Page 44 of Bad Boy in Her Bed

Ryder nodded as he rolled his stool to the safe.“Are you still angling to do those free temporary tats at the Fourth celebration Sunday?”

“Damn right I am.Grey’s going to help out but if you want to swing by and do an hour or two, that would be cool,” he lied, hoping his cheat of a business partner would stay far away.

Shrugging, Ryder turned his back and opened the lock.“Yeah, maybe.Have a good night.”

Walking out to his truck, he fired off a text to Grey reminding him to switch the laundry over during a study break before he messaged Jocelyn to see if she wanted him to pick up anything on his way over.

“No.I’m fine thanks.”

Frowning as he started his truck, he reread her response a few times.

Her texts were always brief, but rarely punctuated with anything other than an emoji.And she always asked about his day.

Hitting the road, he shook his head.

He was being paranoid.

Paranoid and weird.

Nodding at the doorman as he entered, he hopped on the elevator and stepped into her hallway, disappointed to see she wasn’t waiting for him in her doorway.An uneasiness slithered through him while he knocked on her door and waited for her to answer.

Maybe he said too much last night.Been too eager to follow her to New Jersey.Been too forward in his offer for her to move in with him.He knew she was still holding back emotionally, if not physically, but he was certain the barrier was falling more and more every day.

The door opened and she stepped aside for him to enter, the downturn of her lips and the redness of her eyes sending a jolt of fear through him.

“Hey,” he said, reaching out to embrace her and freezing when she backed away.“Jocelyn.What’s wrong?”

She closed the door and leaned against it, her gaze on the floor.“I need you to be honest with me, Birch.Completely honest.”

“Always,” he replied, his stomach knotting.“Baby, you’re kind of freaking me out here.”

Inhaling sharply, she swallowed and looked up at him with such suspicion and wariness he felt the hit direct to his chest.“How are you paying for Grey’s schooling?”

He could feel the blood draining from his face as he ran a hand through his hair.“Why are you asking?”

“Because it’s important.”She looked to the ceiling and walked past him, grabbing a bottle of water.“Because I need to know where you got the money to pay for his education on a small-town tattoo artist’s salary.”

He knew eventually someone would ask.But most people didn’t talk money in casual conversation.They didn’t ask and he didn’t offer and no one was the wiser.

But what he and Jocelyn had wasn’t casual.And neither was their conversation.

“Okay,” he opened slowly, gathering his thoughts as he crossed the floor and sat at the dinette, his back hunched in defense.“Before I tell you, I’m going to need two things from you.I need you to never tell anyone, and I need you to hear me out.”

She perched on the edge of the bed where they’d awoken that morning, her steel eyes red-rimmed and hard.“I’ll hear you out, but you can’t ask me not to say anything if you’re into anything illegal.”

“I don’t know if what I did is illegal,” he sighed, pressing his forehead to his fist for a moment.“It’s just…if I tell you and you let it out that you know, I’m fucked.More importantly, Grey will be fucked.River and Winter might be, too.”

Bringing her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them.“If I agree not to say anything but it involves Serpent’s Tongue, I’ll be obligated to disclose it.”

“It doesn’t.This happened long before the shop existed.”When she nodded, he ran his hands over his face and laughed humorlessly.“I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass, but I never figured it would be a woman doing the biting.

“Six years ago on July Fourth, there was a break and enter on the east side of town.The intruder had a crowbar and a switchblade.The victims described him as being in his early twenties, unshaven, with dark brown hair.A tall guy, around six-foot-two.He was picked up a few blocks away the same night, skulking through someone else’s backyard.”

He could see the confusion on her face before she spoke.“That was you.”

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head.“No.It was Justin Fogerty, Sheriff Bill Fogerty’s middle kid.He and I were in school together until I dropped out.Kind of a spoiled, smarmy asshole, but I didn’t know him too well given who his dad was.

“Anyway, the two cops who picked him up brought him straight to Bill.Maybe they were thinking they could wipe the report as a favor to the boss or something, but the couple who were robbed were all over social media within hours.So someone needed to go down for it.”

---