9. Clay
CHAPTER NINE
Clay
I haven’t slept right in four nights.
Maybe five.
At a certain point it all starts blurring together, one motel ceiling bleeding into the next, one too thin pillow and one flickering digital clock and one long stretch of dark where my body feels tired enough to drop dead but my head just won’t shut the hell up.
It’s this restless hum under my skin. Something’s wrong, and my body knows it before my mind does.
I keep rolling over. Throwing an arm over my eyes.
Kicking the sheets down and dragging them back up ten minutes later.
Listening to the air conditioner rattle because it’s held together by spite and duct tape.
Every time I start to drift, I jerk awake again for no reason.
Just that same sharp pull in my chest, that same feeling of being half a second behind a sensation I can’t name.
By the fifth night, I stop pretending I’m gonna get real sleep and start living on coffee, bad gas station breakfast sandwiches, and whatever adrenaline’s left in me. Men have ridden in worse shape. Hell, I’ve ridden in worse shape. Hungover, bruised, bleeding, pissed off enough to be reckless.
This should be nothing.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
The morning of the ride, my reflection in the motel mirror is a man I wouldn’t trust with anything fragile.
My eyes are bloodshot, my jaw rough with stubble, my skin drawn tighter than it ought to be.
I splash cold water over my face and brace my hands on either side of the sink.
“Get it together,” I mutter.
The guy in the mirror doesn’t look convinced.
The day is already hot. The kind of heat that bakes the dust into everything and makes men meaner by noon.
Trucks and trailers crowd the lot near the arena, sunlight flashing off metal, country music thumping somewhere distant and badly tuned.
A few riders stand around in clusters, hats low, coffee in hand, talking shit as always.
Normal.
Everything about it should feel normal.
Instead I feel off balance before I even get my glove on.
Brandon catches up with me near the chutes, beer belly pushing at his belt buckle even though the bastard can still ride better than half the field.
“You look rough,” he says by way of greeting.
I tug my vest into place. “Morning to you too.”
“I’m serious.” His eyes drag over my face. “You get any sleep?”
“Enough.”
“That bad, huh?”
I huff a laugh that doesn’t carry much humor. “Didn’t say it was bad.”
“Didn’t have to.”
He’s known me long enough to hear what I don’t say. Not many people do.
I flex my hand inside the glove, testing the fit. “I’m fine.”
Brandon gives me that look. The one that says he thinks I’m full of shit but isn’t gonna waste his breath pressing it too hard.
“Fine men don’t look like they got in a fistfight with a motel mattress and lost.”
“I won plenty.”
“Yeah?” He snorts. “Then you’re the first.”
I almost grin, but it doesn’t quite land. My head feels packed with wool, heavy and slow around the edges.
Around us, the arena keeps building toward that familiar pulse. Men hauling gear. Stock contractors barking at each other. The smell of dirt and sweat and livestock thick enough to taste.
Usually it settles me.
Not today.
Today every sound feels one click too loud.
Every movement a fraction too sharp.
I rub a hand over the back of my neck and stare out toward the stands. People are filtering in already, boots on metal bleachers, kids weaving between adults carrying nachos and giant sodas.
The noise crawls over me instead of through me.
“You can scratch,” Brandon says, quieter this time.
I look at him.
He shrugs one shoulder. “No shame in it. Off day’s an off day.”
I bark out a humorless laugh. “You trying to kill my reputation?”
“I’m trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”
“Bit late for that. I ride bulls for money.”
His mouth twitches, but he still doesn’t look amused. “Clay.”
I yank my hat down a little lower. “I’m riding.”
He watches me, measuring whether to push harder. Then he nods once. “Alright. Then wake up before you get on him.”
I tell myself I will.
I stretch, walk, roll my shoulders. I sip coffee so bitter it feels medicinal, splash more water on my face, go through every small familiar motion that usually clicks me into place.
None of it sticks.
By the time they start calling names, my pulse is too high and my thoughts too slow, which is a hell of a combination. I can feel the edges fraying, that split between body and mind where one of them wants to perform and the other one’s lagging because it missed the cue.
Still, when they call me, my body goes.
The chute is hot and alive under me once I climb up.
Metal rattles beneath my boots while the bull shifts in tight, angry bursts of muscle.
He’s a big red brindle son of a bitch with murder in his eye and foam stringing wet from his mouth.
The kind of animal that doesn’t just want you off.
He wants to make a point about it. Normally I love that; the danger clears me up.
I settle my hand into the rope and try to find the center of myself. The place that always shows up at the gate. The place that knows what to do.
It’s there, just dimmer than it should be.
The bull slams one side of the chute, jarring me hard enough that pain bites through my shoulder. My hand slips for half a second.
Half a second.
I catch it again fast, but the miss is enough to send ice-cold darts through my gut.
Focus.
I bend forward, set my grip, and squeeze my thighs in. Dust bursts up around us. Men shout above me and beside me. The gate man glances over, waiting for the nod.
I close my fist tighter around the rope.
This is still mine.
It has to be.
I nod.
The gate snaps open.
The bull explodes out from under me with a force so violent I’m sure I’m getting hit by a truck. His first jump is all height, launching me up and back before my seat’s even settled, and I come down crooked.
Too far to the outside, too slow, I know it instantly.
My body tries to correct, but the signal has to fight through mud to get there. My hips lag. My shoulder pulls late. The bull hits the ground and twists hard to the right, then fires his back end high enough to pitch my chest forward over empty air.
I’m chasing the ride before it’s even started.
“Come on,” I grunt through my teeth, though whether I’m talking to the bull or myself, I couldn’t say.
He bucks again. The motion rips through me, and for one second, I almost find it. That old rhythm. That hard beautiful place where all the violence starts making sense.
Then I lose it again.
The crowd, the announcer, even my own thoughts, it’s all just noise.
Too loud. Too late. Too slow.
The bull spins left now, a nasty switch that should’ve been manageable if I’d been where I needed to be. I’m not. My weight drifts. My free arm cuts wild, trying to catch balance that isn’t there.
The next buck comes lower but harder, all brute force and bad intent, and it jerks me forward enough that my hand nearly comes loose.
Panic flashes white hot through my chest.
I clamp down, drag against the rope, try to haul myself back to center.
The bull gives me nothing.
He drops his front end and kicks up behind so fast the whole world snaps under me. My body pitches sideways. One leg loses contact. My shoulder tears hot. My grip finally breaks the wrong way.
And then I’m gone.
There’s no graceful way to describe being thrown.
One second you’re fighting for it, the next there’s nothing under you at all. Just air, dirt, and a sick, hard realization that you’re no longer in charge of where your body lands.
I hit awkwardly.
My right foot catches under me while the rest of me keeps going, and the force of it twists my leg in a direction no leg was ever meant to go.
The snap is loud enough that I hear it over the crowd. A sharp, wet crack.
Pain detonates through me so fast and so bright it doesn’t feel real at first. Just impossible white heat, blasting up from my lower leg to my spine, so violent it wipes the breath straight from my lungs.
I don’t scream, or at least, I don’t feel the sound rip from me.
The sky flashes black at the edges. Sound goes weird and watery, the roar of the stands dropping far off as if somebody shoved my head underwater. I try to sit up, and my body answers with another burst of agony so savage it almost knocks me out cold right there.
“Fucking hell…”
I fall back into the dirt, chest heaving, vision pulsing in and out. My hat’s gone. My glove’s half off. Every heartbeat slams pain harder through my leg until I can’t tell where the break ends and the rest of me begins.
Somewhere nearby the bull is still moving, hooves pounding, men yelling.
I can’t lift my head enough to track him.
Hands are on me suddenly. Fast and firm. Keeping me down.
“Stay still.”
“Don’t move, don’t move.”
“I got his shoulder…”
Medical team.
Bullfighters.
Voices stack over each other while I grit my teeth so hard my jaw feels might crack too. I force myself to look down.
Big mistake.
My lower leg is wrong.
Bent at a sick angle inside my jeans, boot twisted outward in a way that makes bile claw up my throat.
I suck in through my nose and nearly black out from the effort.
“Look at me,” somebody says.
I drag my gaze up. One of the medics is kneeling over me, sunglasses shoved up on his head, mouth moving calm even while the whole world shakes around us. “You with me?”
“Unfortunately,” I grind out.
That gets the barest ghost of a grim smile. “Good. Need you to stay with me, alright?”
“Kind of busy.”
“You know where you are?”
“Arena.”
“What day is it?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, trying to drag my brain through the pain. “Saturday?”
“It’s Monday.”
“Hell.” I open my eyes again. “That bad, huh?”
“Leg’s broken,” he says. No dancing around it. “We’re gonna get you loaded up.”
Broken.
The word shouldn’t hit harder than the pain already does, but it does. Because pain is pain. Immediate. Animal. Here and now.
Broken means later. Weeks, months, recovery, sitting still.
Broken means not riding.
“No,” I bite out before I can stop myself.
The medic’s expression doesn’t change. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Anger flares hot and stupid, mostly because there’s nowhere else for it to go. “I’m supposed to ride again in…”
My voice cuts off as they start stabilizing the leg.
White explodes across my vision.
I choke on a curse so filthy it’d make Mom slap the back of my head.
“Easy,” somebody mutters.
“Don’t tell me easy.”
But I can hear it now. In the medics. In the men standing nearby pretending not to stare too hard. In the hush that settles weird around a wreck. They all know.
I know too.
Even if I’m not ready to say it.
They slide the brace into place, and every tiny movement is lightning shoved into bone.
Sweat runs cold down my back. Dirt sticks to my arms, my neck, the side of my face.
I can’t get enough breath. I can’t get away from the pain.
I can’t do a damn thing but lie there while strangers work over me because I’m some busted piece of equipment.
Humiliation burns almost as hot as the injury.
I hate this.
Hate the helplessness of it. Hate the way my body just betrayed me in front of everybody. Hate that Brandon was right. Hate that I knew I was off and climbed on anyway.
Mostly I hate that I can already feel the consequence of it settling in deeper than the break itself.
Grounded.