing the script was written by people who were scared and hungry and proud.

People who made choices.

People who didn’t finish what they promised to finish.

And we’re standing here, two heirs, doing the same thing. Pretending, lying, trying to control outcomes instead of facing the truth.

I take a step closer, slowly, giving her a chance to stop it.

She doesn’t.

“Neither are you,” I murmur.

Her throat works as she swallows.

“And I…” I start, then stop, because the words are too big, and I’m not brave enough to say them in a room full of ghosts.

So I say the truth I can say.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Tessa blinks, thrown. “For what?”

“For my family only telling half the story,” I say roughly. “For me walking around town acting like this land is clean just because it’s ours on paper.”

Her eyes shine, and it makes my chest ache.

“Don’t,” she says quietly. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Be… honorable,” she snaps. “It makes it harder.”

I blink. “Harder to hate me?”

Her lips part.

She doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t have to.

I don’t know who moves first.

Maybe she does.

Maybe I do.

Maybe the air between us just finally collapses under everything we’re not saying.

But suddenly her hand is on my chest, gripping my coat, anchoring herself, and my own hand, free now because the journal slides on the desk, cups her jaw, gentle in a way that should be a sin.

And the kiss is lightning.

This kiss isn’t careful like the one on Founders’ Day.