Page 198 of Josephine and Clay

They step inside.

Rose takes one look around the motel room and her expression shifts into the same face she makes when Wyatt tracks mud through her kitchen. It suggests she's already drafting a list of everything wrong with this room.

Boone notices the pills immediately. “Jeez, Clay.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s getting less convincing every time you say it.”

I shut the door harder than necessary and limp back toward the bed. “Did everyone form a committee on the drive here or did y’all rotate turns being dramatic?”

Boone ignores that. “You mixed whiskey with pain medication?”

“Apparently.”

“Apparently?”

I shrug once and instantly regret it when my headache pulses harder. “I wasn’t exactly running scientific trials, Boone.”

Rose sets the coffees down carefully on the desk. “Clay, Tessa said you sounded awful on that voicemail.”

I suddenly find the stained carpet fascinating.

“Yeah, well. Turns out whiskey and emotional repression aren’t a stable combination.”

Boone’s eyes narrow slightly. “You scared people.”

The comment lands hard.

Because I know he means Mom too.

Maybe she’s sitting back in Buckhorn pretending she isn’t worried sick while organizing kitchen cabinets hard enough to damage wood finishes.

Guilt flashes briefly before irritation crushes it back down.

“I’m thirty years old.”

“Twenty-three,” Boone says immediately.

“Close enough.”

“You disappeared in the middle of the night with a bad leg and enough painkillers to tranquilize livestock.”

“Bit dramatic.”

Rose blinks at me. “Clay, you called Josie sounding halfway to a breakdown.”

I look away first.

Boone watches me carefully now. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

I laugh once under my breath and limp toward the air conditioner. Coolness pushes against my legs while the machine rattles hard enough to sound terminal. “You drove eight hours because I left an embarrassing voicemail?”

“We drove eight hours because nobody could get hold of you afterward,” Boone says sharply. “Because you vanished in the middle of the night after weeks of acting off. Because Mom’s worried. Because Dallas is worried. Hell, even Nash is worried, and that man once got kicked by a horse and called it character development.”