Page 68 of Coyote

"I know what it is, little one."

He looked at the map for a while longer, back up at the ridge, at the bones. His thumb moved once over the paper beside them. Then he folded the map along my creases, taking his time with each one, and slid it into his shirt pocket.

John braced a hand on his knee and stood, one careful stage at a time, guarding the ribs. On his feet, he blocked out the porch light, and the whole night smelled like him. I sat where I was and let him tower over me.

His hand came up as he passed me. It stopped above my hair, close enough that the warmth of it reached my scalp. My whole body leaned into a touch that wasn't landing, one degree of heat off his palm, and I held so still that Nimue tightened against my throat.

Then he turned and he took the warmth with him down the steps and across the yard, toward the equipment shed and his bedroll. Pearl got up, stretched her back legs one at a time, and followed him.

I stayed on the step until the wood went cold where he'd been sitting. Then I crossed the yard after him, let myself in past the patched place in the wall, and lay down on my blanket an arm's length from the biggest thing in my life, close enough to take and too far to be taking, and I listened to his breathing go long and deep and stay.

Coyote had been circling me for days, and everything he'd asked me that morning had been the wrong question.

I sat on an upturned bucket in the equipment shed and restocked Sierra's field kit, because my ribs allowed the work and I needed something to do with my hands. Gauze in the left compartment, tape and shears in the right, suture packets laid flush. Outside, boots crossed the yard again, tracing a wide circle around the shed and coming no closer.

He'd started at the coffee pot before full light, asking whether the tape on my forearm had pulled in the night. Over breakfast the questions came at intervals, one every few minutes. Did the thigh ache before weather? Should he move the bedroll off the draft? Was the coffee strong enough? Did the eggs need more salsa? He wanted to know whether a man my size needed a third blanket in June, which even Cruz looked up from his phone for. At supper he asked whether the well-water shower ran too cold at night for a man with fresh stitches.

The boots stopped outside the door.

"Why's your light still on?" Coyote said.

"Wrong question," I said, and fitted the last suture packet into its row and buckled the kit shut.

"You should sleep. Sierra says skin knits at night."

"Sierra's right."

He came in out of the dark with Nimue around his neck and crossed to the corner, lifted her down, and put her into the crate of clean rags, where she stacked herself into coils and settled. Then he walked the shed once, the same circuit as last night, eyes over the patched place in the wall, the window latch, the gap under the door. He unrolled his blanket an arm's length from mine and lay down on his back with his knife on his hip and his eyes on the door.

I turned off the light and hung my shirt on the nail above my boots, the map still in the pocket. Keeping my hands off him since the cave had grown harder by the hour, harder still with him lying an arm's length away in the dark. I wanted to scoot over to him, hold him, put my arm around him and kiss his hair, tell him everything was going to be all right.

But if I did that now, he might mistake it for forgiveness, and I wasn't sure I was ready for that.

I came out of the dream swinging.

Somewhere off to my right, a bucket tipped over. And from an arm's length away, somebody was saying my name, over and over.

Coyote?

The shed came back in pieces while my heart thumped hard in my chest. Cold sweat gathered on the back of my neck, and my hands had the fine tremor that I used to get after a rough shift without enough sleep.

My right hand was already out. Open, palm down, on the cold boards between our bedrolls, reaching across a mattress that was five years gone.

Coyote sat cross-legged an inch past my fingers. Out of reach, exactly as he'd promised. His own blanket lay smooth behind him, untouched. Nimue was up around his throat with her head raised, and there was enough moonlight to see his eyes, and I had no idea how long he'd been sitting there in the cold saying my name into the dark.

"You were reaching," he said. "For him."

I looked at my hand, still open on the boards between us.

"It starts out for him." I swallowed. "Lately it's been finishing on your side of the floor."

His expression didn't change. Nimue loosened at his throat and slid down into his lap.

Then he crossed the arm's length he'd been keeping since the porch, and he set his head down under my open hand, where it had stopped the night before.

My fingers combed through his hair. It was the first touch since the cave that wasn't about tape and gauze. He held still and let out a low, relieved sigh.

I'd told myself I wasn't ready to forgive him. I'd reached for him anyway.