Page 83 of Lethal in Pink

And I do not regret it.

Chapter twenty-eight

Jae

I’ve been standing in front of the same metal shelving unit for forty minutes, counting 22-gauge syringes into a plastic tray, and my face is starting to cramp from a grin I can’t seem to turn off.

It’s ridiculous. It’s unprofessional. It’s also completely uncontrollable.

Usually, this room is just a list of chores—a quiet, predictable space where I check off boxes and stay under the radar. Today, the orderly rows of vials and the hum of the lights just feel like background noise I’m barely registering. All I can hear is a three-minute-and-forty-seven-second voice memo playing on a loop in my head.

Amiyah Lane in full obsessive mode, tearing into a true crime podcast host over a cold case he completely botched. She didn’t cite law; she cited the limitations of forensic geology and the specific, damning oversight of soil samples that the lead investigator had ignored for three decades. She laid out the timeline of a crime from 1994 with the precision of a surgeon, clearly having paused the podcast just to look up topographical maps and geological survey data before hitting record to absolutely bury a man who couldn’t hear her.

“—and if you’re going to act like a 'crime expert,' the ethical minimum is to know that the limestone in the victim’s ravine doesn't match the dirt in the guy's trunk. That’s a three-hundred-mile difference in geology, you absolute hack. You’re not solving a mystery; you’re just confirming a bias because it makes for a cleaner narrative. It’s lazy. It’s insulting. And it’s exactly why that family is still waiting for an answer thirty years later.”

Listening to her tear that guy apart hit me right in the gut, leaving me rigid and inconveniently hard against the seam of my scrubs. I’d listened to the memo four times. The last time, I was locked in the staff bathroom with the sink running, my forehead pressed against the cold tile, waiting for the physiological rebellion in my jeans to subside. I was genuinely starting to wonder if I’d finally broken my brain. Is there a medical term for being turned on by forensic geology and prosecutorial-level aggression? Because if there is, I was pretty sure I was the current case study. I was standing in a room meant for veterinary medicine, feeling a completely obscene, frantic want that only Amiyah could carve into my bones, and I couldn't decide if I needed a doctor or just a hell of a lot more self-control.

I was officially a lost cause. I was, by all accounts, an absolute disaster. Why the fuck am I built like this? And God help me, I couldn't stop smiling.

I stand there, looking at the tray, and I finally stop trying to outrun it. The thing that’s been hovering in the back of my head for weeks.

I’m in love with Amiyah Lane.

It doesn’t hit like some movie moment. It’s more like a low-grade fever that’s been hanging around, and I’ve been trying to convince myself it’s just stress or jet lag or the fact that vet school is a meat grinder. It’s not. It’s her. And there’s no quick fix for it.

My hands go back to work, counting vials on autopilot. The cabinet lock clicks—that sharp, metallic snick—and I’m left standing there, running through every single reason I’m a total idiot for letting this happen.

It’s the shorthand we’ve developed. We finish each other’s sentences, share inside jokes about random campus shit, and talk for hours about things that don't matter. It’s an eight-month-old rhythm that feels like it’s been there forever, even though I’m still figuring out how I fell into it so hard.

Then there’s the laugh—the one she tries to physically murder the second it breaks out of her chest. Like three weeks ago at Beaned & Brew’d when the kid behind the counter butchered her name as Amaya for the fourth time. She didn’t even correct him. Her head just tipped back, her eyes squeezing into half-moons, letting out a sound so bright and completely unguarded that the guy next to us jumped. She snapped back into her cool, lawyer-mode mask three seconds later, her cheeks burning pink the entire walk down the block. I catch myself replaying that specific sound when I'm staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM.

Same with the clinic.

I mentioned the brick storefront with the wide windows once—just a half-baked pipe dream over lukewarm coffee—and she didn’t blink. She set her cup down, rested her chin in her hand, and just listened. Really listened. Five minutes later she was already pulling up commercial zoning restrictions and local lease comps on her phone, rattling off square-footage prices like she was mapping out her own schedule. She treated my half-assed idea like it was an actual inevitability. Nobody has ever backed me up like that. Not once in twenty-seven years.

I like to think I’m a rational person, but this isn't "liking" someone. "Liking" is a preference—a manageable, quantifiable attraction that resolves itself if you stay busy or remind yourself that you came to Blackthorn to keep things uncomplicated.

This is not that.

This is compounding interest.

It’s wanting her voice in my kitchen at 7:00 AM. It’s wanting to see the messy, furious look on her face when she’s struggling with a bill she forgot to pay. It’s wanting to know her handwriting on a grocery list.

I wash my hands at the stainless sink until the skin is raw and pink. The parking lot is sweltering, the asphalt radiating heat from the afternoon sun. I lean against my car door, pull out my phone, and type something deliberately, strategically stupid.

Me: just replayed the podcast rant. you do realize the host cannot hear you, right? this is like yelling at a weather forecast.

The three dots pulse for eight seconds—she’s drafting a manifesto—and then her response lands.

Amiyah: The host’s platform reaches 2.3 million listeners. His irresponsible framing of forensic evidence as a magic bullet for cold cases normalizes the very tunnel vision that keeps the wrong people in prison. The ethical obligation doesn’t disappear because the medium is asynchronous. If anything, the responsibility is greater. Also, the weather cannot withhold geological data. False equivalence. Try again.

Followed by a single emoji…

Amiyah:😏

I read it twice, leaning against the warm metal of my car, grinning like a complete idiot in an empty lot. I don’t care that this complicates every plan I brought to California. I don’t care that it sits directly opposite the future my family has mapped out.

Me: noted. will draft a formal apology to the weather.