Bad Boy Ink (Get Ink'd #5) - Ali Lyda Page 0,28

say it out loud, it had been a relief to have Bryce there. I'd felt sturdier having someone in my corner.

I wished that I hadn't felt that way. It was just a reminder of what happened if I stopped keeping my walls up. Because I needed to be able to handle my father without Bryce being there. Hell, I needed to be able to handle life on my own. Depending on someone else would make me too weak and too vulnerable when they inevitably left.

No matter how nice it had been to not be alone for once.

That meant I could not, under any circumstance, become accustomed to having Bryce around. Bryce, who was too flirty and too pretty and too kind.

“Yeah, I guess that was fine,” I said, after I realized I’d been quiet too long. “But really, we're just working on this project. I don't need him standing up for me. I just need to get an A on this case study and move on with my life.”

Bryan made a noncommittal noise, and I knew that he wanted to say more. With his newly lovestruck heart, I was almost certain he was envisioning Bryce and me dancing under rainbows with hearts and kittens floating in the air around us, just because Bryce stuck up for me once. Like that was ever going to happen.

I did feel better for calling him, though, and I was grateful to have one person that I could rely on. “Thanks, Bryan. I just needed to vent about today.”

“Anytime, man.”

We hung up and I relaxed back onto the bed, stretching my arms out and up. I needed some serious decompression after all the people-ing I’d done today. After stretching, I reached beside my bed to grab the top comic on my to-be-read stack.

Snuggling in deeper, I looked down at the comic to start reading and promptly burst into maniacal laughter.

Because of course the comic in my hand was the newest episode of Thor.

9

Bryce

Well, shit. I had all my suspects pulled up on my dual monitors, and beneath them were ideas and hunches that I'd come up with while investigating. But with all the evidence laid out in front of me, I was beginning to suspect that Aiden was correct, and that the culprit wasn't the wife.

I hated being wrong.

And I really hated being wrong for the case study that I was sharing with Aiden. If this project was a competition, and it sure as hell felt like it was most of the time, then I was in second place right now. I don't do second place.

But an A in the class was more important than my ego, and it was time to move forward with our project. So I shot Aiden a text to see if he wanted to meet up to discuss our prime suspect.

Aiden: wait, am I reading this right? You agree with my suspect?

Bryce: yeah, yeah. I *think* I agree with you.

Aiden: Being right never stops feeling good. I've been waiting for you to catch up, old man.

Bryce: you are an asshole. And a whippersnapper. Now when can we meet?

As I waited for his response, I couldn't help but realize that I was grinning like a goddamn fool. I tried to wipe the smile from my face, but I couldn’t. There was just…something about Aiden, especially now that he was loosening up around me a little more. And yeah, I hated it when he made assumptions about me, or underestimated me, but he also challenged me and forced me to work even harder than I might have on my own. He was too smart and far too good-looking in his own nerdy way.

We shared an open lunchtime on Monday and agreed to meet to discuss our next steps. It was getting easier and easier to make plans with Aiden now that he wasn't constantly pushing me away. All I needed to do was text a time and a place, and he’d try to make it work instead of fighting me tooth and nail. Or we’d text a few questions and answers back and forth with none of his iciness coming through. I wondered if it was because we were getting along or if it had something to do with my standing up to his dickhead of a father.

Now there was a family relationship dynamic that would have made Jerry Springer drool. No wonder Aiden was so closed off and prickly if that’s the role model he’d grown up with. And it made