13. Clay
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Clay
Somebody pounds on my door as if the house is on fire.
I jerk awake, mean and disoriented, heart kicking hard against my ribs before my brain catches up enough to realize I’m not in a motel, not at an arena, not late for a ride.
I’m in Buckhorn, back in my old room with a broken leg, and that pretty much sums up the misery.
“Go away,” I mutter, dragging my forearm over my eyes.
The pounding comes again.
“Rise and shine,” Boone calls through the wood, way too damn cheerful for this hour. “Need your help.”
I crack one eye open and squint at the thin stripe of daylight cutting through the curtains. “You got three other brothers.”
“Not the ones I need.”
“That sounds made up.”
“Get up, Clay.”
I let my head fall back against the pillow and consider pretending I died in my sleep just to get some peace, but the door swings open a second later because apparently privacy no longer exists when you’re injured and trapped under your mother’s roof.
Boone steps in already dressed for the day, hat on, boots dusty, with his broad shoulders blocking half the light from the hall.
I glare at him. “You ever hear of politeness?”
“I did knock.”
“You also entered when I told you to go away.”
He shrugs. “You weren’t moving.”
“I was sleeping.”
“Exactly.”
I push myself up with a curse as my leg throbs in protest, the cast heavy and hot. “What could you possibly need from me before eight in the damn morning?”
Boone leans against the doorframe, arms folded. “Fence check down by the east pasture.”
I stare at him. “That’s your emergency?”
“Couple boards came loose in the night. Need someone to hold nails and keep Rusty from stealing the hammer.”
I blink. “You woke me up to babysit a dog?”
“No.” His mouth twitches. “I woke you up because you’ve been sulking in bed for days and Mom’s about one snapped plate away from marching in here herself.”
“I’m not sulking.”
He just looks at me.
“Alright,” I say. “Still doesn’t explain why that requires me and my busted leg.”
“Fresh air will do you good.”
“You sound like Mom.”
“Maybe because she’s right more than you are.”
I flip him off, which only makes him grin.
That pisses me off.
He pushes off the frame. “Five minutes.”
“This is harassment.”
“Five,” he repeats, and disappears back down the hall.
I mutter a string of curses under my breath while I drag myself upright. Every movement feels off. The crutches dig into my hands, my balance is shot, and getting dressed with one useless leg is its own special kind of humiliation.
By the time I make it to the kitchen, the house already smells of coffee and bacon.
Mom glances up when I come in. “Look who’s alive.”
“Debatable,” I mutter.
She slides a plate onto the table. “Eat.”
“I’m going with Boone.”
“Then eat faster.”
I lower myself into a chair with as much dignity as a man can manage while half crippled and under surveillance. “You all this bossy because Dad’s not here to distract you from me?”
The second it leaves my mouth, I know it was the wrong thing.
Mom’s expression doesn’t change, but Boone, stepping back in through the mudroom, goes still for half a beat.
Shit. I drag a hand over my face. “I didn’t…”
Mom sets the knife down. “Eat your breakfast, Clay.”
That flat tone is worse than if she’d snapped, so I shut up and shovel eggs into my mouth as if that’ll fix anything.
It doesn’t.
By the time Boone and I head outside, I’m in an even fouler mood than when he dragged me out of bed.
The morning’s cool enough to bite a little, the kind that still holds onto the night before the sun starts baking the dust up out of the ground.
The yard stretches wide and familiar around us, all fences and outbuildings and long shadows, with the cattle lowing somewhere distant and the first light catching on the weathered boards of the barn.
Rusty trots up the second we hit the porch steps, old red heeler body low and wiggly, ears crooked, eyes bright with the particular expression of a dog who thinks every human activity exists purely for his entertainment.
He circles me once, sniffs my cast, and sneezes loudly.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I hate it too.”
He thumps his tail against my good leg.
Boone tosses tools into the bed and jerks his chin at me. “Get in.”
I look at the passenger seat. “You know this still feels dramatic, right?”
“You gonna climb in or keep whining?”
“Bit rich coming from a man who married the first woman who looked at him too sweet.”
He huffs a laugh. “Get in, jackass.”
The ride out to the east pasture is rough enough that every bump jars pain through my leg despite Boone trying to take it easy. I grit my teeth and stare out across the ranch instead of giving him the satisfaction of knowing it hurts.
The land rolls out big and dry under the morning sun, all gold grass, sage, and fence lines cutting through it as old scars. The mountains sit blue in the distance. Same view I grew up with. Same ground I used to tear across on horseback before I got old enough to start itching under my own skin.
Boone parks near the fence and kills the engine. “There.”
I look.
There are only three loose boards to deal with, a repair so minor it barely feels worth calling a chore.
I turn slowly toward him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“You dragged me out here for three boards.”
He grabs the tool belt from the dash. “Told you it was simple.”
“That’s not help. That’s pity.”
His jaw ticks once. “You want to lie in bed all day and rot? That’s your plan?”
“My plan was sleep.”
“Your plan has been acting like the world ended because you can’t climb on a bull for a while.”
I bark a short laugh. “For a while.”
Boone slams the truck door and comes around to the fence. “Yeah. For a while.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Probably. Since I’m not the one laid up.”
Heat flashes through me. “No kidding.”
He looks at me a second, then tosses me the box of nails. I catch it awkwardly against my chest.
“Hand me those,” he says.
I stare at the box, then at him, standing there broad and capable with a hammer in one hand because he belongs to this place in some easy, unquestioned way.
That’s the thing, isn’t it?
He does.
Dallas does too. Nash, even when he acts idiotically, still fits here. They’ve all got roots sunk deep into this place.
I never seem to land long enough to grow any.
I crutch myself over and hand him nails while he fixes the boards with quick, practiced movements. Rusty hovers between us, trying to snatch one from the open box every time I look away. Once, he gets the hammer and trots three limping steps before Boone swears and takes it back.
That should almost be funny.
It isn’t enough.
Out here, for some reason, my mind keeps drifting to her. Josie.
The last message I sent her. The one she didn’t answer.
I tell myself I don’t care. That she’s busy, or over it, or just better at keeping things casual than I am.
Still… it sits there. Unfinished. I hate that.
I stand there useless as a fence post, torturing myself, while Boone does ninety percent of the work.
“You could sit,” he says without looking at me.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s June.”
He drives in another nail. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
That gets an ugly laugh out of me. “Little late for that.”
Boone straightens, wipes the back of his wrist across his forehead, and gives me a look that’s too direct for this early in the day. “Nobody here thinks less of you because you got hurt.”
I shift my grip on the crutch. “Didn’t say they did.”
“You act like it.”
“Well, maybe I don’t like standing around while you all find tasks pathetic enough for the burden to manage.”
His expression hardens. “Knock that shit off.”
I look away, out over the pasture.
A few cows move slowly through the grass. Wind skims over the field and lifts the edge of Boone’s shirt. Rusty sits on my boot and pants as if this is the best morning of his life.
“Clay.”
I don’t answer.
Boone exhales through his nose. “You’re my brother. Not a burden. Not a project. Not some stranger we’re stuck with. We’re just trying to keep you from climbing the walls.”
I stare at the horizon harder.
Because the problem with Boone saying something real is that I never know what to do with it.
“Fence is fixed,” I say finally.
He nods once. “Yep.”
And just like that, he lets me off the hook, which makes me feel worse.
The afternoon settles hot over the ranch.
After lunch, Mom corners me before I can disappear back into my room.
“Come with me,” she says, already heading for the pantry.
I pause in the hall. “That sounds threatening.”
“It’ll be more threatening if I have to ask twice.”
So I follow her.
She’s canning peaches, because of course she is. The kitchen counters are covered in bowls, jars, and towels, sunlight slanting in through the window over the sink and catching on the steam rising from a big pot on the stove. The whole room smells sweet, warm, and too much of my childhood.
Mom points at a chair by the table. “Sit.”
I lower myself into it carefully and eye the assembly line she’s got going. “What exactly am I contributing here?”
She hands me a paring knife and a bowl of peaches. “Peel.”
I hold up the knife. “You trust me with a blade but not a beer.”
“I trust you to sit down with a knife. I don't trust you drunk on pain pills.”
“Fair.”
For a while, the only sounds are the soft scrape of skin peeling away, the clink of jars, the hum of the old refrigerator in the corner. Mom works with that brisk, efficient focus she brings to everything. There’s comfort in it. Even now.
Maybe especially now.
I peel slower than she does because she’s had forty years of practice and because I’m distracted by the ache in my leg and the quieter ache under that.
Eventually she says, “Boone said you helped him this morning.”
“He lied. I handed him nails like some kind of decorative assistant.”
Mom snorts softly. “You always were dramatic.”
“Runs in the family.”
Her mouth tightens, almost smiling. Then it fades. “How bad is the pain today?”
I shrug. “Manageable.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it hurts.”