Page 89 of Stay in Your Lane!

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 fewweeksKyle 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 weredead!Holyshit,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.Kissedher. On themouth.

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 beingwith 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 andhimand?—

“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?—”

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