Chapter Twenty-Seven
J ocelyn’s lungs burned in her chest as she pushed herself to cover more ground. She forced her feet across the uneven earth while she gripped the tape recorder in one hand and held Birch’s truck keys in the other.
“I don’t run.”
She didn’t need to look back to know he was still on her tail, the gap between them widening now that they were traveling up Tower Hill. Every so often, Birch would holler her name in the moonlight, each call to her sounding more desperate and strained than the last.
Although he was faster out of the gate, she counted on the element of surprise to buy her the precious seconds she needed to gain the lead, a lead she could easily maintain once she had it.
And she did, with an old tape recorder she’d recognized the moment Birch approached her on the porch. He was so focused on his keys that he hadn’t noticed her until he was almost sprawled on top of her.
“Jocelyn!”
His voice was hoarse behind her, his rasping breath carrying across the still night to match her own as their physical endurances were tested against their wills.
“I don’t run.”
Her muscles no longer burned. A bone-deep numbness settled in as she fumbled with the recorder and dropped his truck keys while she fought to remove the tape. Throwing the heavy machine aside, she grasped the small plastic cassette and focused on the top of the hill.
“Jocelyn, stop,” he hollered, his footsteps growing closer. “Please.”
Cloud cover obscured the moonlight, making the terrain below her almost impossible to discern.
And she didn’t know this side of town, didn’t know the trails and the ridges and the paths. There was no plan, no map to follow. Her momentum hiccupped with every assessment of her surroundings, each hesitation losing more of her precious lead.
“I don’t run.”
He was running now, his heavy breathing getting nearer as she breached the peak of the hill and began her descent. Her ingrained caution slowed her pace while she tore down the hill, his desperation barreling him ahead until he overtook her.
Skidding to a stop in front of her, he turned, his arms catching her when she stumbled and slammed into him. His body cushioned her fall while they tumbled roughly onto the dirt and weeds, his hold on her going lax as he hit the ground with a thud. The cassette flew out of her hand and she scrambled over him to reach it before he could, snatching it up and clutching it to her chest.
“I have a backup,” he rasped, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself back onto his haunches. “The cassette is a copy of the original I have saved on my phone. It’s just insurance. That isn’t the only recording this time.”
This time.
Her instincts were right. He’d bartered himself away, and she knew damn well which devils he made the deal with.
“Whatever they’re paying you, it isn’t worth it,” she snarled through panting breaths.
His head was bowed, his hair falling forward to hide his eyes.
If her legs would cooperate, she could catch him off guard again and try to outrun him.
“I’m not doing it for the money.” He pressed his palm against his forehead. “Goddamn it, Jocelyn. Just give me the tape. Please.”
She shook her head. “You said you have a backup. Why not be fine with that?”
“Call it sentimental attachment.” He peered up at her and she was struck by how worn he looked. The weight of the past few weeks showed in the creases and deepening lines on his face. “Jocelyn, it’s already done. Whether you give me that tape or not.”
Waving her hand toward the lights of town, she scoffed. “Then go.”
“I’m not leaving you out here in the dark alone,” he scowled. “It’s counterproductive to my plan of keeping the shit I brought along from rolling downhill onto you.”
Pursing her lips, she glared at him. “First of all, that is a disgusting analogy. Second, I never asked you to save me. Not from Ryder, not from Trevor, not from you. And third, if you want to sentence yourself to a decade of hell, don’t you dare attach me to it in any way. Because there is no fucking way in hell I would ever ask you to sacrifice any part of yourself for me.”
He stilled, his silence reaching around and gripping her until even her heart was afraid to beat.
*
His feet were numb.
His thighs. His calves. Even his arms.
All numb, all motionless while misery, rage, desperation, and desire detonated in his head.
He rocked back onto his feet and stood, hearing nothing except for the pounding of his own blood in his veins.
“You didn’t have to ask. You will never have to ask.” He shook his head to try and clear the storm in his mind, the turmoil keeping him from regaining his footing. “It just happened and I…it just happened and I couldn’t stop it.”
He could see Jocelyn standing up slowly before she took a hesitant step toward him, the cassette still clutched tight in her hand. “What just happened?”
He backed away from her to give himself space and shoved his hands through his hair. “Being with you, Jocelyn. Being with you meant I had to sacrifice a piece of myself right from the start. A big fucking piece.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he ran his hands over his face and looked to the dark sky, the move silencing her. “Every second I’ve spent with you, I’ve had to ignore every instinct I ever had. Thirty-one years of keeping my back to the wall so no one could catch me off guard. Three decades of expecting the worst and making plans for me and my brothers to survive it. My whole fucking life doing what needed to be done so we wouldn’t starve or freeze or die.
“Then you,” he laughed, hearing the hint of mania in his own graveled voice. “You come waltzing into Serpent’s Tongue, and the next fucking thing I know, I’m going on dates that don’t involve a courthouse. I’m looking forward to my phone ringing so I can talk to you again, not dreading it because the call might be another disaster needing to be fixed. And waking up in the morning? Holy shit, Jocelyn. Here I am, jumping out of bed to go for a run when I’ve spent the last three years lying there for a good hour after I wake up because I still can’t believe I’m not back in that cell.”
She took another step toward him, her beautiful face looking up at him with heartbreaking worry. “Birch. It’ll be okay.”
“It’ll be okay,” he echoed, pacing the ragged terrain. “When you say it, I believe it. That’s probably the worst part of all this. I believe it. You promise, and I believe . I don’t just need to believe it. I want to. Every time you tell me things will be okay, I want to hear it. I fucking crave it.”
Stopping in front of her, he took a deep breath and tried to look her in the eyes, failing miserably. “And I just wanted to make it okay for you, too. I went to Ryder’s thinking he and I could come to an agreement, maybe split the charges coming down the pipe and we could both plea them down separately, maybe serve two or three years each. I figured it would pull his focus off you, maybe get him to roll on his uncle.”
This time, he managed to meet her gaze. “But then he opened his mouth. Started spouting off about the hotshot accountant I was banging, saying she was using me for intel, and he couldn’t wait for charges to be brought so he could expose her game and ruin her career. And the more he said about you, the more disgusting shit he started spewing about what he would do to you, the more he talked about what could happen to you once you didn’t have your firm protecting you, I stopped thinking and reacted.”
Easing his phone from his back pocket, he opened his recording app and pressed play, Ryder speaking for himself.
“Someone would pay good money to see that tight ass of hers disappear. The only reason your smug little whore ain’t dead yet is because she’s someone. Once she’s no one, I’m betting she’ll be up for grabs and she has a shit ton of powerful enemies who would probably like some arm’s length revenge.”
His own voice was almost unrecognizable, an animalistic growl rumbling through every word.
“I’ll give you the deal of a lifetime. Tomorrow morning, I walk into Fogerty’s office and confess. Give me all the details I’ll need and I’ll make sure you walk away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a warning to keep your nose clean.”
There was a long pause, then the sound of the rustling of fabric from when he crossed the room and loomed over Ryder.
“You’ll get to keep your freedom. I’ll even sign Serpent’s Tongue over to you. But if Jocelyn receives one scratch, one bruise, one misplaced blond hair and it gets back to me you had anything to do with it? You weren’t the only one who made some friends on the inside, Drayson. I made a few, too. And they’ll be watching you while they watch over her.”
He let the rest of the muffled recording play on, allowed Jocelyn to hear the details Ryder told him, the ins and outs of the dealing. Her steel eyes were hard and narrowed, her mind connecting what she’d uncovered to the events his rat of a business partner confessed to until the talking stopped, the heavy slam of a door and revving of a truck engine ending the audio.
“I knew I could do that for you,” he said, shoving his phone back into his pocket and backing away, the blasts in his head going off faster and faster. “I could give you one less enemy, one less threat. I could make you a little more okay, just like you made everything okay for me whenever we were togeth—”
“You’re babbling.”
Her voice alone paused the explosions. “What?”
“You’re babbling. I may not know much about prison, but I know guys who babble don’t last long in there.”
Everything ricocheting through his mind zeroed in on following her words and he looked at her, as if instinct was leading him to the safe harbor she had become for him.
Holding his gaze, she set the cassette on the ground and tilted her head, studying him. “Tell me you love me.”
He blinked. “What? I—”
“Birch Baker,” she interrupted, enunciating with the precision she used every time she spoke his full name. “Stop overthinking it and just say it.”
Self-preservation reared up fast, her command pummeling against his broken defenses. “What difference does it make?”
She took one step closer.
Then another.
Another.
Standing inches from him, she put her hands on his chest and slid them up to his shoulders. “Watch this,” she ordered. “I love you.” She scanned the sky for a moment then looked up at him. “See? No lightning strikes. No ground opening up. The world didn’t end. I love you. Try it.”
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
He couldn’t say it then leave.
He couldn’t say it then stay.
Her thumbs grazed along his jaw and he relaxed a fraction as he always did when she touched him.
“Birch? It’ll be okay.”