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Livy’s face blanches of all color. She sits with her mouth hanging open, her phone in her hand at her lap. Brighton yells from there.
I reach over and press the speaker button. “Bright, Livy is dumbfounded. Give her a few minutes, and she’ll be ready to go. Y’all come over whenever. We’re celebrating all damn day.”
“Okay. See you in a bit. Happy birthday, Lay.” She clicks off.
“Thanks, Ex. I owe you one,” I offer into my phone.
“No, you don’t, little brother. Just grow old and gray until we’re too deaf to hear the other one yelling about kids on the front lawn.”
“That I can do. See you in a bit.”
He disconnects, and I stare at my fiancée. “We got him.”
“You… he…” Her eyebrows pull together.
I tell her what I know and why it was so easy to make the decision about rehab. And that I refused to have someone else profit on my pain.
“And Team Takedown is you, Eli, and Exton who made that”—she looks at the screen in disbelief—“happen?”
“Well, I didn’t do anything. And none of us committed a felony or four. That asswipe did.” I pause the television feed, and after burning the image into my brain once and for all, I turn off the TV and get it retracted back into the wall with the art descending to cover the mechanism. “I was able to validate two of the crimes. Eli knew the law. Exton had the contacts at the FBI and DEA.”
“What else are you hiding from me?”
“Nothing, Pix. I wasn’t hiding this. The timelines just didn’t line up for me to loop you in. For the record, we’re not forming a secret crime-fighting trio to stop every injustice.”
“So no tights?”
“Not for me. Don’t need people ogling my man meat.”
She tackles me into the mattress.
And lucky for me, I get my second orgasm of the day.
* * *
The family piles out of the house just before midnight.
I put Livy to bed, promising to be right behind her, and come back into the kitchen to scoop up the last of the trash.
A quiet knock on the door surprises me. It doesn’t get Kyle’s attention, and the vision through the peephole isn’t who I’d expect. I open the door to Pop who holds a black box.
“This isn’t for your birthday. And it’s not yours permanently, but it is yours for as long as you need it.”
“You want to come back in, Pop?”
“No. But I wanted a private moment to give it to you.”
I look at him skeptically and open the lid. It takes a moment. It takes an infinite moment across one thousand lifetimes for me to understand.
I look up into Pop’s watering eyes.
“As long as you need it, son. Have a great night.”
He turns on his boot and heads to his already running truck. The windows are down as usual, and he lifts a hand as he pulls out of the driveway.
I close the door, lock it, and fold to the floor, staring at the contents of the box.
My nose warms, and the stinging tickles. My eyes fill, and without a care in the world, I let them overrun my lower lids.
