by Hanna Hart
The food was great, and his family was warm and welcoming to his girlfriend, just as he was expecting. What he hadn't been expecting was the stilted, flat conversation from Sophia. Every question she answered lacked the usual life she brought to social events, and she hadn't said five words to Catherine.
He thought his best friend would have been all over the girl, questioning her with silly get-to-know-you questions and teasing the couple about how adorable they were, but now it was her turn to be distant.
Somewhere between dinner ending and his mother rising to get dessert from the kitchen, Sophia stood from across the table and whispered something into his mother's ear before disappearing into the house.
He thought she was going in and help wash dishes but based on the look his mother pierced him with, he knew Sophia was leaving.
Why was she leaving without saying goodbye?
“Excuse me a sec,” he said quietly to Catherine, kissing her on the cheek before heading down the side of the house and through the back gate toward the driveway.
As expected, he saw Sophia bound through the front doors of the house and head toward her car.
“Where are you going?” he asked, irritated.
Sophia turned, startled by his voice. “You scared me,” she snapped.
“Where are you going?” he repeated.
“I'm heading out,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, then asked, “Why are you taking off without saying goodbye?”
Sophia set her jaw and turned in the driveway, the pebble drive kicking up under her runners. “Why didn't you tell me you had a girlfriend?” she asked impatiently.
“It was new.”
“So?” she rebuffed quickly. “I tell you what I had for breakfast! You can't give me the decency of letting me know that you're falling in love with somebody? What kind of friendship is this?”
“Considering you think telling me what you eat for each meal of the day is normal? I would say a pretty strange one,” he laughed.
Sophia narrowed her eyes, unamused.
“Oh, come on, Soph!” he said as she started to walk down his driveway toward the road. “What are you doing? You gonna leave your car here and walk home like a baby?”
She crossed her arms. “Sounds good to me!”
“You're blocking people in,” he said, coming up beside her as she trailed down the sidewalk. He walked with her in silence, irritated at her petulance for seemingly no reason.
Once they had walked a safe distance from his house, he asked, “What's wrong with you?”
He could see Sophia was clenching her teeth. Her eyes were glassy, though out of anger or the desire to cry, he couldn't tell. He wasn't accustomed to Sophia crying, so the very sight of tears in her eyes made him stop cold.
Nash pulled her hand into his. “What?” he asked, his tone soft with worry.
“Oh, Nash,” she sighed, pulling her hands from his with embarrassment. “Why'd you have to go and do that?”
“Do what?”
“Nash,” she repeated, her eyes darting back and forth from his. “I told you I wanted to talk to you when you got back,” she enunciated.
“Uh-huh,” he nodded.
“About us,” she specified.
“Look, I'm sorry that I said I was in love with you,” he explained quickly. “I know it put our whole friendship in jeopardy, and I don't want to do anything that's going to make you uncomfortable. You were right. We would be all wrong together.”
Sophia thinned her lips. She looked defeated, her sad eyes looking up at him bashfully. With a shrug, she said, “Or maybe not.”
“Or maybe...?” he began, then drew his brows together and stopped short. “What?”
“You were right, okay?” she said, louder than she'd likely meant to. “I love you! I love you, and I'm in love with you, and you were stupidly right about everything and I wanted to tell you that we should be together today but you brought your stupid girlfriend here and—”
Nash's heart was pounding furiously. He was overcome with a sweeping joy he had never experienced before and couldn't bring himself to let her finish her thought. Before he knew it, he was tilting his head to the side and leaning in to catch her mouth. His lips pressed against hers, soft and dry, then suddenly full of all the passion that had been waiting to be released for years.
He set his hand on her waist and pulled her close and she ran her delicate fingers up the side of his face. They stayed like this for what felt like forever. Then the kiss broke.
“You want to be with me?” he repeated, almost afraid to say the words out loud.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Then I want to be with you,” he said, and he broke up with sweet Catherine that very night.
Nash remembered that as one of the best nights of his life, and now here they were again in the same town, under the same roof. Maybe the years had matured Sophia. Maybe she was ready for him now.
As he looked over at her, listening to the storm and watching the way her curly brown hair hit the pillow of the pull-out couch, he suddenly felt a spark of hope lilt inside of him. He began to think, why shouldn't they try again?
Didn't she come into his life for a reason?
Was she God's gift to him? A way out of this depression? A second chance to make things right?
Sophia made it easy to love her, and that was the hardest part of being around her. He immediately remembered all of the things she did that made him happy and promptly forgot why they'd broken up in the first place.
They had an easy connection, and after just a week of spending time together, he already felt like they were friends again.
Then he remembered Wesley.
She was dating Wesley now—and that was going to make things very complicated for Nash.
But then again, maybe complicated looked good on him.
Chapter Ten
Sophia
Leaving the house after being witness to a tornado touching down was like getting a second chance at life.
Sophia, Imogene, and Nash had all driven through the town the next morning to see what had happened to Tillsonburg.
The devastation left by the tornado had been thankfully mild, a few buildings were damaged, and some crops destroyed, but overall, the town had been left unscathed.
In need of a huge cleanup, sure, but nothing they couldn’t handle.
There was an overwhelming sense of community in the days to follow, and Sophia loved seeing how all of the little shops and businesses came together to help one another out. Some coffee shops offered free donuts and coffee to the construction workers and city employees who were in charge of making Tillsonburg beautiful again.
“This is why I love this town,” Nash said in an uncharacteristic show of affection. “We’re like family.”
“I’ve always heard people say that about small towns,” she mused. “But I never really understood it until now.”
Sophia did all that she could to help out in the days after, following along with Lauren to help beautify the community and offering discounted milk from her farm to one of the bakeries that had been all but demolished by the storm.
You can’t get any flowers without a little rain, her aunt used to say. And as the weeks went by, broken Tillsonburg returned to normal.
No, it was better than normal. It was a tight-knit community, and now Sophia was a part of it. The devastation brought them all together.
When life began to return to normal, Wesley started coming around a lot more. He helped her clean up around the farm and took her and Imogene out to dinner a few times.
He was a sweet guy. He was simple and kind, and that’s what drew her to him.
The men in her life, though they had been relatively few, hadn’t been anything like Wesley.
When she was fifteen years old, there was Dwayne. He was tall and dark-skinned and incredibly handsome, but he was into sports, and she couldn’t have cared less.
They d
ated off and on, never quite seriously, for a year and a half until they both went off to college.
He was a rough and tumble guy and incredibly jealous, but fun and carefree, just like her.
They both grew up with dysfunctional families. He was raised by his grandparents and Sophia by her aunt and uncle, and she always appreciated that he could understand that part of her. The part that felt abandoned.
Then there was Nash—her only truly serious relationship.
He was sweet, sure, but not in the way Wesley was. Wesley was a kind soul. There was something wholesome about his affection, something that screamed, “Let’s be a family!”
Nash was wild. He was a cowboy through and through.
He was a complex mixture of honest and strong. He liked things done a certain way, he was a deep thinker, knew how to laugh at himself, and was happiest when he was working with his hands or with a horse—not in the office.
Nash was also incredibly stubborn. If you didn’t do something the way he wanted it, he was done with you.
Sophia knew that firsthand.
Then, of course, there was August. She hadn’t been in love with August, in the same way that she could never picture herself falling in love with Wesley. But she wanted to.
It was a sunny Wednesday morning, and Sophia took the day off to go on a tour of Havenview Ranch with Wesley and Imogene.
He’d taken her around for a brief tour of the property and then left her in the lobby of the main ranch. He was going to bring her on one of Havenview’s most popular experiences and told her it would be about ten minutes.
Never one to wait around, Sophia promptly wandered away from the lobby to go and find Nash.
It would be rude not to say hello, after all.
“Surprise!” Imogene cheered as she and Sophia barged in through Nash’s office door.
“What are you doing here?” he said in surprise, looking up from his computer monitor.
“Getting a tour of the ranch,” she grinned.
“From...?” he asked, then promptly answered his own question. “Ah. From Wesley?”
“Yeah, he's just setting up one of the experiences for us right now. He told me to wait by the restaurant, but I thought I would wander around until I found you.”
“I'm surprised you did. My secretary is usually pretty good about keeping the riff-raff out,” he winked, and Sophia couldn’t help but giggle.
“Well, I'm pretty persuasive,” she said.
Nash stood from the desk and walked over to them, and she could feel her pulse quicken.
Being around Nash was like receiving an incredible dose of chemistry. She didn’t want to flirt with him or think about him, but she couldn’t seem to stop either.
“How you likin' the ranch, Imogene?” he asked.
“It's okay,” her daughter said with a shrug.
“It's okay?” he repeated in a higher pitch than his usual voice.
“I think it's pretty cool,” he said. “Have you seen the horses?”
“Horses?” Imogene repeated, her eyes going wide with excitement. “No!”
“Aww, then you haven't seen the best part!” he grinned, and her heart began to swell as she watched him interact with her daughter. “We have the prettiest horses in the whole wide world!”
“Rainbow horses?” Imogene asked.
“Alright, not that cool,” Nash chuckled. “But I think you'll be impressed. There are pony rides, too.”
“Wow!” her daughter swooned. “Can you take me?”
“Ah, I think Wesley is going to take you, sweetie,” he said.
“I want you to!” Imogene insisted.
Nash looked up at Sophia and offered a devilish smile.
“She wants you,” Sophia said with a shrug.
“Yeah, and how do you think Wesley is going to feel about that?”
“Hey, you're just the owner of the ranch,” she said, not-so-secretly hoping he would come out with them. “You’d just be showing us around. Nothing wrong with that. I think it would be rude for you not to come and give Imogene some special treatment.”
“I don't think Wesley would see it that way,” he said. “Though I'll be curious to know what you think of the ranch.”
“So far, so good. Very good, in fact.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
She had been impressed by the ranch, though not surprised at how wonderful it had turned out. She always knew that Nash would be an amazing ranch owner one day.
It had different amenities, like a spa and pool, along with skeet shooting, fly fishing, horse trails, and cowboy campouts.
Beyond the business side of things, she could see Nash’s hand everywhere in the property. When she saw the woodwork in the lobby around the desk, she knew he must have been the one to carve it.
“You done good,” she teased, gesturing around his immense office. “Really good.”
Nash looked pleased with her response, but he dropped the subject quickly.
“So, do you have a full day with Wes or...?” he trailed off slowly. “Can you want to meet me later?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?” he repeated with amusement. “Just like that? You don't even want to know what I want to do?”
“I assume whatever it is has gentlemanly undertones,” she said coyly.
“You know what they say about assuming,” he flirted back, and she blushed.
Talking to Nash was a familiar game of cat and mouse. The two were always trying to best one another, to be clever and charming, to make the other desire them.
Only this time, she didn’t know if she was the cat or the mouse.
“There you are!” Wesley greeted in his friendly way as he walked through the office doors. “Hey, man,” he gestured to Nash briefly before turning to Sophia and asking, “You guys ready to go?”
She nodded. “Just came in to say hi.”
Wesley raised his brows, not irritated but not entirely comfortable either as he said, “And now you have. Come on, let's head out.”
For the rest of the afternoon, she and Wesley went on a stagecoach ride. This experience was meant to mimic the frontier days, helping guests understand what it was like to ride in horse and buggy and took them into a section of the ranch devoted to the true cowboy experience.
The small section looked like a movie set from the old west. There were four buildings on the right of the lot and four on the left. There was a saloon, a market, a city hall, a restaurant, and a few other buildings designed to look like the old frontier.
At first, Sophia thought it would be boring to spend her afternoon learning about the old west, but she ended up enjoying herself. After the tour, Wesley took Imogene to a small petting zoo, and she squealed with delight as she gently stroked one of the oversized lop-eared rabbits' plush coat.
“Is it weird for you?” Wesley asked as he stared down into the rabbit pen and watched Imogene with amusement.
“What?” Sophia asked.
“Being around Nash, I mean.”
“Oh,” she said, drawing the word out. This was the first time Wesley had brought Nash up, and she wasn't quite sure where he was going with it or why he wanted to know.
“Maybe a little bit, but not in a bad way,” she admitted. “It's always weird to see someone you knew when you were still a teenager. But no, it's alright.”
“I think that's amazing that you guys can be friends after. I'm surprised, really. Nash isn't all that...” he trailed off, adjusting his cowboy hat.
“Forgiving?” she giggled.
“Hey, you said it, not me,” he laughed. “He's a great guy, but I know how he is with women. It's my way or the highway.”
“He's a man who knows what he wants,” she said definitively, watching her daughter chase the rabbits in the petting zoo. “Be nice, Imogene!”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Wesley said, tilting his head to the side. “I like to think I'm a little more accommodating than that.”
>
“Oh, you definitely are,” she smiled. “You're probably the nicest guy I've ever dated; you know that?”
“And you are definitely the prettiest girl,” he said.
“Stop now, or you're gonna make me blush.”
“I like making you blush,” he responded, and it was probably the most outward flirting he'd done with her. She leaned against the wooden banister and looked up at him, wondering if he was going to kiss her. He did, but it was just a friendly peck.
“So why did you guys break up, if you don't mind my asking?” he wondered aloud. “If it's private, you don't have to answer.”
Sophia blinked in surprise. “You don't know?”
“Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head.
Sophia swallowed, unsure now how to respond. She'd always believed that honesty was the best policy, but if Nash didn't tell him, it was probably for a reason. She said this, and Wesley argued that Nash didn't tell anybody anything.
“And to be fair,” he continued, “I didn't even know you existed until a couple of weeks ago.”
“Nash never talked about me?” she asked, and Wesley shook his head.
“He doesn't talk about his past at all. He doesn't even talk about growing up in Dallas.”
“Aren't you supposed to be his best friend?” she snorted, but Wesley looked stung by the comment. “I'm just kidding around,” she said, setting a hand on his arm. “I get it. Nash is a private person. He always has been. But I’m not about to get in trouble with him by telling you.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Not bad, per se,” she said hesitantly. “He might find it a little embarrassing, that’s all.”
“Oh, now you’ve got me even more intrigued!”
Sophia giggled. “Ask Nash,” she said. “If he gives you the headline, I’ll fill in the blanks.”
Chapter Eleven
Nash
Nerves ran through Nash as he made his way to the stables at his ranch. He’d asked Sophia to meet him around nine that night, given she wasn’t sick of the ranch and wasn’t still with Wesley.
