29. Clay
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Clay
Turns out you can spend years believing a place will save you, then finally get back there and realize you brought the problem with you in the truck.
That’s been the last ten days.
The motel room smells of stale smoke, dusty carpet, and industrial bleach.
The air conditioner rattles hard enough to sound distressed, though all it actually accomplishes is pushing warmth around the room.
Somewhere outside, country music leaks through thin walls while a couple of guys argue beside the ice machine about whether a stock contractor in Amarillo cheats on gate draws.
I lie flat on my back staring at the ceiling while my leg throbs beneath the brace.
Sleep isn't happening again.
The digital clock beside the bed reads 1:14 a.m. in angry red numbers. I’ve already watched twenty minutes crawl by one miserable minute at a time, which feels excessive even for insomnia.
The whiskey probably isn’t helping.
Neither are the pills.
I might be taking them again, but I don’t think drinking on them is helping.
I reach for the bottle on the nightstand and take another swallow anyway. The liquor burns all the way down, enough to punch through the ache in my leg briefly before the pain settles right back where it started.
Outside, somebody laughs loud enough to echo across the parking lot.
Usually, I love this part.
The noise and motion. The fact that none of it was meant to last. Men limping around arenas pretending they’re indestructible while comparing surgeries over gas station coffee. Dust hanging in the air beneath floodlights. Bucking chutes rattling under your boots.
For years, this life made more sense to me than Buckhorn ever did.
Out here, nobody expected permanence. You rolled into town, rode hard, drank harder, then left before anybody asked questions you didn’t know how to answer.
Back then, it seemed simple.
Only now I’m back, and none of it fits right anymore.
The arenas still smell the same. The announcers still yell too loud. Everybody still slaps your shoulder hard enough to bruise and asks how the leg’s healing before launching into stories about their own injuries.
Nothing changed.
Except me, apparently.
I stare at the ceiling a little longer after that thought lands.
I shift wrong, and pain shoots through my knee hard enough to make me swear under my breath.
“Hell.”
The room tilts slightly afterward.
That’s either exhaustion or the whiskey and medication teaming up to humble me personally.
Could go either way.
I close my eyes for a minute.
Bad move.
Josie appears immediately, behind the clinic counter with that focused crease between her brows while she studies paperwork. Hair escaping her bun, sleeves shoved up, looking calm enough to fool most people into thinking she isn’t carrying five emotions at once.
My chest tightens before I can stop it.
I open my eyes again and stare at the stained ceiling.
“Fantastic.”
I came back out here because I thought distance would settle me down. Thought the circuit would remind me who I was before Buckhorn got under my skin again.
Instead, every day lands a little sideways.
I spend mornings limping through rehab exercises, afternoons pretending I’m fine around riders who smell weakness like blood in water, and nights lying awake thinking about a woman who told me to take care of myself right before I left her standing outside a clinic door.
Not exactly thriving.
I grab the bottle again.
Empty.
I stare into it anyway, hopeful in the pathetic way tired people get around one in the morning.
Then I toss it toward the trash can beside the desk.
The bottle hits the rim, bounces off, and rolls beneath the chair.
“Strong finish, McCoy.”
My phone lights up beside me.
No messages.
I knew there wouldn’t be any. Didn’t stop me from checking.
I unlock it anyway and scroll mindlessly. Sponsors and missed calls, then a text from Dallas asking if I've actually been doing physical therapy or merely lying creatively about it.
Then Josie’s name.
My thumb hovers there.
Don’t.
Seriously, don’t.
Calling a woman at one in the morning while drunk and medicated belongs in the same category as wrestling rattlesnakes and starting bar fights in Texas.
Unfortunately, exhaustion has worn down my survival instincts.
I hit call before I can think better of it.
Each ring stretches longer than it should.
Part of me wants her to answer. The smarter part hopes she’s asleep with the phone buried under three blankets where she can’t hear it.
By the fourth ring, my stomach’s twisted itself into something ugly.
Then her voicemail picks up.
“Hi, this is Josephine. Leave a message.”
Her voice slides through me warm and familiar, and suddenly this is catastrophically stupid.
I should hang up.
Instead, I hear myself say, “Uh… hey, Josie.”
I lean forward, elbows braced on my knees while I stare at the carpet.
“I honestly don’t know why I called.” A rough laugh slips out. “That’s not true. I know exactly why I called. I just probably should’ve lost reception first.”
The air conditioner hums behind me.
Outside, somebody hollers near the vending machines.
“I thought coming back out here would fix whatever had gone wrong. Maybe put me back where I was before. I don't know.”
I drag a hand through my hair.
“I kept telling myself I wasn’t running away. But leaving town while your entire life’s falling apart apparently still counts as running, so that’s unfortunate news.”
My voice sounds rough even to me, frayed around the edges from too many sleepless nights.
“This place used to fit better,” I continue. “Now it just wears on me.”
I lean back carefully against the headboard, easing pressure off my leg.
“I don’t fit here the way I used to.”
I almost stop talking altogether. Then the whiskey loosens my mouth again before pride can shut it down.
“You always saw through me.” I rub my jaw. “Drove me insane, by the way. You’d look at me for five seconds and somehow know when I was lying to myself.”
I can practically picture the expression she’d make hearing this too. Arms folded, one eyebrow slightly raised, disappointment tucked behind professional restraint.
The thought almost makes me smile.
“I miss you.”
The words slip out soft and immediate.
Real enough to sober me halfway.
I sit upright too fast and pain flares through my leg. “Okay. Nope. Forget that entirely.”
Excellent recovery. Absolutely nailed that one.
I scrub both hands over my face.
“I’m tired, and I’ve mixed whiskey with pain meds, which you’d probably classify as medically irresponsible.”
Silence fills the motel room.
“She’s definitely judging me right now,” I mutter.
Can't really argue with that.
I exhale slowly through my nose.
“I just wanted to hear your voice for a minute.”
There’s more lodged in my chest trying to get out.
I hope you're okay. I hope work's keeping you busy. I hope you're eating better than toast over the sink. Most of all, I hope leaving didn't hurt you as badly as I think it did.
But the words stay where they are because I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one night.
Movement sounds outside my room. Boots on gravel. Somebody arguing about rodeo payouts.
Awareness slams back into me hard enough to clear the whiskey fog.
What the hell am I doing?
I yank the phone away from my ear and stare at the screen.
Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds of emotional self-destruction recorded permanently for future humiliation.
“Oh, you absolute idiot.”
I hang up immediately.
Then freeze.
The voicemail already sent.
Panic arrives fast and complete.
“No. No, no, no.”
I call back instantly, trying to delete it, only to realize it's too late. My fingers fumble badly enough that I somehow start leaving a second voicemail that consists mostly of breathing and, “Wait... hold on...”
I disconnect so violently I nearly throw the phone across the room.
Silence crashes down afterward.
I fall backward onto the mattress and cover my face with my forearm.
This is how I finally lose the last scraps of dignity I had left.
Not under a bull or wrapped around a fence post at eighty miles an hour. Destroyed by my own drunken voicemail in a roadside motel outside Twin Falls.
My leg throbs harder now, deep and relentless, and the pill bottle on the nightstand keeps pulling my attention back to it.
I stare at the label, weighing the promise of a few hours of unconsciousness against the possibility that mixing another pill with the whiskey might turn tomorrow into somebody else's problem.
Josie's words push through before I can make the decision.
Take care of yourself when you go.
Concern threaded through disappointment.
That somehow hurts worse than anger would’ve.
I grab the pill bottle, roll it once through my palm, then throw it back onto the nightstand hard enough to make it rattle across the wood. Outside, the music keeps playing while men laugh somewhere near the ice machine and trucks rumble through the parking lot beneath the buzzing neon.
Ten days ago I would’ve called all this freedom.
Tonight it feels a lot more like loneliness.
I turn toward the phone again, half expecting to see a missed call or a text telling me to stop drinking and get some sleep.
The screen stays dark. No callback or voicemail.
Nothing except the same silence that's been sitting in the room with me since I hung up.
I stare at the ceiling while the air conditioner groans in the window and my leg pulses with every heartbeat.
Leaving was supposed to make things simpler.
Instead, all I really did was put several hundred miles between myself and the one person I can’t seem to stop thinking about.