“I’m not staying,” I informed him.
“Well, I’m gonna go do… somethin’ else, then. Hope ya feel better real soon, Snakey.”
He didn’t wait for a reply before he was padding after Bull, his steps significantly quieter.
I sighed. The pain medication was taking effect, and tiredness was quickly weighing down on me.
Coyote cleared his throat as he stood. “Well, I should… go handle thatthing. But I wanted to ask you… with your company doing fancy tech stuff and all that…” He dug around in his pocket until he retrieved a silver lighter and handed it to me. “Is it possible to put a tracker in that?”
I turned it over in my palm. It seemed like an ordinary lighter. “Why?”
“I just… It’s important. I can’t lose it again.”
I saw in his eyes that thing I’d been trying to shield from my own since he’d shown up to help me in the alley. No, since before then, in a private room with crimson walls and a man I’d never see again. Vulnerability.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
twenty
Harper
LIGHTERS AND UNWANTED GOODBYES.
I did try to get some rest. After I’d called a ride to take me home, I’d showered again, wetting all the dressings over the scrapes that Bull had tended to. But I didn’t care.
I still felt his hands on me. His breath. The filth of the alley. I could still smell the dumpster. No matter how much I scrubbed at my skin, I couldn’t get rid of him from my senses.
Then I was dressed in my own clothes, in my sheets, in a bed no one but me had ever slept in.
I was so tired.
I couldn’t sleep.
I’d silenced my watch. There was no beeping to tell me what to do. But the habits lived under my skin. The alarms blared in my mind.
All I could think about was what I should be doing, and what was done.
Had Coyote hidden the body? Where? It was probably better that I didn’t know.
What if someone found it?
Maybe I’d fucked this up even further. Maybe if I’d just gone to the police and told them what had happened, I could prove it was self-defense. There would be a scandal, but if someone found the body now, after I’d tried to cover it up? There was no way to make that look innocent. A scandal would be the least of our worries.
Nausea made the room spin. Or maybe it was a side effect from the medication, or a result of my head being smashed against a wall. Bull had checked for a concussion, but maybe he wasn’t a good doctor. Good doctors didn’t usually take patients in a repurposed room connected to their home kitchen.
Benny.
While everything spiraled, and new potential problems flashed through my mind, I still kept coming back to Benny.
How long had he stayed at the club after I’d left him? I hadn’t checked if he’d messaged me. I couldn’t bring myself to.
If I hadn’t left him, none of this would have happened.
Maybe it was karma on me for hurting Benny—and Tristan, for hurting Logan.
Logan.
When? How many times? Did it have something to do with why Logan left?
