Asa (Marked Men #6)

by Jay Crownover

  It had taken Ayden two days to get from Austin to Woodward. Two days during which I had given the okay to have the stranger who was my father cremated, and then inherited a hundred-acre tobacco farm that sprawled beautifully across prime Kentucky real estate. The spread was beautiful. Like something off a postcard, complete with a massive white farmhouse and stables for horses. It was like the places I had schemed and conned my way into when I was living in a trailer, and here it had been in my backyard all along. It felt old and important and I couldn’t believe it was mine. I couldn’t believe something this good had sprung up in the middle of all the bad that permeated this place in my history.

  Ayden’s boots clattered on the wooden steps that graced the elegant front porch of the house. I didn’t look up at her. Instead, I closed my eyes as she sat down next to me on the top step and hooked an arm through mine as she rested her head on my shoulder.

  “I’m surprised Jet let you come back here alone.” I tilted my head to the side a little so it was resting against hers. We had never been able to do this as kids. Just be. It was always a fight to survive with no quiet time to just take in life and the landscape.

  “He doesn’t belong here.” Her husky voice was quiet and I couldn’t agree with her more.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  We sat in silence and took in the enormity of being in a place neither of us ever thought we’d be able to touch in our hometown. It was surreal and I’m sure as overwhelming for her as it was for me.

  “So what are you going to do now?” I knew Ayden well enough to know she wasn’t asking me about the farm.

  I let my eyes drift back closed and took a deep breath. She was the only one I was going to tell, the only one I trusted with the entire sordid story. I knew my sister would keep my secrets and protect the woman I cared so much about, so I laid it all out for her. Royal’s mom, the proposition, being stuck between lying to the only girl I was ever going to love in order to be with her or telling her the truth and hurting her, ripping her world apart instead. I knew Ayden would see the impossibility in all of it, and as the tale unfolded I heard her gasp and swear the deeper down the rabbit hole I went. I told her about the games I liked to play mostly because I couldn’t stop myself from doing it and how Royal was quick enough and ballsy enough to call me on my shit each and every single time. I told her that I didn’t even see the badge anymore and the idea of being in love with a cop didn’t even faze me because I knew, just knew, that I was never ever going back to that place where I was going to be a danger to myself or others. Loving Royal had given me enough strength to put the past down and to stop trying to predict the future. All I was concerned with was the here and now.

  When all the words were done, when everything was purged out of me, I noticed Ayden had silent tears running down her face. She shook her head at me and leaned over to rub her wet cheek on the shoulder of my T-shirt, which made me laugh.

  So quiet I almost didn’t hear her, she told me, “It shines out of you, Asa.”

  She was talking about the good and finally I thought maybe she was right.

  “I let the state cremate my father. I’m gonna take his ashes out in the field and spread them around. Then I’m going to call the estate lawyer and tell him to get together the offers he has had lined up on this place since Dad’s parents passed. Apparently this property is a hot commodity and folks around here have been waiting anxiously for it to go on the market for years.”

  She made a noise in her throat. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep it? It’s beautiful.”

  I laughed drily. “It’s not mine. I don’t belong here, and we both know beauty isn’t everything. Besides, the numbers the lawyer was throwing around weren’t too shabby. I can pay off the medical bills I still owe. I can give you enough money to pay off grad school.” She lifted her head in surprise and gaped at me. I grinned at her. “I can buy into this new business Rome asked me to partner with him on. I can fix up the Nova. I can look at buying my own bar and moving out of my crappy apartment. It’s enough money to really start over with a clean slate.”

  “Wow … all that for a bunch of weeds?”

  I laughed. “You’ve been out of the country for too long. You’re a bona fide city girl now.”

  She shrugged. “True enough, but I still wear my boots with pride.” We shared a grin and she told me with so much heart that it made my chest ache, “I just want you to do whatever is going to make you happy.”

  That was exactly what I had told her when she said she was going to leave Denver and move to Austin so she could have more time with Jet.

  “I had a shot at happy. It didn’t really work out for me.”

  She sighed again and got to her feet as I rose to my own. I picked up the plain urn that was sitting on the steps next to my feet and lifted an eyebrow at her. She nodded solemnly and followed me as I started walking toward one of the tobacco fields.

  “You can’t just leave things with Royal the way they are, Asa. You both deserve better than that, and she’s smart. Once her heart stops hurting so bad, she’s going to start putting the pieces together on her own.”

  We did deserve better, and maybe Royal would figure it all out in time, but I didn’t have an answer on how to fix it while that time passed, so I just looped an arm around Ayden’s shoulders as we walked silently into one of the fields to shut the door on the past and all the bad things and demons that lived there in the dark—for good. There was no more before and after. There was only this moment; although it sucked and felt terrible, it was still the only moment I wanted to be in.

  CHAPTER 18

  Royal

  My first instinct was to show up on Asa’s doorstep five seconds after he left me and demand answers all while knocking him into next week. My second instinct was to curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out for days, because even if this was just another one of his twisty games, I was done playing with him. So I split the difference and called him every single day for a week, praying he would answer and alternately hoping he would just show up at my door with a brilliant excuse full of pretty words that would set things right. I did all of that while hiding out at Dominic’s apartment or sequestered in my bed with Saint at my side trying to talk me off the ledge. None of my emotional upheaval was helped by the fact my mother was suddenly all over me trying to earn a mom-of-the-year award. I couldn’t turn around without her asking me how I was, without her telling me there were a million fish in the sea, without her telling me that a guy like Asa wasn’t worth a second of my time let alone a single bit of sorrow. She was trying to distract me but all she succeeded in doing was annoying the hell out of me.

  I was frantic and furious, mostly because I knew something had happened, something I didn’t understand. Something had forced him to walk away from me, and I needed to know what that something was if I was ever going to have a chance to come to terms with the fact that Asa had purposely ripped my heart out of my chest and handed it back to me.

  When it became glaringly obvious that Asa wasn’t going to answer any of my calls, I cried my last tear and decided I was done. Done worrying about what his reasons were. Done trying to justify his actions for whatever they were. Done hurting over a man that had only ever promised to hurt me from the very start. He had kept his word all right.

  I shoved everything I was feeling up into a tiny little ball and did my best to ignore it while I threw myself into work. I forgot to eat. I forgot to keep in touch with Dom. I forgot to go to the gym. All I did was work and go home, work and go home, and then work some more. My new partner asked me a hundred times if I was okay and I just waved him off. Luckily, around the same time that I decided to be an emotionless android, Barrett and I got handpicked by our lieutenant to be on a special task force to investigate a series of break-ins involving all of the different medical marijuana dispensaries that had cropped up in Denver since the drug had been legalized across the state. It was a perfect excuse for me to shut out everything else and brush ever
yone off when they were checking up on me. I just lost myself in work and pretended like I had never even heard of Asa Cross.

  It was all working great … well, aside from the fact that I was giving myself an ulcer, waking up in the middle of the night with tears running down my face, and my heart squeezing so hard that it felt like there was a fist around it. I was faking it well enough that my mom finally backed off and Dom stopped threatening to move onto my couch until I snapped out of my funk. The lie that I was fine fell from my lips as easily as the truth anymore. I told it so much that when I was awake I could almost believe it myself.

  I had a rhythm of denial and deflection all in place, resigned to that being how the rest of my existence was going to be, when Saint popped by one night after work with a bottle of wine and some startling news. She told me over the first glass that Nash had paid Asa a visit and reported back that the blond bartender looked and sounded horrible. Over the second glass she informed me that Cora had let it slip that Rome had forced Asa to take a few days off work because he was in such a sorry state, and it was over the third that she let it be known that Asa’s dad had died in prison, so he had gone back to Kentucky for a week to settle the man’s estate. She also mentioned that tonight was his first night back at the Bar, so a bunch of the guys had headed down that way to check up on him. I had only taken a few sips from my first drink because I was so caught up in any tidbit of information she had about my whiskey-eyed charmer that I forgot I was even holding a full glass in my hand.

  I was so stunned by the news about Asa’s dad that I almost dropped the glass from my suddenly nerveless fingers. I didn’t want to feel for him. I didn’t want sympathy and the need to see if he was okay to fill me all the way up on the inside, but it did. We polished off the bottle and Saint gave me a hug and told me it was all right to hurt for someone I still loved, which made me want to break the arctic freeze I had surrounded myself in and start crying and being hysterical all over again. It took about half a minute from the time she walked back across the hall to her own apartment for me to grab my keys, which were thankfully in the right spot for once, and head out to the 4Runner. I was operating on autopilot. Asa had given no indication that he wanted to see me, that he cared one way or the other that we had split up, but everything inside of me was drawing me back to him. It seemed like he was always going to be the magnetic north my compass was pointed at.

  It was just after midnight when I pulled into the surprisingly empty parking lot. As I jumped out of my car I noticed Dixie and the new bouncer walking out of the front door. The cute cocktail server stopped when she recognized me and nodded to the massive, imposing man to go ahead. He gave me a once-over and then walked over to a fierce-looking motorcycle that sounded as mean as it looked when he started it up. Dixie twirled one of her strawberry-blond curls around her finger and smiled sweetly at me.

  “Everyone has been by to check on him tonight. I can’t say I’m surprised you’re the last one to filter through.”

  I bit down on my lip and shifted uneasily on my feet. “How is he?”

  She shrugged and lifted her hand to turn it back and forth in a so-so motion. “It’s Asa, so it’s kind of hard to tell. I think he’s glad to be back home, but whatever happened between the two of you is still sitting heavily on his shoulders. He hides it all pretty well, but I’ve worked with him so closely for so long I can see it. His eyes don’t shine anymore.”

  That made me suck in a hard breath and had my fingers twitching on each hand. “I just wanted to see if he was okay. I knew he wasn’t close with his dad at all … but still.”

  She nodded in agreement. “I think he’ll be happy to see you. It was a pretty slow night. Rowdy and Zeb were the last two left at the bar and they took off about ten minutes before Church and I walked out. He’s probably getting ready to shut everything down if you want to stick your head in for a minute before he locks the door.” She reached out a hand and gave my arm a little squeeze. “I don’t know why he did what he did, Royal, but I do know that doing it made him miserable and hurt him just as much as it hurt you.”

  “I wish that made me feel any kind of better.” She made a sympathetic noise and then waved good-bye as she headed off to her own sporty little car. My hand shook when I reached out to pull open the door to the Bar. I didn’t know if it was better that he was alone inside or if seeing him for the first time since he demolished me would be easier with the buffer of other people around. I figured this way if I burst into tears, or made a fool of myself in any other way, at least he would be the only one to witness it and he had already seen me at various stages of my worst.

  The lights were still on and blazing bright. The jukebox was on and playing a sad song I didn’t recognize. Asa was behind the bar and had turned around to see who was walking in when the doors opened. All I could think was that Dixie was dead wrong. His eyes shone brighter than the sun and hotter than the neon signs on the wall behind him from the distance that separated us. He was a glowing golden beacon of all that I ever wanted, and he was just staring at me while I stood rooted on the spot.

  He looked a little rough. He had lost some weight and his normally short, blond hair had encroached on shaggy territory complete with unruly curls that upped his handsome level to devastating. He had more than a scruff of gold fuzz on his face, and where a flirty grin usually lived on his mouth there were fine white lines bracketing a tight frown. I took a deep breath and told myself that even if he had hurt me, even if he was still playing some kind of awful game, I was a big enough person to make sure he was all right. I could live my life without Asa Cross in it even if I didn’t want to. When I started walking toward the bar, I saw him tense up as he moved forward and leaned on the opposite side with his arms spread far apart.

  “What are you doing here, Red?” He didn’t sound upset that I was here, but he didn’t sound happy to see me either.

  I made my way all the way up to the bar and pushed a couple of the stools out of the way so I could stand directly across from him with the wood of the bar top pressing into my middle.

  “I heard about your dad, so I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  He just stared at me for a long moment, then pushed off the bar and turned around to grab a couple of rocks glasses that he then proceeded to pour a couple of fingers of amber liquid into. I could tell by the peaty, smoky scent that it was scotch. My cheeks instantly flamed bright red and my breath got choppy when I recalled the last time we had shared a scotch in this bar. He pushed the glass over in front of me and I hesitantly curled my fingers around it.

  “I feel like shit every second of every day, but it doesn’t have anything to do with my dad passing away.”

  That much brutal honesty after a full month of silence was almost enough to bring me to my knees. I felt my back teeth clench together and some of the anger that I was surviving on surged to the surface.

  “I didn’t go anywhere, Asa.” God, I wanted him to explain himself more than I wanted anything else in the entire world. I wanted him to open his mouth and make everything better, but he didn’t. He just continued to stare at me and I continued to stare at him.

  He reached out for his own glass and lifted it until it touched his lips. I could see the memories glittering all along the molten heat in his gaze as he swallowed the liquor down and continued to watch me in silence.

  I could see this was going to go nowhere fast. He wasn’t going to cave and break his silence. I wasn’t going to be able to withstand him licking his lips and looking at me like I was his last meal while he was on death row, without climbing over the bar and either smacking him across the face or sitting on it … or maybe both. Neither would bring me any peace of mind while he was still being so evasive and secretive. I pushed my untouched drink back toward him and closed my eyes briefly.

  “So this is it for us?” I could hear in my voice how much it hurt to say those words.

  He made a strangled noise and I opened my eyes as he leaned back
up against the bar. Now I could see what Dixie had been talking about. There was no more shimmer, no more glimmer or metallic glow in his gaze. They just looked flat and boring brown like any other guy’s … which Asa definitely wasn’t.

  “This is it.” It sounded like the words had to fight their way past dragons and over cliffs to make their way out of his mouth.

  I pushed some of my hair over my shoulder and wrapped my arms around my waist. Once again he left me feeling like I needed a hug.

  “You were worth every second of heartbreak. I just want you to know that.” I had to let him know that even if he ruined me, my time with him had all been worth it in the end. It was filled with moments I would cherish forever. His eyes flickered away from me for a second and his head dropped down so that he was looking at the top of the bar.

  “So were you, Royal.” That was it. The finality of it all when a simple explanation I knew he wouldn’t give could fix everything.

  God he was going to murder my heart and it was a crime he was going to get away with scot-free. I was turning around to leave, and he was turning around so he didn’t have to watch me walk away, when the front door slammed open and a disheveled young man came rushing through.

  I had been on the streets and on patrol enough to know a strung-out junkie when I saw one, and this guy was higher than a hundred kites. He was twitchy and he was sweaty and his eyes were roaming around the bar in an alarming way. He had on dirty torn jeans and a hoodie that was zipped all the way up even though it was heading into early summer weather and easily sixty-five degrees outside. I shot Asa a look out of the corner of my eye, but he was scowling at the intruder in a threatening and unconcerned way.

  “Avett doesn’t work here anymore, Jared. She got fired because of you.” Asa’s voice was calm but his twang was thick in his words, so I knew he was trying to throw the guy off.