Page 171 of Tessa and Nash

“You barely touched your lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.”

He studies me, irritation flickering beneath the calm. “You should be pleased, Tessa. Truly. The town is finally taking the threat seriously.”

I reach for my gloves. “Maybe the town should take the truth seriously.”

The second the words leave my mouth, the air goes still.

“That,” Thomas says softly, “depends entirely on whose truth you mean.”

I meet his eyes and realize, with uncomfortable clarity, that I am very close to losing whatever easy version of family I once believed in.

Because I cannot unknow what I know.

And I cannot unknow Nash.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Tessa.”

I pause.

His voice changes, turning firmer, the tone that used to make me straighten at sixteen because I thought being good meant being unquestioning.

“Do not let sympathy make you stupid.”

My hand tightens around my gloves. “And don’t mistake silence for agreement.”

His face hardens.

I think he might say something unforgivable.

Instead, he nods once, clipped and cold. “Go on, then.”

So I do.

I leave the dining room with my spine straight and my pulse hammering, the old house suddenly feeling less a shelter than a museum of every version of me that learned how to survive by being useful.

The front door shuts behind me with a sound that feels like escape.

Outside, the air is brutally cold, sharp enough to sting all the way into my lungs. Snow still clings in dirty ridges along the curb. Buckhorn moves around me in its usual slow winter rhythm.

I stand on the steps, breathing.

Then I start walking.

Not back to Town Hall.

I need noise, movement, something less suffocating than polished wood and Thomas’s satisfaction.

My boots carry me toward Main Street before I consciously choose it, past the feed store, past the bakery window where Clara arranges Valentine’s cookies, past familiar faces that know far too much about everyone’s business.

I keep my expression composed.

Inside, I am a mess of shame and fury and want.

By the time I reach the Rusty Mug Café, my hands are shaking enough that I shove them into my coat pockets.