Page 173 of Tessa and Nash

“No.”

“He hasn’t reached out?”

“Not yet.”

That hurts more than I want to admit. “I panicked, and now I think I’ve wrecked everything.”

I stare into my coffee.

“I stayed close to Nash for reasons that weren’t honest,” I admit.

“And now?”

Now I stay close because when he walks into a room, I know before I look.

Because I can hear the difference between his real laugh and the one he uses when he’s bleeding under the surface.

Because when he said he loved me, some traitorous part of me had been waiting for it.

I stare at the steam rising from my coffee.

“Now I don’t know how to separate what began as strategy from what became… something else.”

Maeve leans back slowly. “That sounds like a real problem.”

Laura passes by and drops a plate of pastries on the table.

Maeve breaks one in half and pushes it toward me. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re in emotional free fall.”

I take a bite.

Finally, Maeve says, “What are you going to do?”

I let out a breath. “I have to decide what side I’m actually on.”

Maeve’s expression softens. “That sounds miserable.”

“It is.”

She nods. “Good. Important choices usually are.”

I look down at my hands around the coffee cup.

Somewhere out there, Nash is probably working, or brooding, or pretending he’s fine badly enough that only a fool would believe it.

The thought aches.

And finally, I let myself admit the simplest truth of all.

I do not want to be on the side that hurts him.

That doesn’t solve anything.

It doesn’t untangle the land or the council or the feud or the lie we built this whole mess on.