Page 56 of Tessa and Nash

Maggie crosses the room and squeezes my arm once.

“I’m glad,” she says quietly, so only I can hear. “I’m glad you’re not alone.”

My chest tightens so hard I can’t breathe.

Because I am alone.

I force a smile. “Yeah.”

Tessa’s hand slides to my back, just for a heartbeat. She heard my mother’s words. She felt the way they hit me.

Boone watches that too.

His gaze narrows a fraction.

He knows something’s off.

I don’t know what gives it away, me, her, the way my smile is a little too practiced, the way Tessa’s calm is almost too perfect, but Boone clocks weak fences the way other people clock weather.

And right now, he’s watching for the break.

Tessa looks up at me, and I swear she’s not acting at all.

She’s here, with me, in the middle of the mess, and that does something to my chest that I don’t have a name for.

I swallow hard, set Ellie’s drawing carefully on the counter, and look back at my family. My mother’s softened pride, Rose’s bright warmth, Faith’s delighted joy, Dallas’s quiet watchfulness, Lila’s wary eyes, Boone’s suspicion.

Then I look at Tessa Long, my fake fiancée, my enemy, my rival, my problem.

And I realize something that makes my stomach drop even harder than the lie did.

She’s better at this than I am.

And I don’t just need her to be.

I want her to keep touching me as if it means something.

Which is a whole different kind of disaster.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tessa

January 6th

By morning, Buckhorn knows.

I can tell the second I step onto Main Street and feel the collective attention swing toward me like a weather vane catching a hard gust. Heads turn. Smiles bloom. Whispers scatter and then reform behind steaming coffee cups.

Engaged.

The word hangs over the town as fresh snow. Bright, disruptive, impossible to ignore.

My stomach flips, not with regret, exactly, but with the sharp awareness that this is no longer contained. This isn’t a private strategy between me and Nash anymore.

And I still haven’t told my uncle.

I adjust my scarf and keep walking, posture straight, steps measured. Control first. Panic later.