Chapter One #2
I could already hear the conversation Knox and Ransom would have about me before I even hit “call.” Reckless.
Selfish. Ruining the family name. It never seemed to occur to them that maybe I liked the drama, maybe I craved the attention.
Or maybe I just wanted to see if anyone would actually show up when it mattered.
The real secret—the one I’d never admit out loud—was that I’d built my whole adult life around the fear they’d find out exactly what kind of trouble I liked to get into. The kind that left you bruised on the inside, not just the out.
How do you tell your domineering, tattooed, take-no-shit brothers that all you ever wanted was to be dominated yourself? That under the sarcasm and smart mouth, you’d rather kneel than fight?
You don’t.
You just keep running, until one day your legs give out.
I ground the cigarette into the curb, stared at the cracked screen of my phone, and finally did what I’d been dreading since the moment I woke up in the ER. I called home. It rang twice. No more. Knox must’ve had the phone holstered to his chest like a cop on a stakeout.
“Where the hell are you?” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Not dead, thanks for asking,” I said, my voice steady in a way that surprised even me.
“Don’t get smart. Mom’s already lighting candles, and Gramps is pacing the porch like he’s about to shoot the next person up the drive.”
“Tell him to save the ammo for the real criminals.”
There was a silence, the kind that meant Knox was deciding whether to chew me out now or wait until I was in spitting distance. “What happened.”
I kept it simple. “Got jumped. Lost the bike. Need a lift.”
“Hospital?”
“Just a couple stitches. Don’t get sentimental.”
He exhaled, sharp. “You want to talk about it or just keep acting like a goddamn idiot?”
“Send someone with a truck, Knox. That’s all I need.”
“Bo—” He said it like he’d bitten down on the word. “I can be there in four hours. Don’t fucking move.”
I started to say something smart-assed, thought better of it, and let him hang up first. My hand shook, so I stuck it in the pocket of my jeans and dug my thumbnail into my thigh until the feeling passed.
I booked a room at the nearest motel with my last twenty, wincing at the way the woman behind the glass partition stared at my face like she’d seen the same story play out a hundred times. Maybe she had.
“Need anything else, honey?” she asked, sliding the key card across the counter with a pink-nailed finger.
“Got a beer fridge?”
“Down the hall. Vending only.”
“Perfect,” I said. “You got a pen?”
She handed one over. I scrawled my name on the sign-in and tried to make my handwriting legible, even with the swelling in my knuckles. Bo McKenzie. That’s all it took to get a room in this shithole, and maybe that’s all it took to get home.
My room was everything I’d hoped for: threadbare carpet, a queen bed with a dip in the middle, and curtains so thin the neon from the sign outside pulsed through them in cartoon pink and blue.
I tossed my backpack on the floor, then sat on the edge of the mattress and peeled off my shirt.
The gauze on my face was already stained; the bruises on my chest were starting to darken to an ugly green.
The tattoo on my arm—my signature, the only thing I’d ever made that felt real—looked even brighter against the wreckage.
I hit the vending machine, bought the only beer they had—cheap, watery, probably older than me—and sat cross-legged on the bed, staring at my phone until the buzz of the alcohol dulled the ache behind my eyes.
At some point, I realized I hadn’t even told Knox where I was. I snapped a photo of the motel sign, its burnt-out letters spelling MOT L, and texted it with a single word: “Here.”
He didn’t reply.
It was fine.
I didn’t need a reply. I just needed someone to show up.
I sat there, the sweat of old fear drying on my skin, and promised myself that tomorrow, when the truck came, I’d get in.
This time, I’d let someone else do the driving.
The scratchy motel bedspread left impressions on my bare shoulders, like the world’s worst tattoo.
I was pretty sure they didn’t even make polyester this rough anymore—this was the stuff of Reagan-era nightmares, the kind of fabric that came pre-loaded with cigarette burns and the ghosts of a hundred bad decisions.
I hadn’t bothered to change out of my jeans or the t-shirt splattered with dried blood, mostly because I didn’t own anything else that wasn’t similarly trashed.
The whole room felt temporary, like the universe’s idea of a holding cell: threadbare curtains framing a view of the parking lot, floor sticky under my boots, a sour note of disinfectant clashing with the funk of old carpet.
A buzzing neon sign just outside my window flashed the words “MOT L” in epileptic rhythm, the O burnt out and the L barely hanging on.
I stared at the ceiling, the beer sweating in my hand, and tried not to think about how badly I wanted to open the mini-fridge and crawl inside it just to stop my thoughts from spinning.
But I’m a creature of habit, and the first crack of the can—sharp and metallic—was enough to anchor me for a second.
I took a long pull, letting the bitter fizz burn a path down my throat, and waited for the old familiar numbness to set in.
It didn’t.
Instead, I kept thinking about the look on Knox’s face when he saw me tomorrow.
If I even lived that long. I didn’t like the idea of coming home broken, not when I’d spent so many years trying to prove I could stay gone for good.
But after tonight, I had nothing left except the hope that maybe—just maybe—someone from the old crew would show up instead of the family welcoming committee.
I wasn’t sure who that would be. Knox said he’d come himself, but knowing him, he’d send a proxy just to keep me guessing. Maybe Ransom. Maybe one of the farmhands. Or maybe, if God had a sense of humor after all, it’d be Josiah Moxley.
The thought hit me harder than the beer.
Josiah, with his six-foot-four frame and arms like steel cables, his hands always stained with machine oil and motor grease.
He was the kind of man who fixed everything he touched, a giant in battered work boots and a collection of black t-shirts that hugged his chest tight enough to make a point.
He’d been my first crush, my first heartbreak, and the subject of a thousand late-night fantasies that never made it past my own bedroom door.
Not that I ever told him. When you’re sixteen, queer, and the baby brother of half the valley, you learn real fast which secrets are safe to say out loud and which will get you buried.
And besides, Josiah had ten years on me, and the kind of self-control that never let a thing slip unless he wanted it to. I was a non-event to him—Knox’s screw-up sibling, a cautionary tale with a motorcycle and a mean streak.
But sometimes, if the light caught just right, I’d catch him watching me with this look. Like he wanted to say something but couldn’t risk the words.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. I’d always been good at projecting meaning onto blank surfaces.
I finished the beer, tossed the empty in the direction of the trash can, missed by a mile. Cracked open another. My fingers were still trembling from the adrenaline comedown, but the ache in my jaw was enough to ground me.
I reached up and poked at the edge of the tape, testing the tenderness, then let my hand drift down to my right arm. The tattoo sleeve looked even more vibrant here, the motel’s sickly pink glow lighting up the pines and riverbanks and the silhouetted mountains along my forearm.
I’d added to it every time I survived something I shouldn’t have—a new tree, a wolf hidden in the branches, a streak of cloud curling above the valley.
Every time I looked at it, I remembered that leaving home didn’t mean leaving behind the things that mattered. It just meant you had to carry them with you, even when they hurt.
I leaned back against the wall and tried to imagine what it would be like if Josiah actually walked through the door.
He’d take one look at the state of me and probably laugh, that low rumble that shook his whole chest. Then he’d tell me to stand up, dust myself off, and get moving, as if the world was never going to stop to wait for me to catch up.
But then he’d see my hands. The way they shook, the way I cradled my arm like it was broken, the way I kept glancing away because I couldn’t stand to have anyone looking at me too long.
And maybe—just maybe—he’d kneel down to my level. He’d put one of those big, careful hands on my knee, not too hard, not too soft, and he’d say, “You done with all this, Bo? You ready to come home?”
I could see it so clearly it hurt. I could see myself nodding, could see the relief in his eyes, could feel the weight of wanting finally give way to something real.
I squeezed my eyes shut and drank until the can was empty, then started another. The six-pack wasn’t going to make it through the night, but neither was I.
I let my mind wander, let the glow of the neon sign burn holes in my eyelids, and told myself that tomorrow would be different.
That this time, when someone showed up for me, I’d stop running.
That maybe—just maybe—I’d let them put me back together again, even if it meant surrendering the one thing I’d never given up before.
Maybe that’s what I needed all along. To be seen, to be known, even if the person who saw me did it with a wrench in one hand and a smirk on his lips.
I drained the last beer, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and crawled under the covers. They smelled like old detergent and the faintest hint of cedar, and for a second, I let myself pretend it was the scent of home.
Tomorrow, I’d face the consequences.
Tonight, I could dream a little longer.