Chapter 27 #2
Not the way I'd bitten the guy with the rifle. Different. I wanted to put my teeth on the soft skin under his jaw, where the sound had come from, and hold there. Just hold. Not break anything. Just keep him still under my mouth until he made the sound again.
I didn't.
I sat back the rest of the way, a few feet from him, because I was going to do something a lot worse than stupid if I stayed that close.
"Hey, polilla."
He didn't say anything. His eyes were the only part of him that wasn't beaten to hell. Big and brown and tracking me like I was something he was waiting to see do something he couldn't take back.
Fair.
"I'm Coyote. That's Linc. We're not with them." I tipped my chin at the bodies. "Obviously."
His eyes flicked to the bodies, came back to me, and stayed.
I let him look. Whatever he was working out, he had to work it out himself. I'm bad at lots of things, but I'm decent at being still.
After a while, his mouth moved. The voice that came out was small and hoarse and barely there.
"Where am I?"
"Pae Saco. Northwest corner of New Mex—"
"New Mexico?" His face did something I couldn't read, or maybe it tried to do too many things at once and got stuck. "Not Arizona?"
"Last time I checked."
"Did I make it?"
"Make what?"
"Across."
I looked at him. He was watching me like the answer was going to decide something he'd been deciding for a long time.
"Across the border?"
He nodded, just barely.
"Yeah," I said. "You made it. You're stateside."
His eyes closed, and he let out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck in his chest for about a week.
Then his eyes opened again, and whatever relief had been there was already gone.
"I'm an American." It came out fast, scrambling. "Those guys took me. I crossed back. I'm not — I'm not illegal, I'm not — "
"Polilla."
He stopped.
"Existing isn't a crime."
He stared at me.
"What?"
"You. Existing. It's not a crime. Breathe."
He didn't breathe. He laughed instead, this small, cracked-up sound that wasn't actually laughing.
"You're weird."
"Yeah."
"You bit a guy."
"I did."
"You're still — " He gestured vaguely at my face. "There's some on you."
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It came away red.
"Better?"
"Not really."
I kind of liked him.
I gave him a once-over. His feet were the worst of it — torn up, leaking, one toenail gone, and going to need cleaning before they got infected.
His ribs were bruised from the kicking. His lip was split.
His left eye was puffy in a way that meant somebody had hit him a couple of days ago, not tonight.
He was dehydrated for sure. Hadn't eaten in a while either.
Mama could've fixed most of it. I knew enough of what she taught me to keep him alive until we got to Sierra.
Sierra was who he needed.
"Owen," he said.
I looked up.
"My name. You asked."
"Owen what?" I said.
He hesitated. Long enough that I figured he was deciding whether to lie. I respected the hesitation. I hesitate too.
"Just Owen for now."
"Okay. Just Owen for now."
He almost smiled. It didn't quite happen, but it tried. "And, uh. Polilla. You can keep that one. If you want."
"Yeah?"
"It's better than my real one."
"Okay, polilla."
He closed his eyes.
I stood up.
He flinched when I came up to my full height, which, fair — I'm taller than most things, and most of those things don't usually have his night. I crouched back down some so I wasn't looming, got an arm under his knees, one across his back, and picked him up.
He stiffened — every muscle he had left locked up at once.
"Wait — what — what are you doing?"
"I'm gonna fix you."
He went very still.
"What?"
"You're broken." I thought of Mama's hands, brown and quick, the way she'd cleaned a coyote pup's eye with a damp cloth and warm water and humming. "I'm gonna fix you."
He stared up at me. His eyes were wet, and he wasn't blinking the wet away, just looking at me through it like crying was something his body was doing without asking him.
"I can't fight you," he said, very quietly. "If you're lying, I can't fight you."
"I know."
He kept staring.
Then, all at once, he didn't. He sagged into my chest like whatever had been holding him up since whenever he started running had finally been allowed to clock out.
He was warm. He weighed almost nothing. I've thrown bales of hay heavier than him. I've thrown Linc, and Linc is a small man.
His face was right under my jaw. I could smell him from there without trying, the under-skin smell, and the thing in my chest did the unclenching thing again and the thing in my stomach did the clenching thing again and my cock, which had decided this was happening now, was still right there making sure I knew about it.
I was going to have to figure that out later. Not now.
"Why," he said into my shoulder. "Why are you helping me?"
I thought about it. The honest answer was that I'd been looking at him for ten minutes and something in me had already lit up and decided. The honest answer was probably a lot for somebody who'd just watched me eat a guy's arm.
"Because they were hunting bad," I said. "And you were what they were hunting."
A long pause.
"And what am I to you?"
Oh.
I hadn't expected that. He was sharper than he had any business being, hanging in my arms the way he was, and I didn't know what to do with it except like him more.
"Don't know yet," I said. "But I'm not hunting."
I whistled.
La Pintada came out of the dark and stopped beside us. Owen turned his face further into my shoulder, away from her, away from the bodies, away from everything.
I had to put him down to mount up.
"Hold on," I said, and started to lower him.
"No."
His hand came up and caught the front of my shirt, and gripped.
I stopped moving.
He'd barely had the strength to lift his head ten minutes ago. His knuckles were white now.
"Don't — " His breath caught. "Don't put me down. Don't. Please."
"I'm just gonna get on the horse, polilla. Two seconds."
"Please." The word came out wrecked. He pressed his face harder into my neck, and I felt the wet there, against my skin. "Don't leave. Don't leave me here. I'll do anything. I won't run. I won't — I'll do anything you want, just don't — "
Oh.
He thought I might leave him.
He thought I might walk away, and he'd be alone with the bodies and the dark and whatever came next.
He'd rather have me.
I'd just killed three men with my hands and my teeth and a knife in front of him, and he'd rather have me than be alone.
Something in my chest did a third thing it hadn't done before. Not the unclench. Not the clench. Something heavier. Something that wasn't going to come back out.
"Okay, polilla." I tightened my arms around him. "Okay. Not putting you down. Shh."
He was shaking.
I couldn't get on the horse while holding him. Couldn't be done.
I whistled differently. La Pintada folded.
She went down on her knees in the dirt the way I'd taught her when I was twelve and too small to mount her any other way.
Owen flinched at the movement, but I shushed him again and stepped over her shoulder and settled into the saddle with him still in my arms. She got back up under us, slow and careful, and I shifted him so he was sideways across my thighs with his head against my chest where he could hear my heartbeat.
His grip on my shirt didn't ease until we'd been moving for a full minute.
"You're gonna be okay," I said.
He laughed, that same small, cracked sound. "Nobody's said anything to me in like a week."
I huffed. "Well. Now somebody has."
He didn't answer. I think he was already mostly out.
His head fell back against my shoulder.
He'd been mine since his fingers caught my shirt. He just didn't know it yet.