Page 42 of Coyote

Coyote looked at me for a moment. "You think I'm strange."

"I watched you tear a man's throat out and then argue with Sierra because he wouldn't let you eat before washing the blood off your face."

"I was hungry."

"You're strange."

He grinned at me.

I eased myself down onto the bedroll. Pain caught beneath the new stitches and held until I found a position against the wall.

Coyote saw it. He crossed to the tins and came back with a canteen and two tablets before I could object.

"Acetaminophen," he said.

"I don't need it."

"I can manage the pain."

"I know. Take them anyway."

I held out my hand. Coyote dropped the pills into it and watched until I swallowed. Then he sat beside me.

For a while, we did nothing. Nimue slid down his arm and moved out through the cave mouth. The little bones turned above her. Wind crossed the opening and carried away most of the heat.

Nobody shouted for a doctor. Nobody bled. Not one man needed a decision out of me. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cool wall of the cave.

Coyote put a hand on the back of my neck. "Better?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

His thumb moved once beneath my hair, and I sighed. I should've felt content, but there was something eating at me, a secret I hadn't told Coyote yet. I'd needed to tell him since the river, maybe before that. Each time I reached for the words, Coyote touched me, and I let myself forget them. I couldn't keep doing that.

He shifted. His nose came in under my ear, along the jaw. "You smell like something you haven't said."

"Little one."

His hand stopped. "You'd tell me if you were planning to go somewhere, wouldn't you?"

I opened my eyes. Coyote was watching the mouth of the cave instead of me.

"Where would I go?"

"That isn't an answer."

"No." I turned toward him. "I wouldn't disappear on you."

"Even if you thought I wouldn't like where you were going?"

"Especially then."

His fingers tightened against my neck.

I covered his knee with my hand. "There's something I should have told you."

His eyes snapped to mine. "Are you leaving?"