Page 40 of Stay in Your Lane!

“I don’t know, just a few hours.” Three and a half, but that was fine.

“Hours. Wow.” He reached out and took the pie, letting his fingers brush mine. “Do you want to come in for something to eat?”

I could feel my metaphorical ears go up. “Pie?”

“Pie, yeah. I even have some ice cream in the fridge.”

“You’re the perfect one,” I told him very seriously. “And I really am sorry.” I hated to ruin a nice moment with a negative reference, but… “Have you heard from your brother yet?”

His face fell a bit. “Not yet. Probably not for another few days. This shit takes forever.”

“But that pie won’t wait,” I said suggestively, putting the other issue aside for now. “And neither will this cat grass, honestly; it’s already looking a little wilty.”

“We can’t have that.” He opened his door slowly, brushed a cat away with his foot—probably Patches, since she struck me as the type that might make a break for it—and said, “Come in.”

Apology success.I was going to have to do something nice for Stuart for this.

CHAPTER 12

KYLE

Some stubborn part of me still wanted to be mad at Everett. I’d never been one to put up with people storming off in a huff. I had a very low tolerance for dramatic fights and blowups; if we couldn’t sit down and talk things through like adults, what was the point of being in a relationship?

Which was probably why I was twenty-eight and hadn’t had a relationship last more than three months. Yeah, it was possible I was the problem.

But somehow, Everett had come back—and waited for me until at eleven at night, no less—with a peace offering. The pie was great, but admittedly, it was the cat grass that won me over. It was adorably thoughtful. It was just so… Everett, and I was startled by how endearing that was.

Holy fuck. I like this guy more than I thought I did.

And it wasn’t like he’d stormed out on me over a disagreement about leaving socks on the floor or something equally inconsequential. It was about this possible murder we were trying to solve. The stakes were pretty damn high, and so was the stress. Was it reallythatdramatic or theatrical forsomeone to get that angry when he thought an actual murder might go unsolved?

I chased a few pie crumbs through the remaining melted ice cream on my plate. In the middle of the living room, Jeff and Patches inspected the cat grass. Patches had discovered she liked chewing on it and rubbing her face on it. Jeff was still trying to figure out how to sniff it, and he was deeply offended that each attempt ended with a blade of grass going up his nose.

“I always thought that was a myth,” Everett mused. “The whole thing about orange cats being stupid? But Jeff…”

I snorted as I put my plate on the end table. “Yeah. They say orange cats share a single brain cell. Jeff… doesn’t get a turn very often.”

Everett looked at me. “Does heeverget a turn?”

“About as often as certain comets pass by the earth.”

He laughed, and okay, yeah, I definitely wasn’t mad at him anymore. He was just so damn cute. And he loved animals. In particular,myanimals. He’d even said hi to the fish on the way into the living room, and he was starting to figure out how to identify them on sight. Gladys and Bill were easy thanks to their physical anomalies, and of course Steve always gave himself away. But Everett could also tell Julie and Tim apart, which even I struggled to do sometimes because literally the only difference was that Julie, being a female, had averyslightly darker red belly. He was one of the few people who’d ever caught sight of Paul, who typically lurked in the shadows and showed himself so rarely, I’d worried a few times that the others had eaten him.

When I’d pointed out Octavius, he’d cocked his head. “That’s a different name from all the others. Did he come with it? Like Patches?”

“No. He was my most recent, and he was number eight, so I thought I’d be clever and call him that.”

“Number eight? But you only have—” Everett had straightened, a look of horror on his face. “One of themdied?”

“No, no! The others were kind of picking on him and he wasn’t eating, so I sold him. Apparently he’s much happier in a tank by himself.”

The relief in Everett’s sigh had been endearing, too. Like he was seriously invested in the well-being of a fish who’d been gone six months before we’d ever crossed paths.

Sitting here beside him on the couch, watching him laugh at my cats playing with the grass… no, I couldn’t be mad at him. I didn’t even want to be.

I was also relieved to have him back on my side while we figured out what happened to Ricky. I wanted to see this through, and I’d been worried ever since he’d left that I was on my own.

I cleared my throat. “So, um… What do you think our next move should be? With Ricky?”

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