21. Clay
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Clay
I wake up in Josie’s bed with a crick in my neck, one leg propped awkwardly on a stack of pillows, with the smell of coffee drifting through the room.
I don’t move at first, partly because my leg protests the idea immediately, and partly because I’m still trying to figure out how the hell this became my life.
Sunlight slips through the curtains, soft and pale, landing across the edge of my cast. Her place is quiet. Neat. Too neat, maybe. Everything has a place. Books stacked straight. Throw blanket folded over the armchair.
I smile before I can stop myself.
Then I hear movement from the kitchen.
The smile fades. Because she’s here. Because last night happened. Because I didn’t leave. And because for once, I didn’t want to.
I rise to my feet and hobble through the house.
“You’re awake,” Josie says the moment she sees me.
She stands in the kitchen doorway holding a mug in both hands, hair loose around her shoulders, face scrubbed clean, wearing soft gray shorts and an oversized flannel because she’s trying to look practical and accidentally made herself impossible to stop staring at.
“Barely,” I say.
Her eyes drop to my leg. “How bad?”
“It hurts.”
“You should rest it.”
I huff out a laugh. “You and my mom should start a club.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
She crosses the room and sets the mug on the table in front of me. “Coffee. Black.”
I look at it. “You remembered?”
Her expression shifts; she didn’t mean to reveal that. “It’s not difficult.”
“No?”
“You texted it once.”
I grin into the mug because she clearly doesn’t realize how much that tiny detail gets to me. “That means you remembered.”
She gives me a look sharp enough to cut glass. “Drink your coffee.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Still giving orders.”
Her mouth twitches. There it is. That tiny crack in the wall she keeps between herself and everyone else. I enjoy it too much.
I reach for the mug, careful not to jostle my leg. “You sleep?”
“A little.”
“Liar.”
She narrows her eyes. “You don’t know me well enough to know when I’m lying.”
“I’m learning.”
She looks away first, busying herself with something on the side table that doesn’t need touching. “You should probably eat before you take anything for pain.”
“I’m not taking anything right now.”
Her head snaps back toward me. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t like feeling foggy.”
“You like pain better?”
“No. I like control better.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I get that.”
“Breakfast?” I ask.
She blinks. “What?”
“Let me take you to breakfast.”
“You’re injured.”
“I can still buy eggs.”
She crosses her arms, but it doesn’t have the force it usually does. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make this into a whole thing.”
I study her.
That wall’s back up. Not all the way, but enough.
Last night, for a while, it came down. She’d simply loosened her grip on herself for a little while. She let herself lean into me, let herself laugh, let herself want without making it pass a test first.
Now daylight’s here, and she’s trying to put everything back where it belongs.
Including me.
I don’t like that.
Maybe I should.
Would probably make life easier.
But I don’t.
“I’m not making anything,” I say. “I’m asking you to breakfast.”
“That's making something.”
“Only if the eggs are really good.”
She gives me a flat look.
I grin.
She fights a smile and loses a little.
“Fine,” she says. “Breakfast.”
Another small win.
We go to the Rusty Mug because Josie says Spurs is “too much town before ten a.m.” and I don’t argue because, honestly, she’s right.
The Rusty Mug is busy enough to feel alive but not so packed that I want to leave immediately. Laura spots us the second we walk in.
“Well, well,” she says, smile slow as she looks between us. “Morning.”
Josie stiffens beside me. I feel it before I see it.
“Morning,” I say, easy.
Laura’s eyes dip to my crutches. “You need a booth with room for that leg?”
“Please,” Josie says before I can.
I glance down at her.
She ignores me.
Laura leads us to the corner booth, giving me extra space to stretch my leg out without blocking the aisle. “Coffee?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Tea,” Josie says.
“Toast?” Laura asks her.
Josie blinks.
Laura smiles sweetly. “You looked like a toast kind of morning.”
Josie’s cheeks color slightly. “Sure.”
I raise a brow once Laura leaves. “Toast kind of morning?”
“She’s invasive.”
“Small town café owner. Comes with the job.”
She laughs. “You defend her because you’re from here.”
“I defend her because I know better than to cross a woman who controls breakfast.”
That earns me another smile.
I like making her smile.
Too much.
We order. I get eggs, bacon, biscuits, and hash browns because apparently healing bone makes a man starving. Josie orders toast, scrambled eggs, and fruit, then looks irritated when Laura adds a side of potatoes “just in case.”
“You have enemies everywhere,” I say.
“I’m realizing that.”
“Or people like you.”
“That’s worse.”
I lean back carefully. “You really don’t like being fussed over, do you?”
Her fingers tighten around her mug. “No.”
“Why?”
She gives me a look. “That’s a question for after breakfast.”
“So there’s an after breakfast?”
Her eyes flick to mine. Then she looks down into her tea. “Maybe.”
I take that as another win.
For a while, we talk about easy things.
The clinic. The rodeo circuit. Her emergency kit, which I call a tiny disaster purse and she insists is “field preparedness.” Rusty stealing food. Mr. Biscuits, a cat I've never met but already deeply respect based on Josie’s description of his crimes.
“He knocked an entire tray of instruments off the counter once while maintaining eye contact,” she says.
“That’s leadership.”
“That’s sociopathy.”
“Fine line.”
“Spoken like a man who has clearly committed similar crimes.”
I put a hand to my chest. “I've never knocked medical instruments off a counter.”
“No, just your whole life off a bull.”
“Too soon.”
She winces, but she’s smiling. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” she admits. “Not really.”
I laugh, and it doesn’t feel forced. It feels easy. That’s what gets me.
I don’t get much easy.
Things haven’t felt easy lately, not with my family and definitely not inside my own head. Definitely not with the ranch and the rodeo and the way my whole life is suddenly a rope burning through my hands.
But Josie sits across from me, picking at toast and pretending not to be funny, and somehow the noise quiets.
“So,” I say after Laura clears our plates, “how does someone become Buckhorn’s new vet?”
She looks surprised by the question. “School.”
I snort. “That’s your answer?”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s very vague.”
She wraps both hands around her mug. “I worked hard. Got qualified. Applied wherever I could. Dr. Harris needed help. Buckhorn was hiring.”
“That’s still a vague answer.”
Her mouth curves faintly. “What do you want me to say?”
“Everything.”
That stills her.
I don’t know why I say it like that.
Maybe because I can tell there's more. Maybe because everything about her makes me believe there’s more underneath, packed carefully away where no one can make a mess of it.
She looks out the window.
Main Street moves slowly beyond the glass. Trucks parked along the curb. A woman pushing a stroller. Old Virgil Tucker talking to a man outside the feed store.
“I wanted a place that could be mine,” she says finally.
“Wasn’t where you grew up?”
“No.”
“Where was that?”
She hesitates. “Outside Boise. Not small like this. Not big either.”
“You got family there?”
Her fingers trace the handle of her mug. “Technically.”
I understand that answer more than I want to.
“Technically,” I repeat.
She lifts one shoulder. “We aren’t close.”
“Why?”
She looks at me then. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who avoids answering them.”
Fair hit.
I lean back. “Maybe I’m changing.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit cautiously.
“I don’t either,” she says.
About herself, I think.
About me.
Maybe both.
A sizzle passes between us across that little café table; it’s heavier than flirtation and too fragile to name.
“What about you?” she asks. “Why bull riding?”
I huff out a breath. “That one’s easy.”
“I doubt that.”
I smile without much humor. “Because for eight seconds, everything makes sense.”
She doesn’t interrupt.
Most people do. Most people either make some joke about being crazy enough to climb on a bull or tell me it’s dangerous. Yet I somehow missed that part.
Josie just waits. So I keep talking.
“When you’re in the chute, there’s no room for anything else. No family history. No expectations. No screwups. No wondering where you fit. Gate opens, and the only thing that matters is whether you can stay on.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “And if you do?”
I swallow. “Then you’re enough.”
Josie’s face changes in a way I can’t read fast enough. That got under her skin. “You shouldn’t have to get hurt to feel that.”
My chest tightens. “Yeah, well.”
The weak response hangs between us, somewhere in the space between denial and admission.
She looks down at her tea. “I get needing proof.”
“Yeah?”
Her nod is small. “Sometimes it feels like if you can just do everything right, if you can keep all the pieces together, no one can say you failed.”
“You afraid of failing?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. “I’m afraid of needing help and not having it.”
There’s a rawness in her voice under all that control.
I want to reach across the table.
I don’t. Not because I don’t want to. Because I can tell she might bolt if I do.
“Josie,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t hide fast enough.
She looks scared.
My heart starts to beat harder. “What is it?”
She inhales. Her fingers tighten around the mug until her knuckles pale. “I need to tell you something.”
Everything in me stills.
The café keeps moving around us. Cups clinking. Laura laughing behind the counter. Someone near the door talking about hay prices.
But at our table, everything narrows down to Josie’s face.
My phone rings.
Josie flinches.
I curse under my breath and grab it from the table, already planning to silence it.
Nash.
I almost ignore it.
I should ignore it.
But Nash doesn’t call twice unless he’s joking or drowning, and when the screen stops, it starts ringing again immediately.
I drag a hand over my face and answer. “What?”
“Hey,” Nash says, breathless and frantic in a way that immediately puts me on edge. “I need help.”
I straighten despite the pain. “What happened?”
“Nothing bad. Not bad bad. Just… Hailey’s been crying for an hour, Tessa hasn’t slept, and I’ve got guests checking in at the dude ranch, two horses that need moving, and the water heater in cabin three is making a sound like it’s possessed.”
I close my eyes. “Nash.”
“I know, I know, you’re hurt. Boone’s tied up with the far pasture, Dallas is handling paperwork with the supplier, Mom’s got Rose and Faith helping with food for the church thing tonight, and I swear I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t—”
“I’ll come.”
The words leave before I think them through.
Josie looks down.
My chest tightens.
Nash exhales hard. “Thank you. Seriously.”
“Yeah. Give me twenty.” I hang up. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head immediately. Too fast. “Don’t be. Your brother needs you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s fine.” She gathers her napkin, folding it too precisely. “It can wait.”
I don’t believe her.
But I also don’t know how to ask without pushing too hard. And for once, my family needs me for something other than getting out of bed or holding nails because I’m a decorative idiot.
Nash needs help. Actual help.
That should feel good. But leaving Josie sitting here with unfinished words in her mouth feels wrong.
I reach across the table before I can talk myself out of it and cover her hand with mine.
She goes still.
“I want to know,” I say. “Whatever it is.” Her eyes flicker. “I just have to handle this first.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Josie.”
Her throat moves as she swallows. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you again as soon as I can.”
She looks at our hands, then turns hers under mine, just enough that our palms touch. “Okay.”
The realization hits harder than it should. I don’t want to leave this booth, this café, or this woman who somehow makes me feel like a version of myself I haven’t wrecked yet.
But Nash is waiting.