Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“There is,” I say. “If you buy the wrong one, the biscuits turn out awful.”
He lets out a low laugh that briefly takes ten years off his face.
I stare out the window before that sound can do something reckless to my heart.
We park in front of Miller’s Market, which is half grocery store, half community bulletin board, and one hundred percent where you will run into someone you owe a polite conversation to while holding a bag of onions.
The bell over the door jingles as we walk in. It takes exactly twelve seconds for the first head to turn. Then another.
Then three more.
Small towns don’t stare the way cities do. Cities are impersonal. Texas stares with investment.
Nash slides a hand to the small of my back. Not possessive. Not squeezing. Just a subtle placement like he’s guiding me through a door.
I freeze for a microsecond.
His thumb moves once—barely a stroke, more of a steadying pulse.
And my traitor body decides to remember what it felt like to be fourteen and breathless and convinced he was the only boy who’d ever matter.
I keep walking.
“Delaney!” Mrs. Hartwell calls from the produce aisle. She’s sixty, unstoppable, and probably responsible for half the town’s marriage proposals through sheer influence. “Back home for good?”
“Back for now,” I say.
Her eyes flick to Nash like she’s assessing a prize bull. “And you, sir?”
“Nash Hawthorne, ma’am.”
“Oh, I know who you are.” The smile she gives him suggests she knows who he was at seventeen, too. “I was beginning to think you’d grown allergic to this town.”
Nash’s hand tightens just a hair at my back. “Just been busy, that’s all,” he says evenly.
Mrs. Hartwell hums and looks between us like she’s reading the last page of a mystery. “Well, isn’t that something.”
It is something. It’s a lot of something.
We escape deeper into the store.
Nash becomes a surprisingly competent grocery partner. He reads labels, double-checks brands, and humors my mother’s handwritten note that says NO STORE-BRAND BUTTER, ABSOLUTELY NOT. He bends close to hear me over the hum of the refrigeration units, and I fight the stupidly intimate urge to rest my forehead against his shoulder like we’re not walking a high-wire act over the canyon of our past.
“Your mom still bossy?” he asks as he tosses coffee into the cart.
I snort. “She’s refined. Like vinegar.”
“Vinegar’s useful.”
“So is a taser. Doesn’t mean I want one in my purse.”
His mouth kicks up.
We hit the checkout line right as two of the ranch wives and one of my old high school classmates appear on the opposite end of the aisle like sharks scented blood in the water.
Nash reaches into the cart, pulls out a pack of gum, and drops it on the belt.
Then he leans in and murmurs near my ear, “We should probably sell this.”
“What?”
“This.” He flicks his gaze toward the unofficial welcome committee. “You want them convinced? Give them a reason to be.”
I swallow. “We’re not—”
“I know.” His voice lowers. “But they don’t.” He turns me slightly by the elbow—gentle, but sure—and brushes a kiss to my temple.
It’s brief. An illusion. A performance.
It still sends a hot, electric line straight down my spine like my body doesn’t recognize the difference between fake and familiar.
The women gasp.
One of them beams like Christmas came early.
I stare at the gum display and focus on breathing.
“Okay,” I mutter when we’re outside again. “Point made. Your method is… effective.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m not.”
He gives me a look that says he has seen worse lies in harder places and survived them.
“I’m fine,” I say softer.
He nods like he’s honoring the line I’m drawing. “Fence next.”
I hate how grateful I am for the subject change.
Back at the ranch, the south fence looks like a mouth with missing teeth. The repair crew is already there, but Gray’s instructions were clear: visibility matters.
So I grab gloves and a toolbox while Nash checks the line, eyes scanning the horizon like he expects the wind to try something.
We work side by side in the sun. Hammering staples. Tensioning wire. Replacing a post that snapped clean at the base. The rhythm of physical labor steadies me—the simple truth of it. You fix what breaks. You keep going.
“Your hands still know what they’re doing,” Nash says after I loop wire with practiced efficiency.
“City didn’t erase me.”
“No.” His voice is low. “It didn’t.”
I glance at him, surprised by the softness I catch there.
The last time we saw each other—
I don’t let my mind finish the sentence.
I don’t let it walk toward that half-remembered night when everything almost tipped into yes and then something else happened. Something sharp enough that time hasn’t dulled it yet. The details are a locked drawer in my chest. I can’t open it while I’m trying to hold this ranch together.
Nash braces a new post while I tamp the dirt around it. We’re close. Too close. Our shoulders brush. A bead of sweat slides down the column of his throat and disappears into the collar of his shirt like a sin.