Page 5 of Watch Your Back (Devil’s Backbone #2)

Why am I being so fucking nice to Ashley?

She is clearly weirded out by it, and so am I.

And yet…I feel kind of sorry for her. She so obviously believes my friends care about her, as more than just my inconvenient new family member, but she’s wrong.

We’ve already discussed it. Ashley needs to go, and that’s the only option…

so why do I have this slimy feeling in my gut?

I t took some time—and several coffees—but I eventually relaxed enough to enjoy the day with my friends and family.

The parents seemed determined to make it a perfect day, and I had to guess they also understood how much Heath needed it.

The food was incredible—Max was a great cook—and during dessert, Dad whipped up a batch of his peppermint martinis that somehow ended up with Carly and me both drunkenly sobbing in the bathroom as we apologized to each other for being crappy friends.

Wisely, we both then opted for a little nap to sober up, and when we woke a few hours later, the house was much quieter.

I gave Carly my fluffy robe to wear, then wrapped myself up in a blanket to head back downstairs.

The snow had started falling again outside, and the fireplace crackled in the living room.

The four guys were all sprawled out on the sofas, awake but silent. Just…existing.

“Hey there, sad elves,” Heath greeted us with a slow grin spreading across his lips. “You two get all the emotions out?”

“Along with half a swimming pool worth of tears,” Nate murmured with the ghost of a smile. Prick.

Carly snorted. “Don’t be jealous that girls can talk out our differences and move on from them like mature adults. No fist fights necessary.”

“Just a bit of vomit in the shower,” I added with a wince. “It’s cool, though. I cleaned it up.”

Heath laughed and it was possibly my favorite sound in the whole world. I stepped over Royce’s legs propped up on the coffee table and took the vacant spot at Heath’s side, snuggling in.

“Where are the parents?” Carly asked, flopping down into an armchair, then groaning. “Ew, I think I’m hungover already.”

Carter tossed her a bag of corn chips. “Eat something. They went out to that party Max mentioned, told us not to wait up.”

“Are the three of them—” Royce started to ask, but both Nate and I cut him off with a sound of protest in unison.

I shook my head, grimacing. “We don’t know. We don’t want to know. Gross.”

“Agreed,” Nate grunted.

Royce snickered. “I’m just saying, Carina was all kinds of dolled up and?—”

Nate threw a cushion, hitting Royce square in the face to shut him up. Thank fuck for that too. I desperately didn’t want to picture my mom as the meat in a fifty-something-year-old sandwich.

“How are you feeling?” Heath asked me in a low voice, his arm draped comfortably over my shoulders as I rested against his side. “Do you need some water?”

“Or aspirin?” Carter added, smirking from his relaxed position perpendicular to us.

Pouting slightly—because I really didn’t feel so great—I shook my head. “I’m fine. I never realized how strong my dad’s peppermint martinis were, though.”

“Probably has something to do with them being almost entirely vodka,” Heath mused. “Anyway, it’s good you’re here now and sober…ish. We need to talk about some serious shit before your parents get back.”

Fuck. Inhaling sharply, I sat up straighter. “Um…” Was this when he told me we were done? Or that he couldn’t stomach sharing me with Carter? Not that that had turned into anything, since both Carter and Royce had ghosted me even harder than Carly had.

Heath wet his lips, running a hand through his hair, messing it up in such a sexy way. “This is hard to say but…” He paused and I held my breath, bracing to have my heart broken. “…what do you guys know about hypnosis?”

Huh?

“Hypnosis?” Royce repeated thoughtfully. “Like…when I snap my fingers, you’ll act like a chicken?”

Heath chuckled. “Yeah, something like that.”

Hypnosis? Oh. Oh. The serious talk wasn’t about our love life, and holy shit, I was officially the most self-centered bitch on earth.

Here’s Heath, having just survived a suicide attempt and subsequent rehab, wanting to talk about the very scary shit that went down at Nevaeh…

and I was fixating on whether he liked me or not.

Wow.

“You okay, Spark?” Carter asked quietly as Royce responded to Heath with an anecdote about someone he knew who used hypnosis to quit smoking.

I bit my cheek, trying to quell my embarrassment as I nodded. “Yeah, fine. Just…hungover, I think.”

He gave me a sympathetic smile, then pushed to his feet with a stretch and groan. “I’m grabbing a drink. Anyone want anything?”

“A lobotomy,” Carly moaned from the fetal position she’d curled into on the armchair.

Royce grinned. “Carly wants another peppermint martini. I’ll take another beer.”

Carter left the room and Heath cleared his throat. “So…I take it no one really knows much about hypnosis then?” He glanced around at everyone, including me. I shrugged my response and he gave a thoughtful hum. “Yeah, me neither.”

“So why ask?” Nate sat forward in his seat, elbows on his knees. “Do you think…?”

Heath wet his lips again, seeming more nervous than I’d seen him…

maybe ever? “Don’t you? Look, it sounds farfetched and a bit fucking sci-fi, but one of the other guests at Sunshine Valley Center suggested it as a possibility, and I have to admit, it sounds plausible.

I’ve done a little bit of research and I think maybe this needs investigating. ”

“By guest you mean inmate, yeah?” Royce teased.

Heath scoffed. “It’s not a prison. Patient, if you must be clinical about it. Yeah, look, it wasn’t any of the doctors that suggested it, and when I mentioned the possibility in therapy it was kind of brushed aside as borderline fictional. But…they also haven’t given me any better explanations.”

Carter returned from the kitchen, handing out beers to all the boys even though only Royce had asked for one. To me, he passed a can of ginger beer and a packet of salty crackers.

“Thanks,” I murmured, sitting up a little straighter so as not to spill all over Heath. My head hurt for sure, but I was a million times better off than Carly. Just remembering the mess she’d made in the shower made me wince.

“You know anything about hypnosis, Carter?” Royce asked, slouching back with his fresh beer.

Carter gave a small shrug, sitting back down. “Nope.”

“Look, right now it’s the best explanation as far as I’m concerned,” Heath said with an edge of frustration. “It makes a shitload more sense than whatever the fuck the Sunshine Valley therapists think is going on.”

That caused a barb of worry to tighten in my chest. “What do they think?”

Heath glanced at me, then sighed. “Something about sleep psychosis and poor impulse control.”

My nose wrinkled. “How do they explain multiple people having the same sleep psychosis at the same time?”

He ran a hand over his face with a groan. “They can’t because I didn’t tell them about the fire. It was bad enough, convincing them that I wasn’t going to try to kill myself again without admitting that my friends and I are responsible for a man’s death.”

“And that none of us have any recollection of even being there,” Carter added with a grimace. “Good thinking.”

For some reason, my gaze shot to Nate, and I caught him staring back at me with his brow furrowed in concern. We were the only witnesses to the fire, and it’d taken a lot to convince Royce and Carter that they had, in fact, been responsible for the arson.

“What did you tell them, then?” Nate asked, echoing my own thoughts.

Heath took a sip of his beer, clearly sorting through his thoughts.

“As much as I could without being put back into involuntary admission. That I’d been having increasingly violent dreams and waking up with unexplained scrapes and bruises…

that I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d been involved in something bad and that I was scared I’d end up hurting someone I really care about. ”

His hand shifted to the back of my neck as he spoke, and his fingers flexed ever so slightly at the end of his statement. He was scared of hurting me. I leaned into him, trying to silently remind him that I was fine.

“Okay, so that’s why they’re dismissing your hypnosis idea, I guess…” Nate mused aloud, his fingertips drumming his knee thoughtfully. “And they’ve just drawn the logical conclusion that you decided it was safer to…you know…”

“Kill yourself,” Royce filled in when Nate floundered. “You decided it was safer to kill yourself, so you didn’t risk killing Ashley.”

Fuck. The tension in the room was so thick, you could cut it with a knife, and when a log on the fireplace popped, Carly gave a little scream.

Heath gusted out a sigh, running his hand over his hair even as his fingers flexed on my nape.

“Okay, Royce, a little tact goes a long way,” I said, sitting forward to put my drink and snacks down. “There’s no need for snark.”

Royce swung his gaze to meet mine for the first fucking time all day, and I sucked in a breath at the anger simmering beneath the surface of his gray eyes.

“Ashley, tactfully , this isn’t about you.

It’s about our best friend and why the fuck he thought suicide was a better choice than asking us for help.

Why he thought we were so useless, we couldn’t possibly get him help when?—”

“Enough!” Heath barked. “Royce…don’t fucking speak to her like that.

This wasn’t about Ash. Not entirely, anyway.

And if we’re out here pointing fingers and casting blame, you all knew I was sleepwalking.

It’s why you insisted on staying as Ashley’s roomie for so long and didn’t let me stay over.

So don’t act like this is all such a shock. ”

Holy fuck. The conversation was going downhill real fast, and somehow, I was at the center of it again.