26. Josephine
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Josephine
By eleven forty-two, I've checked my phone fourteen times.
I set my phone face down beside the patient chart and reach for the pen clipped to my jacket pocket. Then I put the pen down, because I don't need it. Then I pick it up again, because having something in my hand makes me look occupied.
Dr. Harris pauses in the doorway of the exam room.
I don't look at him. “Josephine.”
“I’m updating the chart.”
“The chart is blank.”
I look down. It is, in fact, blank. “That’s because I’m thinking first.”
“Mm hmm.”
I lift my gaze. He’s watching me over the rim of his coffee mug with the kind of patience that suggests he’s about to be helpful in a way I will deeply resent.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
“I was considering it.” He glances at my phone. “Someone bothering you?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Someone not bothering you enough?”
I give him a flat look. “That's not a professional question.”
“No, but it was a good one.”
Before I can respond, my phone buzzes against the counter.
My entire body reacts.
It's deeply embarrassing.
Dr. Harris notices, because of course he does. He has the observational skills of a border collie and the tact to pretend otherwise only when it suits him.
I pick up the phone.
Clay.
My stomach tightens before I even read the message.
Can I see you on your lunch break?
That's all.
No joke or teasing nickname. No easy charm wrapped around the words to make them safer.
I stare at it until the screen starts to dim.
Dr. Harris clears his throat.
I lock the phone. “I’m taking lunch at noon.”
“Good idea.”
At eleven fifty-nine, I've washed my hands twice, straightened the appointment cards by the register, and moved the same bottle of disinfectant three inches to the left, then three inches back to the right.
At noon exactly, I send one word.
Okay.
Clay is waiting outside when I step out of the clinic.
He stands near the edge of the sidewalk, hat low, one crutch tucked under his arm, weight carefully shifted off his injured leg. He looks better than he did in his room. Cleaner. More awake. Less like he’s trying to disappear into the floorboards.
Still tired, though.
Still too sharp around the edges.
His eyes find mine immediately. I stop with the clinic door half closed behind me.
Neither of us says anything.
This is the problem with unresolved tension. It takes up physical space. It stands there between two people on a public sidewalk in broad daylight, making even breathing feel like a decision.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi.”
His mouth moves like he wants to smile but thinks better of it. “Thanks for coming out.”
“It’s my lunch break.”
That sounds cold.
I didn't mean for it to sound cold. Or perhaps I did. It’s hard to tell anymore.
Clay nods once, accepting it. “Can we walk?”
I glance at his crutch, then his leg.
He notices. “Slowly.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I think a lot of things I don’t say.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’m starting to figure that out.”
There’s a twinge in his voice that makes my chest tighten. Regret, maybe. Or tiredness. Or both.
I tuck my hands into the pockets of my jacket and step beside him. “Where?”
He nods down Main Street. “Just around the block?”
“That’s ambitious for a man who looks like stairs recently offended him.”
A small huff of laughter leaves him. It loosens me before I can stop it.
“Stairs and I aren't on speaking terms,” he says.
We start walking.
Slowly.
Painfully slowly, though I don't point that out. Clay’s jaw tightens every few steps, and once, near Buttercup Bakery, his fingers flex hard around the crutch handle. But he keeps moving like stopping would be worse.
I understand that, at least. Sometimes continuing is easier than admitting you need to pause. “So,” I say, because silence is going to make me organize the nearest storefront display. “You wanted to see me.”
“I did.”
He exhales, then stops near the shaded side of the feed store. Not because he needs to rest, I’m sure. Merely because the building has presented itself as a convenient location for emotional difficulty.
He looks down at his boots. “I’m sorry.”
The words are simple. Too simple, maybe. But his voice isn't.
I look at him carefully. “For what?”
His gaze lifts.
There’s no charm in it now. No practiced grin or quick deflection. Just Clay, looking like he’d rather face another bull than hold eye contact through an apology.
“For how I acted when you came by the house,” he says. “For what I said. For making you feel like caring was something you did wrong.”
My throat tightens.
I wasn't prepared for a truth bomb.
That’s foolish, because an apology should be honest. That's one of its primary functions. Still, I expected vaguer, safer. I was in a bad mood. I didn’t mean it. Sorry if you were upset.
Not this.
I fold my arms, mostly to keep from touching my stomach. “You did make it feel that way.”
“I know.”
“And I didn’t deserve it.”
“No.” His jaw works. “You didn’t.”
The anger I've carefully maintained for six days shifts uncomfortably but doesn't disappear.
I prefer clean emotions. They’re easier to file. This one has too many edges.
“Why?” I ask.
He looks away, toward the street. “Because I’m an ass.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No.” His mouth twists. “But it’s true.”
“Clay.”
He exhales through his nose, long and rough. “I don’t like people seeing me like that.”
“Injured?”
“Weak.”
The word sits between us.
I don't know what to do with it.
He shifts, leaning harder into the crutch. “I hate being stuck. Hate everyone looking at me like I’m something they need to manage. Hate not being able to move when I want to move. And you came in, and I was already…” He shakes his head. “I was already in my own head.”
“That doesn’t make it acceptable.”
“I know.”
The immediacy of his answer surprises me. He looks back at me. “I’m not trying to make excuses. I just… I’m not good at this.”
“At apologies?”
“At being still. At needing people. At not turning mean when I feel cornered.”
I look down at the cracked sidewalk. A small weed has pushed up through one of the gaps, stubborn and green.
“I came there because I was worried about you,” I say quietly.
“I know.”
“I didn’t come to judge you.”
“I know that too. Now.”
I glance at him. “But not then?”
His eyes darken. “Then I thought a lot of things that weren’t fair.”
There's more he isn't saying.
I can feel the shape of it.
Part of me wants to ask. The sensible part. The part that believes clarity is always better than uncertainty. But another part, the exhausted pregnant part that has already spent too many nights trying to solve the unsolvable equation of Clay McCoy, stays quiet.
Clay slows near the town square, where the gazebo sits in the sun, white paint bright enough to make me squint. There are garlands still tangled along one railing from some previous event no one has bothered to fully remove.
He leans against the fence, breathing a little harder now.
“You should sit,” I say.
He nods and lowers himself onto the bench near the gazebo with a wince he tries to hide and fails. I sit beside him, leaving a careful foot of space between us.
For a minute, we just watch Buckhorn move.
A child rides past on a bicycle. Two older men argue amiably outside the feed store. Someone’s dog barks from the bed of a parked truck.
It's an ordinary day.
My life no longer contains ordinary days.
The thought makes my hand twitch toward my stomach again.
I stop it.
Clay is staring down Main Street, expression far away. “I’m going back.”
I turn my head. “Back where?”
He doesn’t look at me. “The circuit.”
I should've expected it.
I did expect it.
That doesn’t stop the hollow little drop inside my chest.
“Your leg isn’t healed.”
“Not to ride yet. But I can be there. Around it. Rehab on the road. Keep connected. Talk to my manager. Figure out when I can get back in.”
I look at his cast. “That sounds premature.”
“Probably.”
“At least you know.”
He glances at me, then away. “I can’t stay here much longer.”
There it is.
The thing beneath everything.
I'm careful with my voice. “Why?”
His fingers tap once against the crutch. “Because I can’t breathe here.”
The words go through me with a terrible, quiet finality.
I stare at him.
He keeps going, like now that he’s started, he can’t quite stop. “Everyone has a place. Boone, Dallas, Nash, Mom. They all fit here. They built lives here. I walk into a room, and it’s like…” He shakes his head. “Like I’m standing in the wrong house.”
“That’s your family.”
“I know.”
“They love you.”
“I know that too.”
“But it doesn’t change how you feel.”
He looks at me then.
For one second, he seems relieved I understand.
I wish I didn’t.
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t.”
My chest aches in a way that feels both compassionate and unbearable.
Because I can see him. I can see the scared part under the reckless part.
The lonely part under the charm. The boy who never felt he belonged in the place everyone kept calling home.
And I can also see what would happen if I told him right now.
He’d say he was staying.
Maybe he’d even mean it.
But standing here, with pain written all over his face and panic sitting just under his skin, I wouldn’t know whether the decision came from love, fear, guilt, or obligation.
I can’t untangle something that important in the middle of a goodbye conversation.
Not today.
“So you’ll leave,” I say.
His eyes search mine. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“Soon.” He looks away again. “Once I can manage the travel. I’ve already started making calls.”
Of course he has a plan. And that plan doesn't include me.
The fact that he's already thought this through shouldn't surprise me. It should give me the clarity I've been looking for, a clean answer.
Instead, the knowledge settles heavily in my chest.
I smooth my palms over my jeans. “Then I’m glad you apologized before you left.”
Emotion flickers across his face. “That sounds like goodbye.”
“It sounds practical.”
“Josie.”
I hate the way he says my name sometimes. Like he can make it softer than I want it to be.
I stand before my resolve can weaken. “I should get back to work.”
His hand moves like he might reach for me, but he stops himself.
Good.
Terrible.
He rises slower, jaw clenched against pain. “Are we okay?”
That question is unfair because it requires a definition neither of us has earned.
I look at him, really look.
The sun catches in his dark hair. His eyes are too blue, too tired. He looks like trouble and want and every bad decision I've ever tried to avoid wrapped into one man with a broken leg and a bruised heart.
I could love him.
The realization is so sudden and so awful that I almost laugh.
I could. But I have to be careful.
And careful doesn’t mean lying forever.
It doesn’t mean keeping the twins from him.
It means waiting until this conversation isn’t balanced on pain, fear, and the possibility of him saying yes to something he hasn’t had time to truly choose.
“We’re not angry,” I say.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“That's the answer I have.”
His expression tightens.
I cannot fix that.
I won't fix that.
We walk back toward the clinic in a silence that feels different than before. Less hostile. More final.
At the clinic door, I stop.
Clay stops too.
We are standing close enough that I can smell him. Leather and sun-warmed dust.
My stupid heart reacts.
“Thank you for apologizing,” I say.
His voice is rough. “Thank you for listening.”
I nod.
Then, because I'm apparently determined to damage myself efficiently, I add, “Take care of yourself when you go. I hope the circuit gives you what you’re looking for.”
His face twists then. Almost hurt, maybe even angry. Almost like he wants me to ask him to stay.
I won’t.
That has to be the line.
Because if I ask and he does, I’ll never trust it. And if I ask and he doesn’t, I’ll break too cleanly to mend.
So I step back into the clinic.
The bell over the door jingles with cheerful indifference.
Dr. Harris looks up from the front counter. He takes one look at my face and says nothing.
Excellent man.
I walk past him into the supply room, shut the door, and breathe.
In.
Out.
Again.
Then I take out my phone and open my messages.
My thumb hovers over Tessa’s name.
I type carefully at first, then faster once the words start coming.
Josie: I saw Clay today. He apologized, and I think he meant it. But he’s leaving Buckhorn again soon.
I stare at the screen for a long moment before continuing.
Josie: I wanted to tell him about the babies today. I really did. But everything felt too raw and emotional, and I couldn’t tell whether he was talking about leaving because it’s what he truly wants or because he’s scared of staying.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Tessa: Oh, honey.
Josie: I’m not saying I’ll never tell him. I just… I need time to think. And I need him in a better place before I drop something this life-changing on him. He’s already going through so much.
The typing bubble disappears.
Then returns.
Tessa: I understand that more than you think I do.
A second later:
Tessa: But you shouldn’t carry this alone either.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
Josie: I know.
Tessa: Dinner this week. No arguments. And I’ll make enough food to emotionally manipulate you into eating.
Despite everything, a laugh slips out of me.
Josie: That feels unethical.
Tessa: Probably. See you Thursday.
I lean back against the shelves, one hand over my stomach, phone held tight in the other.
This isn't the plan I wanted.
It's not clean. Not simple or painless.
But it's a plan.
And for today, that has to be enough.