Page 159 of Tessa and Nash

She stares at me, trying to decide whether to slap me or run.

“This is insane,” she says.

“Yep.”

“We’re fake engaged.”

“Started fake,” I snap. “It doesn’t feel fake anymore.”

Her jaw tightens. “We hate each other.”

I shake my head. “We said we hated each other.”

“Nash,” she snaps, “we have a rivalry.”

“We have chemistry,” I fire back.

Her cheeks flush. “That is not⁠—”

“It is,” I insist. “It’s been there forever. We just didn’t have language for it when we were seventeen and stupid and trying to win.”

Her eyes flash. “And the land?”

“I know,” I say, cracking now. “I know. The land is a mess. The families are a mess. The town is a mess. But you…” I swallow hard. “You make sense to me.”

Tessa goes still.

And then she says, very quietly, “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t afford to believe you.”

My chest tightens.

“I love you,” I say anyway. “One of our stupid rules, one I didn’t even think I’d need, was not to fall in love. But I have. I love you, Tessa Long.”

The truth lands between us.

Her breath catches.

I might as well have just handed her a gun and asked her to trust me not to pull the trigger.

“No,” she whispers.

“Yes,” I say, stepping closer until the cold between us disappears. “I do. I love you, Tessa. And I don’t know what to do with it.”

Her hands lift slightly. She might touch me, she might stop me, she might push me away.

In the end, she does nothing.

Her voice comes out strained. “You don’t get to say that like it fixes anything.”

“I’m not saying it fixes anything,” I reply, shaking my head. “I’m saying it because it’s true.”

Tessa swallows hard. “We started this as a lie.”

“I know.”