25. Everett
CHAPTER 25
EVERETT
W ell.
That had been a fucked up twenty-four hours.
I didn’t have getting arrested by SWAT after a literal firefight in Waffles? on my BINGO card before yesterday. I also didn’t have burning my fingers on a stupid fire extinguisher while smothering a grease fire or doing my best not to freak out while my boyfriend bled from his ears , holy shit, but those things happened too, so maybe now was a good time for me to do something else that would normally be bizarre and/or life-threatening, because clearly the odds were in my favor. Maybe I should take the hearse drag racing, or stick my hand in the fish tank.
I eyed Steve from where Kyle and I were collapsed together on the couch. He was swimming back and forth in a very deliberate, almost taunting manner, his beady eyes trained on me as he did tight little laps of the plant at the front of the tank. Hmm, nope. I didn’t trust my luck that far.
Somehow I’d gone from “number one suspect, armed and dangerous, throw him in the holding cell” to a free man just a handful of hours after I was arrested. I don’t think I’d ever ridden the edge of a panic attack so intensely in my life. Even when we were under fire at the safehouse and Waffles?, the immediacy of the shitstorm we were in kept me from actually feeling anxious about it. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.
But being in a cell, watched by cops who had no reason to think I was anything other than the kind of criminal dumb enough to take on a SWAT team—that was a whole new level of tension.
At least I hadn’t talked to them. They’d tried to threaten me into it, coerce me into it, even coax me into it, but apart from knowing I shouldn’t speak without a lawyer present, my jaw had been clenched so tight I was sure I was losing enamel. I couldn’t even relax long enough to sip from a bottle of water, which they kept telling me meant for sure I was guilty and they were gonna throw away the key and more, and then…
Sergeant Gonzales was a heavyset man with a truly magnificent moustache who’d cleared a path to my holding cell and, without ceremony, guided me out and to an actual office where I could sit instead of standing. Every question thrown his way by the other cops was redirected, and nobody was interested in telling him he couldn’t do what he was doing, which—win! That was the first moment I thought I might get through this.
“Detective Bowman says you’re all right, then you’re all right,” he told me as he sat down across from me. “You don’t need to tell me anything, just wait for your lawyer to get here. I’ll make sure you have privacy when they arrive.”
“I…haven’t got a lawyer,” I stammered, finally unlocking my jaw.
He’d smirked. “Oh, you do. He’s making a stink at HQ right now, but he’ll be here soon enough.”
Weird. I let it pass in favor of asking a way more important question. “Is Kyle okay? Kyle Bowman, he was with me at Waffles?, he was taken away in an ambulance.”
The sergeant nodded. “He’s gonna be fine. Getting discharged soon, from what his dad says.”
I melted into the chair with relief.
“You and Kyle, huh?”
There went my melt. I glanced over at Sergeant Gonzales, like I’d be able to tell if he was homophobic just by looking at him. Ha. “Um, yeah.”
He laughed. “You better take care of him, kid. The Bowmans don’t mess around when it comes to family.”
It turned out, the Mulligans didn’t mess around when it came to family either. I found that out half an hour later, when Theo made his entrance at the station. He wasn’t usually a shouty guy, but I literally heard him from the moment he walked through the door. “—take me to my client right now, or you’ll be hearing a lot more from the DA’s office than you ever wanted to.”
Whoever he was shouting at must have gotten the memo, because a few seconds later there was a knock on the office door. Sergeant Gonzales opened it and Theo walked right over to me, got me to my feet, and pulled me into a hug. It had been a few months since I’d had a Theo hug, but he gave good ones, and I relaxed so fast it was hard to stay upright.
“You’re okay,” Theo said. “You’re going to be fine, okay Everett?”
“Are you sure?” I got out, because half an hour earlier it had looked like I was completely fucked, so excuse me for being a little doubtful.
“I promise,” he said. “You and Mr. Bowman helped pry the lid off a huge conspiracy, but we can take it from here. You’ll have to make a statement, but you’re not under arrest.”
“Really?” It hardly felt possible after the last few days—scratch that, make it the last few weeks Kyle and I’d had.
“Absolutely.” He patted my shoulders then drew back. “Now, let’s get the formalities out of the way so you can go home.”
The formalities included an initial statement and an appointment to follow up, getting all of the stuff the police had taken off me back—including both my phones, nice—and getting a police escort out front, where my sister was walking a rut in the concrete sidewalk until she noticed me.
“Everett!”
I got another hug, which was awesome. Then I got a punch to the shoulder, which was less enjoyable. “What the hell was that message?” she shouted at me. “You didn’t even respond when I texted back! I thought you were dead! Holy shit, you can’t do that to me! Especially not after the police came to tell us they’ve got to put you in a safehouse for God knows how long, and I am so mad at you right now!”
“Don’t be too hard on him, hon,” Theo said before he leaned in and kissed her. Kissed her. On the mouth.
Wait. What?
“He’s had a rough time,” Theo went on as he pulled back. “I’ve got to get to the office, it’ll be an all-nighter probably while we deal with the union’s lawyers.”
“Text me when you’re done, I’ll bring you breakfast,” she promised with a smile.
“I will.” They kissed again, then Theo gave me a smile and left.
I stared at my sister for a long second before blurting, “I thought you guys broke up.”
Leanne blushed and folded her arms in front of her chest. “We decided to give it another try.”
Oh. That was awesome. But…
“Come on.” My sister dragged me to her car. “We can talk about it at home.”
Home. She kept mentioning home, yet it still surprised me when she turned toward the mortuary. I wasn’t sure when my brain had switched “home” from being with my family to being with Kyle. It felt presumptuous of me, like—I’d spent the night exactly once, and I already wanted to live there? Now that I’d had the thought, though, I couldn’t help but dive down after it.
Yeah, wow. I did prefer Kyle’s place. His place had piranhas and cats and him and?—
“The cats!” Shit, what had happened to the cats? Were Patches and Jeff okay? Where had they gone?
“The cats…oh, the cats!” Leanne nodded. “I believe your boyfriend’s brother has them. Or something like that—he was a little garbled over the phone, but I’m sure he said he had the cats.”
Something wasn’t computing. “Why were you talking to Colin?”
“I don’t have Kyle’s number,” my sister replied, like that was a totally reasonable thing to come out of her mouth. “But Theo has Detective Bowman’s number, and he passed me over to Colin because Kyle was in the ER, and?—”
“Jesus, he went to the ER?” Wait, of course he went to the ER. He was bleeding out his freaking ears and I’m the one who demanded an ambulance! God, I was a mess. “I need to call him.”
My sister put a hand on my arm. “Can it wait until after you say hi to everyone at home? He’s okay, I promise—his dad is looking out for him.”
That didn’t exactly sound like the Daddy Bowman I’d met. Then again, having your kid almost get killed by your coworkers probably put a lot of things into perspective for a guy. “Fine.” I texted, though, just a quick Yay, I’m out of jail and it’s even legal! Where are you? Can I come by? Then I put my phone in my pocket so I wouldn’t be tempted to stare at it until a reply came through.
The rest of the ride home was filled with Leanne’s happy chatter, which I hadn’t heard much of lately. It made me wonder… As we pulled into the back lot, I waited for her to turn the car off before I asked, “Are you leaving the business too?”
She stared at me. “How did you know?”
How could I not? “You’re back together with Theo, even though the major sticking point in your relationship was how much you prioritized working here over moving out and getting a place together. But I also know you want to do cosmetology school, and you’ve got a new sticker on your phone case for one—” She slapped a hand over the back of her phone, but it was too late to try to hide it. “And you wouldn’t have time to do both school and work here the way Dad wants while trying to have a relationship with Theo, so something had to give, and I bet it’s working here. Good for you,” I finished with a grin.
“You—that’s—” She sighed, but it was more amused than resigned. “I should never underestimate how well you can pay attention when you want to. You know about Stuart too, huh?”
“Yeah.”
She stared down at her phone for a long moment, thumb rubbing over the sticker. “You’re not planning to leave too, are you? I don’t think Dad could keep the business running if all of us left at once. It was bad enough when he was fretting for just a few hours over how long you might be gone.”
“I don’t want to leave the business,” I assured her. “I love working here. Just…maybe not the way I have been.” Being at Dad’s beck and call while making less than I ought to, never taking the chance to move out and be on my own—or with someone else, someone with two cats and a fish with an attitude problem. I was ready for a change, even if it meant getting a tiny apartment to live in for a while as I sorted my shit out.
“That’s fair.” Leanne nodded sagely. “Now brace yourself.”
“Wh—” The door flew open, and my brother jerked me out of the seat and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Jesus Christ, Everett!” he half-laughed, half-shouted at me. “I saw you get taken down by SWAT on the evening news! Dad just about had a heart attack!”
Oh boy. “Um, surprise?” Sadly, Dad’s night wasn’t about to get much better. But at least I could reassure him that I was okay.
That was the easy part, apparently. I got a quick side-hug, a “good thing I don’t have to bail you out of jail, kid,” and then my dad plunged into the weekend cremation schedule and the services we had coming up, just “getting you up to speed on things” so I could work, work, work. It left me feeling kind of cold, honestly. When was the last time my father had been concerned for me outside of how many shifts I was good for, or whether or not I could set up a funeral correctly?
Leanne held up a hand, interrupting our father’s discussion of flower deliveries. “Dad.” She glanced at both of us, then firmed her shoulders. “We’ve got something to tell you.”
“I can’t believe your dad yelled at you!” Kyle’s indignation was like ice on a burn.
“Eh, it wasn’t so bad. It was mostly him yelling at my brother and sister,” I said, snuggling in a little closer. After I got to his place an hour ago, the first thing we did together was shower. It had been decidedly cleanliness-oriented, which was fine since between the floor of Waffles? and the holding cell, I’d been exposed to more kinds of bacteria than I wanted to think about.
Now we were on the couch, bracketed by cats and full from an extra late-night dinner courtesy of Colin’s awesome wife. Taco casserole was a thing, it turned out. “But yeah, he wasn’t happy with me either. Said we were all betraying him. Then he told me I’d have to work harder than ever to make up for my siblings not being around, so I asked him for overtime pay.”
Kyle snorted a laugh. “What did he say to that?”
“Over his dead body, which I thought wasn’t very funny under the circumstances.”
“Does he not understand that you could have been—” Kyle didn’t say it, but we were both thinking it. Tonight could have been it. Tonight could have been our Ricky Leighton moment, all because we weren’t willing to let go of the truth. It would have been so much easier to just…allow things happen the way they’d been going, to let Ricky’s death be labeled a suicide and go about our business.
I didn’t regret pushing for the truth. I couldn’t, not just because Ricky deserved that much but because our investigation was what brought Kyle and me together. Still… “I couldn’t tell him how scared I was,” I said. “Or that I thought I might die. Or how awful it was when you were down and bleeding and you couldn’t hear me and all I could do was dumb shit to get attention and hopefully not get shot at the same time.” I heaved a sigh and turned my face into Kyle’s neck. He smelled like his soap, and clean skin, and a little like fabric softener. It was better than any cologne.
“Thanks for letting me be here.” I already knew I would have been up all night otherwise. Hell, it was so late now that this probably counted as being up all night, but at least with him I could sleep today.
Kyle ran a hand through my hair, pushing back the bits that had flopped down onto my face. “I wanted you here.”
I smiled. That was nice.
“So do Jeff and Patches.”
Aw, sweet.
“Steve too.”
I had to laugh. “Bullshit.”
“No, really. I came back here alone and went to feed them and Steve wouldn’t take any of the food. He kept swimming around like he was looking for you. He was pining, I’m telling you. Haven’t you noticed how he can’t take his eyes off you?”
I glanced over at Steve, who did still seem to be glaring at me. “Maybe it’s because I’m his nemesis.”
“Maybe it’s because he loves you and wants you to come over more often. Like, every day.”
Were we still talking about piranhas? I pulled back and looked at Kyle, who blushed but still met my gaze. “Really? Because I’ve been told that I’m tough for even the nicest piranhas to get along with sometimes.”
Kyle shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect. Steve thinks you’re pretty great, though.”
“I think Steve is pretty great.” I stopped for a second, then said, “Okay, wait, I’m getting lost in the metaphor. I do think Steve is great even if he doesn’t reciprocate, which is totally fine because he’s a fish and I don’t expect him to love me back, but I also think you’re great and you’re Steve, right? This is about you being Steve?”
Kyle laughed. Like, took his glasses off and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and laughed so hard he got the hiccups. “Yeah,” he finally got out. “ I’m Ste-hic-Steve. Shit, you know what I m-hic-mean.”
Yeah, I did. I had a badass boyfriend who was cute and kind and occasionally grumpy, who loved his pets and his family even when they were dicks to him, who was willing to go to bat for the truth even when it was hard, and who believed in me when no one else did. We had a lot of things to figure out about our jobs, our futures, and about being together. But what I knew for sure?
What we had together was worth it.
“I’m going to win actual Steve over,” I promised Kyle as I stood, then helped him up from the couch. Oof, did we ever need to sleep.
“If anyone can, it’s you,” he said blearily, keeping hold of my hand as he turned toward the bedroom. I glanced back at Steve one last time before I shut off the living room light.
Swear to God, that fish winked at me. It was almost like he was saying, “Welcome to the family, Everett. Now don’t fuck this up.”
Or maybe fatigue had me hallucinating at this point. Either way, I was taking the message to heart.