Page 164 of Tessa and Nash

No message.

No explanation.

No I need time or I’m sorry or last night scared me.

Just silence.

Which is, somehow, worse than any of those.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit there, elbows on my knees, head dropped forward. The room smells faintly of soap. My chest tightens. I took a bad breath and forgot how to let it out.

You said too much.

The thought lands clean and sharp, waiting for me to wake up.

I replay it anyway. Because of course I do.

The lane.

The tree.

The way she looked at me when I finally said it out loud. I’d cracked something open she’d been holding shut with both hands.

I love you.

I scrub a hand over my face, drag myself upright, and force my feet to the floor. The cold bites through my socks in the most unkind way.

Honesty. That’s what everyone says they want.

Be honest. Be vulnerable. Say the thing before it rots inside you.

Turns out there’s a fine line between honesty and a controlled demolition.

I dress on autopilot. Jeans, flannel, boots. Same as every other morning, as if routine might fool my body into thinking this is just another day. I catch my reflection in the mirror and pause.

I look wrecked. Worse than hungover—my eyes too sharp, as if I didn’t sleep so much as argue with myself all night.

I don’t know what I expected. That she’d leave me a roadmap for how to fix this? A checklist for how not to be in love with the wrong person at the wrong time?

I shove the phone into my pocket and head out.

The ranch is awake before I am.

The sky is pale and brittle, winter sunlight doing that thing where it looks bright but offers no warmth. Frost clings to the fence rails, and the barn looms, a shape I’ve known my whole life. Rusty trots toward me as soon as he hears the door, tail wagging as if nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.

Lucky bastard.

“Morning,” I mutter, scratching behind his ears.

He leans into it, content, trusting.

I wish I had that kind of certainty.

Inside, Boone is already at the counter with a mug of coffee, scrolling his phone with the kind of frown that means either local politics or cattle prices are misbehaving again. Dallas is at the table, laptop open, fingers flying, glasses perched low on his nose.

They both look up when I come in.

Boone’s gaze sharpens immediately. “You look like hell.”