25. Diesel
DIESEL
Ipark down the street from Penny’s place, same as I’ve done a dozen times now, but tonight I don’t wait in the truck. The porch light is on. Thunder barks once behind the door before he catches my scent and goes quiet.
She answers in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, hair loose around her shoulders, and something in my chest loosens just looking at her.
“You gonna keep showing up unannounced?” she asks with a sigh.
I tilt my head. “You gonna keep pretending you don’t like it?”
She steps back, lets me in. That’s answer enough.
We end up on her couch, her feet tucked under her, a glass of wine she’s barely touched sitting on the coffee table. Thunder rests his big head on my boot like he’s decided I belong with them.
“Morris officially resigns Friday,” she says. “Council’s already fighting over who gets the interim seat.”
“You want it?”
“I don’t know what I want.” She looks at me when she says it, and I know she’s not just talking about the job.
I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers. Her hands still fit mine like they were made for it.
“Penny.”
She blinks at me. “That tone means something serious. What?”
I look at her for a long moment, weighing whether to say what’s been sitting on my tongue for weeks now.
“You ever think about it? Us. For real, not just stealing nights whenever we can get away with it.”
“Evan—”
“I asked you once. A long time ago.”
Her whole body goes still. She knows what I mean before I finish asking.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not asking again right now. I’m just asking if you ever think about it.”
She pulls her hand back, wraps both arms around her knees like she’s protecting herself from the question.
“I think about a lot of things I can’t have.”
“Why can’t you?”
“You know why.”
I do. I’ve heard it enough times from Bone, from Tank, from my own damn head at three in the morning. Badge and cut don’t mix. But sitting here, watching her curl into herself, I can’t make myself believe it the way I used to.
“I kept that ring,” I say. “Seventeen years, Penny. Carried it everywhere. Every run, every job, every night I told myself I was over you, it was right there against my chest.”
Her eyes lift to mine, something soft breaking through the wall she keeps so carefully built.
“Where is it now?”
“That’s the thing.” My jaw tightens. “I lost it.”
Her brow furrows. “Lost it how?”
“Cord snapped. Weeks back. I didn’t even feel it happen till it was too late to look.”
She’s quiet for a second too long. Something shifts behind her eyes, calculation replacing the softness, and I watch her turn cop right in front of me.
“Where were you when it happened?”
“Penny—”
“Where, Evan?”
I don’t answer fast enough. She’s already standing, arms crossed, putting distance between us until she’s standing beyond my reach.
“Was it County Road 9?”
The air goes out of the room.
“How do you—”
“Because we found a ring.” Her voice is flat, controlled, the voice she must use on suspects right before she reads them their rights. “In the mud. At the scene of an armed robbery of a county evidence van. Simple band, small stone. It’s been sitting in an evidence locker for weeks.”
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say that isn’t already written all over my face.
“Jesus Christ.” She presses her hand to her mouth like she might be sick. “You were there. You robbed that van.”
“Penny—”
“Don’t.” She backs up another step. “Don’t say my name like that’s going to fix this.”
“I’m not gonna lie to you.”
“You already have. Every single time you didn’t tell me.
” Her voice cracks, and for a second I see the girl I proposed to all those years ago, the one who drove away crying.
“I knew. Okay? I knew what you do, I’ve always known, I just—I let myself pretend it was somewhere else.
Someone else’s problem. Not something I had my hands on in an evidence bag. ”
“It’s just guns, Penny. Stolen guns nobody was gonna use for anything good anyway—”
“It’s not just anything.” She’s shaking now, and I can’t tell if it’s fury or fear.
“That’s a federal case. That’s my case. I watched the tech bag that ring and I felt sick and I told myself it didn’t mean anything because it couldn’t, because there’s no way—” She stops, swallows hard.
“There’s no way the man I love robbed an armed transport four weeks before I let him back into my bed. ”
The word love lands harder than anything else she’s said. She hears herself say it too, and her face goes pale.
“Penny.”
She takes a deep breath. “I need you to leave.”
“No,” I answer, shaking my head.
“Evan—”
“I’m not walking out that door and letting you spiral into whatever this is alone.” I stand, reach for her, but she steps back like my hands are something to be afraid of.
“You don’t get to decide that. Not tonight.
” Her eyes are wet, but her voice doesn’t break again.
“I have spent almost two decades building a life on the other side of a line you keep asking me to cross, and you just told me you’re standing knee-deep in exactly the kind of case that could end everything I’ve built. ”
“So what, you’re gonna arrest me?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Her hands are trembling. “That’s the problem. I don’t know, and I hate that I don’t know, and I need you to leave so I can figure it out without you standing here looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m supposed to forgive you just because you’re you.”
I grab my jacket off the back of the couch, jaw working, every instinct in me screaming to stay, to fix this, to make her understand that the ring mattered more than the job it got lost during. But I know that look on her face. I’ve seen it before.
“I’m not giving up on this,” I say at the door. “On us.”
“Then you should’ve thought about that before you robbed an evidence van.”
The door closes softly behind me, quieter than I expected given how loud everything inside me is screaming.
Thunder barks once from behind it, and then there’s nothing but the porch light and the sound of my own boots on her walkway, carrying me back toward a truck that suddenly feels like it’s going nowhere I actually want to be.