11. Clay
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Clay
Turns out coming home busted feels a whole lot different than coming home by choice.
That probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does anyway.
The drive back to Buckhorn is a blur of pain, road noise, and the kind of exhaustion that feels mean.
By the time Boone pulls into the yard, my leg is throbbing so hard I can taste it.
Every bump in the road has worked its way straight up into my spine, and the pills they gave me at the hospital have left my head wrapped in cotton, without doing nearly enough for the pain underneath it.
Worst of both worlds. “Careful,” Boone mutters as I swing the truck door open.
“I know how to get out of a damn pickup.”
“Not on one leg, you don’t.”
I glare at him, but it loses some bite when I have to suck in through my teeth just to stand up. The crutches are awkward under my arms, the cast heavy and wrong, dragging at me in a way that makes my whole body feel off balance.
I hate it before I’ve even taken three steps.
Mom’s already on the porch before we make it up the steps, wiping her hands on a dish towel because she probably hasn’t stopped moving since she got the call. Her eyes land on the cast first. Then my face.
The look that passes over hers is quick. Worry, anger, relief, all jammed together tight enough she can barely show any of it without the rest spilling loose.
“Well,” she says, clipped in that way she gets when she’s feeling too much. “You made a proper mess of yourself.”
I snort once. “Good to see you too, Mom.”
She steps forward anyway, one hand brushing my arm, brief and firm. A check. A confirmation that I’m really here.
“Get inside.”
It’s easier to obey than argue.
Everything in the house is too familiar. The smell of coffee long gone stale in the pot, lemon cleaner, bacon grease sunk into the walls from decades of breakfasts. The old clock over the stove ticking louder than it ought to.
Mom’s got me set up in my old room by dinnertime.
Boone hauled my bag in. Dallas found extra pillows.
Faith appeared with water and instructions I ignored on principle.
Tessa hovered in the doorway with baby Hailey tucked against her shoulder, probably because she wanted to help but didn’t know how.
Nash offered me a beer before Mom told him if he handed alcohol to a man on painkillers under her roof she’d knock him into next week.
That almost made me smile.
By dinner, the whole thing’s already a punishment I didn’t agree to.
The cast itches. The meds make my head swim. Everybody’s talking softer around me, moving with that careful energy people get around the injured. Clearly, they think I might break worse if they shut a cabinet too hard.
I’d rather they yell.
At least yelling feels normal.
Instead, Boone asks if I need help getting to the table.
“No.”
Dallas asks if the pain’s manageable.
“Sure.”
Faith wants to know if I’ve eaten enough.
“Probably.”
Mom asks whether I took the pill on schedule.
I look at her over my plate. “I’m not six.”
“No,” she says. “At six you were easier.”
Nash laughs into his drink. Boone doesn’t. He’s got that older brother look on, the one that makes him seem about twenty years older than the rest of us, as if he came out of the womb already disappointed in my decision-making.
I push food around my plate and let the conversation move without me.
Rose talks about Ellie’s summer reading list. Faith tells some story about Brooklyn blowing out a diaper at the exact wrong moment.
Tessa is half listening, half staring at Hailey in adoration.
Nash keeps reaching over to touch the top of his daughter’s head because he still can’t quite believe she’s real...
“That’s enough brooding to sour the whole table,” Mom says.
I look up. “Was I brooding?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe my face just does this naturally.”
“It doesn’t,” Dallas says dryly.
Faith snorts. “No, your face usually looks more smug.”
That gets a real laugh out of Rose. Even Boone’s mouth twitches. I roll my eyes and reach for my glass.
The movement sends a sharp ache up from my leg and the room tilts just slightly with it.
I set the glass down harder than I mean to.
Silence flickers.
Then Mom says, “You don’t have to be in such a hurry to heal that you make yourself miserable.”
“I’m not miserable.”
That earns me six matching looks from around the table.
Hailey lets out a tiny sleepy squeak against Tessa’s chest, and somehow that only makes it worse.
I push my chair back. “I’m done.”
“You barely ate,” Faith says.
“Not hungry.”
Mom opens her mouth.
“Don’t,” I warn.
Her chin lifts. “Fine.”
That’s worse than if she’d kept going.
I get myself out of the kitchen on the crutches with more noise than grace, shoulders tight, jaw tighter. Every step back down the hall is as hard as losing a fight to gravity.
By the time I shut the bedroom door behind me, I’m sweating. I’m angry at the cast, the pain, the stupid useless throb of my own body. The way everybody looks at me now as some storm-damaged thing that needs careful handling.
I drop onto the bed hard and suck a curse through my teeth when the leg jostles.
“Perfect,” I mutter to the ceiling.
The pills sit on the nightstand beside a sweating glass of water. White bottle. Childproof cap. Helpful little label that might as well read Take as needed and kiss your dignity goodbye.
I stare at it, then take one anyway, because pain is one thing when you’re moving through it.
Different thing entirely when you’ve got nothing to do but sit there and let it gnaw.
The next day is worse.
And the day after that’s worse in a new way.
Pain and boredom start circling each other until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. The pills dull the sharpest parts but leave me slow and fuzzy. There’s cotton packed behind my eyes. I hate that more than I hate the pain, which is saying something.
Mom notices by breakfast. “You look strange.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t get smart with me. Did you take the medicine?”
“Yes.”
“Then eat.”
“I'm eating.”
“You’re stabbing eggs.”
I look down. Fair enough.
Across the table, Wyatt swings his legs under his chair and watches me with the open curiosity only little kids get away with. “Does your leg hurt?”
“All the time.”
He considers that. “That sounds bad.”
“Sure does.”
Ellie, sitting straighter and quieter beside Rose, asks, “Are you gonna have to stay here a long time?”
I swallow hard. Too hard. “A little while.”
Boone glances up from his coffee. “Doctor said six weeks before they reevaluate.”
Six weeks.
The words slam down hard.
Wyatt wrinkles his nose. “That’s forever.”
“Yep,” I say. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
Rose shoots Boone a look that says maybe don’t phrase things like a prison sentence in front of your wounded brother and children at the same time. Boone ignores it.
That’s one of his gifts.
After breakfast, they all try in their own way.
Boone brings me ranch accounts and says if I’m gonna sit around, I might as well make myself useful.
I stare at the ledger in his hands. “You trying to kill me faster?”
“It’s numbers, not poison.”
“Debatable.”
Dallas offers to sit out on the porch with me and have a beer later, then remembers the painkillers and changes it to coffee. As if that’s an even trade.
Nash asks if I wanna help him brainstorm ideas for the guest ranch because “you’re good with people when you’re not being an ass.”
“That the official sales pitch?”
“Pretty much.”
Faith drops by with a sandwich I didn’t ask for and a lecture about not taking meds on an empty stomach.
Rose brings Ellie and Wyatt to say hi, which really means Wyatt climbs onto my bed while Ellie hovers nearby with a shy little smile and asks if I want to see the frog she found by the horse trough.
Tessa just sits for a while in the armchair with Hailey asleep against her, talking soft about nothing much. Baby things. Ranch things. The weather. It should be annoying. Instead it’s almost worse than the others because she’s gentle about it.
Nobody’s trying to drag me into a better mood; they’re just… there, and none of it works.
Not really.
Because every good thing they offer’s a reminder.
You’re here because you can’t leave.
You’re sitting because you can’t stand.
You’re surrounded because everyone else kept building lives while you kept running in circles.
By nightfall, my skin feels too tight for my body.
I stop taking the pills as often just to feel more myself, which is a stupid decision and I know it. But pain at least is clean. Pain doesn’t fog everything over. Pain doesn’t make me trapped inside someone softer and slower and easier to handle.
Pain just hurts. I can work with hurt. Mood’s another thing.
It settles mean in me by the third night.
Low and dark and restless. I snap at Nash when he knocks my crutch over by accident.
Tell Boone to quit looking at me as a problem he has to solve.
Tell Mom I can get my own damn water, which is technically true if by “get” you mean wage war against a set of stairs and lose.
She doesn’t fight me on it.
That’s how I know I’ve crossed a line.
She just says, very flat, “Alright, Clay,” and leaves the room.
That should be a win.
Instead it sits heavy in my chest all evening.
By midnight the house is quiet.
I’m awake, of course, listening to the McCoy Ranch sounds. Pipes ticking. Wind shifting against the siding. A baby making small restless noises down the hall. One of the floorboards settling. Rusty thumping once in his sleep somewhere on the porch.
I lie there staring at the dark for a long time.
Then I reach for my phone.
Her name sits there in the message thread, a dare.
Josie
I haven’t looked at it since the hospital. Since before that ride. Since before everything went sideways.
My thumb hovers.
Then I open it.
The first message I hit is from a week and a half ago.
Josie: Hope you survived your giant ego after that win.
A laugh catches in my throat before I can stop it.
I scroll back in time.
There’s a picture she sent of some goat at the clinic wearing a traffic cone as a crown.
Josie: His name is Bernard, and he has the temperament of a violent old man.
I grin into the dark.
Another one.
Josie: Penny says I’m supposed to remind you that confidence is only attractive if supported by evidence.
Clay: Good thing I’ve got plenty of that.
Josie: Debatable.
There she is.
Dry as dust. All that neat controlled distance with a little spark tucked under it. Even in text, I can hear her voice. The quiet bite of it. The way she holds herself just a little too tight because if she loosens her grip on anything it might all spill.
I keep scrolling.
A stupid amount of our messages are nothing much. Jokes. Pictures from the road. One of her coffee cups on the clinic desk. One of my boots propped on the chute rail. Her complaining about Mrs. Sanderson’s cat. Me telling her she sounded mean for a woman who smelled of soap and trouble.
That one got me a full ten minutes of silence before she answered.
Josie: I do not smell like trouble.
Clay: That’s exactly what trouble would say.
My smile comes easier now.
That surprises me.
The room is still dark. My leg still hurts. I’m still stuck here in Buckhorn with my body laid up and my head not much better.
But for the first time all day, the tension loosens.
I stop on a message from three nights after the fall.
Josie: You still awake?
I was.
Didn’t answer.
I scrub a hand over my face and keep reading.
There are two more after that.
Josie: Long day?
Josie: Or are you ignoring me on purpose for character-building reasons?
I couldn’t respond then—I didn’t have the strength—and now… now it’s probably been too long, right? I mean, what’s she supposed to think? That I got bored, moved on, found someone easier in some bar after a ride.
I’m sure she’d rather speak to that guy again than to me.
I’m no longer far away from her, but I also can’t see her while I’m this way. Luckily, she doesn’t know any of that, so why don’t I…
Clay: Little bit of both.
I erase it. Too flippant.
Try again.
Clay: Broke my leg.
Erase. Too abrupt. Too much.
I stare at the blank text box.
Then my thumb starts moving before I can overthink it.
Clay: Been off the grid. Sorry. Had a bit of drama but all good… how about you?
I read it twice, almost delete the whole thing. Instead I hit send.
The message flies off into the dark, and suddenly I’m wide awake in a whole new way.
I set the phone on my chest and wait.
Nothing.
Which is reasonable. It’s past midnight. She’s probably asleep. She has work. A real life. Better things to do than answer the idiot who dropped off the face of the earth and then resurfaced with a broken leg and an apology.
Still, my eyes keep drifting back to the screen.
One minute.
Three.
Seven.
No typing bubble.
No reply.
The phone stays dark.
And I lie there in the room I grew up in, leg broken, body aching, head too full, listening to the quiet stretch wider around me while the one person I actually wanted to hear from says nothing at all.