Page 91 of Stay in Your Lane!

“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, whodidstill 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 thinkSteveis 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 thinkyou’regreat 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’mSte-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.

EPILOGUE

Kyle

The next several months were a strange mix of escalating shitstorms and long overdue calm.

The city was going to be dealing with lawsuits for at least a couple of years. Chet had filed suit over his injuries during the showdown at Waffles?, and the restaurant’s owners were paying for his lawyer as well as their own suit. From what Everett and I had heard through the grapevine (read: the gossip from servers at Waffles?), the owners were suing the city for millions, citing damage to property and reputation, not to mention endangering employees and customers alike. Carol told us that the city was trying desperately to settle out of court, but the diner’s owner was determined to go to trial. He wanted to, quote,“force an official, permanent, and public record of everything that happened in my goddamned restaurant.”

In the days after what happened at Waffles?, I’d been sure Everett and I would both be out of work. I mean, there was noway the city was still going to contract us, right? And did we even want to still work with and around the police?

To my great surprise, though, the city had approached us both with lucrative, long-term contracts. According to none other than Chief Daniels himself, this whole fiasco had demonstrated that we were more than trustworthy.

“At great risk to yourselves,”he’d said,“you both showed courage and commitment to solve a murder when the people most trusted to do so betrayed their oath.”

No, really, he said that… into a microphone. At a ceremony where he issued us freakingmedals. That was just weird. One minute, the cops were out to get us. The next, they were giving us medals.

Daniels had even tried to get us both to join the force. He and some of his detectives had been seriously impressed by our policework, especially connecting Reardon via his black Air Force 1s. An expert at the state crime bureau had confirmed that the gouge out of the circle in the shoe’s tread matched the one on Reardon’s shoe, which was also the same size. Not only that, they’d found traces of Ricky’s blood inside the treads, along with tiny metal shavings that were a match for those on the floor at the plant where he’d threatened me.

“He’s fucked,”Theo had declared after gleefully reading that report.“Dumbass made sure to shut people up every way he could, but he couldn’t ditch the bougie shoes, and now he’s going down.”

Yes, he was.Mightily.

“Are you sure I can’t talk you boys into becoming officers?”Daniels had asked, shaking our hands after he’d given us the medals.“We could use some men like you.”

Everett and I had politely declined, and instead just smiled and accepted our medals.

The cops applauding us in their dress uniforms that day hadn’t been the same cops who’d tried to smoke us out of Waffles?, fortunately. Detective Reardon and his dozen or so minions had all been fired, and those who’d committed crimes were in jail awaiting trial.

Turned out Chief Daniels had had no part of any of it. No, he’d never liked Ricky, and he really had offered to buy his daughter a house in another city to keep them apart. He’d never wanted to hurt the kid, though, and he’d been horrified to realize Detective Reardon had offed him. From what Theo had told us, Reardon was more devastated by the chief turning on him than anything else. Apparently he was a broken, defeated man.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

His boys also rolled on him, especially once they realized they could get plea deals if they testified against him. It was through them that we all learned his hit list was several people long and comprised mostly of those who had dirt on him or Chief Daniels. Three different people testified that Reardon had been orchestrating it all so that if he got caught, he could throw Daniels under the bus for putting him up to it. Everett and I had thrown a monkey wrench into that, and now the whole house of cards was falling down on his own stupid head.

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