Page 48 of Watch Your Back (Devil’s Backbone #2)
None of us wanted to believe what Katie told Royce and Ashley.
Nate obviously rebelled against the suggestion that his mom was somehow involved in all the hypnosis, but so did Carter and I.
Sure, she wasn’t the warmest mother on earth, but she wasn’t evil.
We’d all known her our whole lives, and aside from being fairly absent since the divorce, she still loves Nate.
No way in hell is she fucking around inside our heads and literally killing people just for giggles.
We all know her. She’s not a murderer.
Then again, I’d like to say the same about myself and unfortunately it simply isn’t true anymore.
Shit. Maybe it is impossible to truly know a person…
H. Briggs, March 9
I t’d been two weeks since our visit with Katie and her shocking revelations about Jocelyn.
Nate had been understandably horrified when we relayed the information and lashed out.
As harsh as he was in his insults, it was painfully clear that, underneath it all, he was scared and hurt.
So I bit my tongue and, for once, didn’t bark back.
He needed time to process the information. We all did. But while I thought we would all think it over and see that, yes, Jocelyn was a very valid suspect…the guys all seemed to dismiss the idea as being far-fetched and illogical after very little reflection at all.
It led to a lot of arguments, and I hated that. Everyone was walking on eggshells by the time I broached the idea of me moving into my own place again.
I wasn’t sneaky about it, but Carter lost his shit and got into a fight with Royce.
It escalated until Heath and Nate were dragged into it, leaving me to abandon the idea entirely, purely out of fear they were actively going to come to blows.
The strain in the apartment seemed to escalate after that, with Heath withdrawing, Royce always on the edge of irritation though he tried to hide it, and Carter?
Carter either wanted to fuck it out or just storm off to the gym.
Apparently talking wasn’t something anyone wanted.
Not even me.
So when Nate handed me an invitation to his birthday party over coffee one morning, I was left gaping after him—particularly when he added, “No excuses, Ash. You need to be there.”
No excuses. I hadn’t been making excuses to Mom or Max since they’d confessed to Mom’s stalker or whatever they were. The person who’d harassed her for years. I had called Dad because I wanted to know what he knew, but he was out in the field, so all I could do was leave him a message.
Somehow I was utterly unsurprised to discover Nate’s birthday was another extravagant party hosted at a lavish mansion in Prosper Heights.
Carter had once again provided me with one of his mother’s obscenely expensive—and stunning—dresses, but this time it was a full-skirted cocktail dress in pristine white with the one shoulder strap creating a huge bow.
“No red tonight?” I joked as he zipped me into the luxurious garment.
He gave a gruff moan. “I wish. It’s a black-and-white party, and since it’s Nate’s birthday, I figured we should play along. You look amazing in everything. I’m just biased toward red.”
“Do you guys always have these huge parties for your birthdays? I feel like the last real birthday party I had was when I was nine. Some girls from school came over for a sleepover, and Mom made us all cute little tent beds in the living room.” I smiled at the fond memory as Carter brushed a kiss over my bare shoulder.
He laughed softly, his breath warm on my skin as I turned to face him. He was still shirtless, and when he raised a hand to fix a loose curl in my hair, the scarring on his forearm caught my gaze. Snatching his wrist in my grip, I kissed the inside of his wrist, right over the k of Spark.
It’d healed cleanly—thank goodness—but the scarring wouldn’t fade anytime soon.
“You’re still insane, you know that?” I murmured, then traced the letters with the tip of my tongue.
I’d done it dozens of times before, and it always elicited the same reaction from Carter—heavy eyes, quickened breathing…
usually followed by him tossing me over his shoulder or onto the bed or against a wall or…
“I know,” he replied with a sexy smirk. “Still in love too.”
Fuck. Same.
He groaned a little as he reluctantly pulled his arm out of my grip, forcing himself to grab his shirt from the hanger to finish dressing. “But no, to answer your question, we don’t do birthday parties every year. This is just because Nate is turning twenty-five.”
I dragged my eyes away from his toned, tattooed flesh and checked my makeup in the mirror instead. My lipstick had smudged ever so slightly so needed fixing. “Is twenty-five a big deal? Does he come into his magical powers and shift into a dragon or something?”
Carter scoffed. “Have you been reading Royce’s romance books again?”
I shrugged, because yes. They were really good and giving me a weird sense of comfort in our unusual relationship dynamic.
“Twenty-five is typically when we rich kids get access to our inheritances, unless the older generations are particularly strict or old-fashioned and add additional clauses to the trust requirements. Nate’s grandparents weren’t dickheads, so he just has to be twenty-five to inherit an obscene amount of wealth. ”
“I’m guessing your family falls into the dickhead category?” I asked with a grin, because his mom wanted to frame me for murder. Clearly she was a dickhead of the highest degree.
Carter smiled back, buttoning his black shirt. “Yes. Very firmly. So does Royce’s, for that matter. I definitely wouldn’t expect any sort of party for his twenty-fifth in June.”
“Are you guys talking about me?” Royce asked, letting himself into the bedroom with a drink already in hand.
We were getting ready in one of the bedrooms of the rented mansion and intended to stay the night after the party, so no one needed to drive.
I’d insisted Nate take the master suite, since it was his birthday, and found a bedroom on a whole different floor for the rest of us, so he didn’t need to hear us getting down and dirty later.
“Always,” Carter drawled. “We can’t stop talking about you, Roycey baby. You’re just so darn interesting.”
Royce shrugged. “Seems legit. I’d believe it.” Then he swept his gaze over my short dress and high heels. “Damn, Squirrel, you look like a fucking present waiting to be unwrapped.”
I glanced down at the giant bow and wrinkled my nose. “Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m okay with it,” he quickly added. “It just means I’ll be thinking about unwrapping you later.”
Carter shot me a dark look that said he fully intended to beat Royce to it, and I bit back a smile at their competitiveness. It was all in good nature these days.
“Help me with this,” Carter murmured to Royce, gesturing to his black silk tie.
He’d gone the full black route on his outfit, as had Royce.
From what I’d seen of Heath earlier, he was in a black suit with white shirt and tie.
I wondered if Nate was in all white. God, then we’d look like we’d dressed to match.
Royce fussed with Carter’s tie, making sure it was sitting perfectly before picking his drink up once more and offering me his arm. “Shall we, Squirrel?”
I tucked my hand through his and let him lead the way out of the bedroom. The party had already started downstairs about half an hour ago, but Carter had delayed me in the bathroom, fucking me over the vanity when I was meant to be doing my makeup.
Heath and Nate were easy to find, lurking near the bottom of the stairs like they were waiting for something. They both looked incredible in their suits, but rather than being in all white, Nate had gone with a black shirt and pants with a white velvet jacket. It was a good look for him.
“Finally,” Heath teased as we reached them. “We were taking bets on how long you guys would be after Royce disappeared up there to find you.”
I grinned, resisting the urge to kiss him. We’d massively dialed down the PDA in public since I was still Nate’s fake fiancée—something Mom had been more and more suspicious about recently despite my continued assurances it wasn’t real.
“Happy birthday, Essex,” I said instead, offering him a polite friend hug. He leaned into it, his hand on the small of my back. I had his birthday present clutched in my hand, and as anxious as I was to get it over and done with, I asked, “Can we talk for a moment in private?”
He raised a brow in question as he drew away from my hug, then glanced to the small, gift-wrapped box in my hand. “Sure. Heath, sort us out some cocktails? We’ll just be a minute.”
Ignoring the guys’ curious glances—because I hadn’t discussed this gift idea with any of them—I let Nate lead me away and through the main living area, where dozens of sharply suited guests already stood around drinking, chatting, laughing, generally enjoying the party.
More than just college students too—I recognized several older guests from the last Devil’s Backbone party.
“In here,” Nate murmured, ushering me into a bedroom just off the main living areas. A glance around said it was the room being used for gifts, with stacks of professionally wrapped boxes lining the floor. “Is this private enough?”
He closed the door behind himself, and I drew a deep breath as I crossed to the foot of the bed and sat down, mainly so I wouldn’t pace nervously. “Yeah, this is fine. Sorry, I meant to find the time to speak with you before the party but, um, got distracted.”
“I heard,” he muttered, almost under his breath, and my face flamed. I really, really needed to learn how to shut the fuck up during sex. “It’s fine. I also wanted to discuss something with you tonight.”
My brows rose in surprise as he pulled a thick fold of papers from the inside of his jacket pocket but didn’t make any moves to hand them to me. Odd. He seemed…nervous.
That made two of us.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” I offered with a weak smile.
“Firstly, I wanted to apologize for the last few weeks. After we met with Katie…I’m sorry for accusing your mom of being some kind of deranged psychopathic puppeteer.
Loads of people have studied mental manipulations in the academic sphere. That alone isn’t evidence enough.”
Nate sighed and came to sit beside me. Not so close to be uncomfortable but close enough that we could speak a little more intimately, not yell apologies across a chasm of space.
“I appreciate your apology, Layne, but it’s not necessary.
You haven’t had a great first impression of my mom, and with the shit that’s happened, it’s entirely understandable you’d be suspicious.
But at the end of the day, she’s my mom.
She would never hurt me, and whoever is doing all this?
They don’t care who is hurt. Just look at Heath. ”
I nodded silently because it was the same discussion we’d all been having since speaking with Katie. The guys all just wanted me to trust that they knew Jocelyn well enough to know if she was a murderer. I wasn’t going to argue with Nate on his birthday, though.
“Well, hmm.” It was the best I could give, because although I was sorry for being an asshole, I still thought Jocelyn was fishy as hell. “Anyway, I had a really hard time trying to think what I could get you for your birthday since you have everything you could possibly want already.”
Nate gave a short laugh with a bitter edge to it. “Not everything.”
I rolled my eyes with a touch of frustration, figuring he was probably dreaming of some obscure one-of-a-kind yacht or something.
“Okay, well, I can’t afford to get you anything you can’t already get for yourself, so I just…
” I trailed off, majorly second-guessing my choices.
“Fuck. Okay, look. My best idea for a birthday gift was to move out of your apartment and give your space back. But you saw how that discussion went the other day.”
This time his laugh held more warmth. “Yeah, I think you and I both need to accept the fact you’re never leaving.”
“Well, this was the only other thing I could think of.” Before I could lose my nerve, I handed over the small gift box I’d been holding on to. “Technically it’s a gift from my mom too.”
Max and Carina weren’t attending the party tonight, as Max had been called away on some urgent business in New York and Mom had gone with him. Probably for the best, so we didn’t have to be on our best behavior in front of our parents.
Nate gave me a curious look, setting aside his folded papers to open the gift. “Oh, it’s a watch?”
Embarrassment flooded through me at his confused expression, but I forged ahead nonetheless.
“It’s… I mean, yes. It’s a watch. But obviously not like the watches you guys wear, so don’t feel like you have to ever take it out of the case or anything, but it was my grandfather’s watch.
Um, Mom’s dad, I mean. He used to say it was his lucky charm and that all the best things in his life happened while he was wearing that watch.
He wanted to pass it down to his grandson, but I was it for Mom. Until she met Max.”
Nate was silent for the most intensely heavy moment, staring at the old-fashioned watch in its wooden case. When he looked up at me, his eyes were shiny.
“Thank you,” he whispered, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. “This is… No one has ever given me something so thoughtful.”
I shrugged, super uncomfortable now. “You’re welcome. Carter said twenty-five is a big deal for you upper-class fucks, so I figured a new Xbox game just wouldn’t cut it as a gift.”
A chuckle escaped him as he looked back at the watch in disbelief. Then he unclipped the white-gold Patek Philippe watch he wore and swapped it for my grandfather’s Omega Seamaster.
“You don’t have to wear it,” I insisted again, with a small laugh to see his obscenely expensive timepiece tossed aside.
He looked up at me from tightening the strap. “Yes. I do. I want to see if your grandfather’s luck is still lingering.” The intensity of his gaze as he said that sent a shiver over my skin, and my mouth went dry.
“What, um, what do you mean?”
It was a dumb question. I’d know that look in his eyes anywhere. It was the same that night after Napa Valley, right before he’d kissed me. He was so drunk then, I’d pushed him away because he wasn’t in control of his actions. But he seemed totally sober now.
Oh shit. Was Nate going to kiss me?
Oh shit! Did I want him to?