I kept it simple. “Got jumped. Lost the bike. Need a lift.”
“Hospital?”
“Just a couple stitches. Don’t get sentimental.”
He exhaled, sharp. “You want to talk about it or just keep acting like a goddamn idiot?”
“Send someone with a truck, Knox. That’s all I need.”
“Bo—” He said it like he’d bitten down on the word. “I can be there in four hours. Don’t fucking move.”
I started to say something smart-assed, thought better of it, and let him hang up first. My hand shook, so I stuck it in thepocket of my jeans and dug my thumbnail into my thigh until the feeling passed.
I booked a room at the nearest motel with my last twenty, wincing at the way the woman behind the glass partition stared at my face like she’d seen the same story play out a hundred times. Maybe she had.
“Need anything else, honey?” she asked, sliding the key card across the counter with a pink-nailed finger.
“Got a beer fridge?”
“Down the hall. Vending only.”
“Perfect,” I said. “You got a pen?”
She handed one over. I scrawled my name on the sign-in and tried to make my handwriting legible, even with the swelling in my knuckles. Bo McKenzie. That’s all it took to get a room in this shithole, and maybe that’s all it took to get home.
My room was everything I’d hoped for: threadbare carpet, a queen bed with a dip in the middle, and curtains so thin the neon from the sign outside pulsed through them in cartoon pink and blue.
I tossed my backpack on the floor, then sat on the edge of the mattress and peeled off my shirt. The gauze on my face was already stained; the bruises on my chest were starting to darken to an ugly green. The tattoo on my arm—my signature, the only thing I’d ever made that felt real—looked even brighter against the wreckage.
I hit the vending machine, bought the only beer they had—cheap, watery, probably older than me—and sat cross-legged on the bed, staring at my phone until the buzz of the alcohol dulled the ache behind my eyes.
At some point, I realized I hadn’t even told Knox where I was. I snapped a photo of the motel sign, its burnt-out letters spelling MOT L, and texted it with a single word: “Here.”
He didn’t reply.
It was fine.
I didn’t need a reply. I just needed someone to show up.
I sat there, the sweat of old fear drying on my skin, and promised myself that tomorrow, when the truck came, I’d get in.
This time, I’d let someone else do the driving.
The scratchy motel bedspread left impressions on my bare shoulders, like the world’s worst tattoo. I was pretty sure they didn’t even make polyester this rough anymore—this was the stuff of Reagan-era nightmares, the kind of fabric that came pre-loaded with cigarette burns and the ghosts of a hundred bad decisions.
I hadn’t bothered to change out of my jeans or the t-shirt splattered with dried blood, mostly because I didn’t own anything else that wasn’t similarly trashed. The whole room felt temporary, like the universe’s idea of a holding cell: threadbare curtains framing a view of the parking lot, floor sticky under my boots, a sour note of disinfectant clashing with the funk of old carpet. A buzzing neon sign just outside my window flashed the words “MOT L” in epileptic rhythm, the O burnt out and the L barely hanging on.
I stared at the ceiling, the beer sweating in my hand, and tried not to think about how badly I wanted to open the mini-fridge and crawl inside it just to stop my thoughts from spinning. But I’m a creature of habit, and the first crack of the can—sharp and metallic—was enough to anchor me for a second. I took a long pull, letting the bitter fizz burn a path down my throat, and waited for the old familiar numbness to set in.
It didn’t.
Instead, I kept thinking about the look on Knox’s face when he saw me tomorrow. If I even lived that long. I didn’t like the idea of coming home broken, not when I’d spent so many years trying to prove I could stay gone for good. But after tonight, I had nothing left except the hope that maybe—just maybe—someone from the old crew would show up instead of the family welcoming committee.
I wasn’t sure who that would be. Knox said he’d come himself, but knowing him, he’d send a proxy just to keep me guessing. Maybe Ransom. Maybe one of the farmhands. Or maybe, if God had a sense of humor after all, it’d be Josiah Moxley.
The thought hit me harder than the beer. Josiah, with his six-foot-four frame and arms like steel cables, his hands always stained with machine oil and motor grease. He was the kind of man who fixed everything he touched, a giant in battered work boots and a collection of black t-shirts that hugged his chest tight enough to make a point. He’d been my first crush, my first heartbreak, and the subject of a thousand late-night fantasies that never made it past my own bedroom door.
Not that I ever told him. When you’re sixteen, queer, and the baby brother of half the valley, you learn real fast which secrets are safe to say out loud and which will get you buried.
