Asa (Marked Men #6) (19 page)

“Why? Why are you doing this when you could tell her the truth instead? Why give me a second chance when you could throw me under the bus and live happily ever after with her?”

I growled at her because I really just wanted her gone. “I’m doing this because she has loved you longer than she’s loved me. I’m doing it because Royal needs her mom more than she needs a boyfriend, and I’m doing it because I never thought I could walk away from the ultimate prize if I had it. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do.” And goddammit, me doing the right thing without hesitation had never been an option before Royal.

And that was all there was to it. I walked away from Roslyn and honestly hoped I never had to see her again. I didn’t wait to see if she got up and left. I just went about my business like a zombie for the rest of my shift … and the shift after that … and the shift after that.

Another week had passed when Rome finally pulled me into the back office and told me to take a few days off. I told him the last thing I needed was time by myself to think. He told me it wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. I told him to fuck off and things devolved pretty rapidly from there. I didn’t really remember him strong-arming out of the Bar and calling me every name he could think of. I didn’t recall him knocking me upside the head hard enough that my ears were ringing. What I did remember bright and clear was him telling me to pull my head out of my ass before he really had to hurt me, and that was enough to spur me into action and get me headed back home.

I spent several days wallowing in a drunken haze while lying in my lonely and empty bed. Who would have ever thought doing the right thing felt a hundred times worse than doing the wrong thing ever did?

I was in the shower trying to wash off the vestiges of a stupor and wondering if I was always going to feel so empty when I heard my phone ring from the other room. Considering all my friends and allies were pissed off at me or purposely giving me space, I couldn’t stop my traitorous heart from thinking it might be Royal. Even if I wouldn’t give in to temptation and answer her call, I’d still look at her pretty face on the screen while my phone sang the Black Angels’ “You’re Mine” and trashed my heart even more.

I was rubbing water off of my face with another towel when I found the phone and stopped dead in my tracks when the face on the screen wasn’t the one I wanted to see but one that I hadn’t seen in so long I almost forgot what it looked like. I sat my ass on the edge of the bed and answered the call with a terse “What kind of trouble are you in, Mom?” I had had enough of mothers to last me a lifetime the last month or so.

It sounded like she was at a truck stop. The background noise was full of wind, horns blaring, and engines revving.

“None. Why is that always the first thing you ask me?” Her drawl was twice as thick as my own and I always asked her that question because the only time I heard from her was when she needed something or was in trouble. I guess the apple didn’t fall very far from that tree.

“Where are you?” I grumbled out the question and flopped back on the bed so that I was staring at the ceiling. I had spent a lot of lost hours in this exact same position over the last few days.

“Outside of Chicago. Listen, I just got a call from the Kentucky Department of Corrections.”

Well, that couldn’t amount to anything good. “About what?”

She screamed something that I couldn’t make out and then came back on the line. “About your father.”

My father was like a ghost story. Something I had heard about my entire life, some specter that existed in theory and used to scare me when I didn’t act right, but there was no actual, tangible proof that he was a real, living, breathing human being.

“What about him? Is he finally up for parole and looking for character witnesses?” I said this ironically considering I had never met the man, and if my illustrious past was anything to go by, I got all of my worst character traits from his side of the genetic pool. He could rot behind bars forever as far as I was concerned.

“Asa!” My mom snapped my name and then moved off to somewhere where she wasn’t battling the background noise to be heard. “Your dad has been sick for a long time.”

I knew I was supposed to feel something at those words, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the feeling was supposed to be. “Okay.”

She sighed and said my name again. “Your dad passed away in the prison hospital last night. He had a massive heart attack. There was nothing anyone could do for him.”

Again I wasn’t sure how any of that was supposed to make me feel or what kind of reaction she was looking to get out of me. “Okay.”

My mom swore and I actually heard her tapping her foot impatiently on the other end of the phone line.

“Asa, you’re his only kin. Your dad never married and his parents passed away years ago. Your dad was an only child, so that means you need to go to Kentucky and settle his affairs.”

I groaned and used my free hand to grind it into my eye sockets. “Mom, he was locked up for over thirty years. What kind of affairs could he possibly have? Let the state sort it all out. I’m not interested in going back there.” Especially not for a man I had never met. The man I would have turned into if fate and a bunch of pissed-off bikers hadn’t turned it all around for me.

“You should know better than that, son. Even the most troubled soul has someone out there to love it. Your father might have made some serious mistakes, but his family never turned their backs on him. They owned a beautiful farm right outside of Woodward that your dad grew up on. Since he’s gone, the land and everything on it will pass down to you.”

I swore and bolted up into a sitting position. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding, Asa?” No, she sounded annoyed that she had to be dealing with any of it at all. “They never cared for my relationship with your dad or the fact you were born right before he got locked up. They thought I was trash and that we ruined his life, but they never gave up hope on your dad.”

“Why does it go to me and not to you? If they hated us, why do I get anything?” Maybe that’s why she sounded so put out.

“I told you your father never married. That includes me. I was in his contact information on his paperwork when he got arrested because we were living together at the time. The prison called me and his lawyer to pass on the news.” She mumbled something under her breath and then all the noise in the background was back. “Go home, Asa. Put your dad to rest. See the farm. Keep it or sell it. Either way you have a way to really start your life over just like your sister did.”

She didn’t tell me good-bye. she just hung up, leaving me staring at the phone in dumbfounded shock. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about what emotion to feel because I was feeling all of them at once. Happiness, rage, fear, sadness, confusion … everything surged to the surface. I was no longer hollow, I was no longer empty. I was full of everything that I had been actively avoiding for most of my life, and now all I could do was laugh like a lunatic and throw my phone across the room. I laughed and laughed until tears fell out of the corners of my eyes and my abs hurt from the exertion. I felt like I was losing my mind but I knew the only thing there was for me to do was get on the next plane to Kentucky.

I didn’t have to look up when her boots hit the bottom of the porch steps to know my sister had found her way to where I was. She somehow always managed to appear when I needed her the most. Initially I had left Denver without saying a word to anyone. I didn’t tell Rome I was leaving, and I didn’t call Ayden to let her know what was going on. It only took getting off the plane and taking a cab to my father’s lawyer’s office for me to have a major change of heart. I was immediately inundated with so much information, given so many decisions to make, that I had to take a second to get my shit together and I realized I couldn’t close the door on where and who I had been by myself. I needed Ayden to help me do it once and for all.

I called my baby sister and filled her in, which of course led to her yelling at me for five minutes for trying to handle all of this by myself. I knew as soon as I hung up the phone she would be making an appearance as soon as she could arrange getting herself back to a place neither of us ever wanted to see again.

I called Rome and gave him a brief rundown as well. He took it more stoically and told me to take as much time as I needed. He also reminded me that he was there, they were all there if I needed anything, and told me not to forget that fact. I told him I was long past taking the good things in my life for granted, and I would let him know how everything worked out.

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.