Asa (Marked Men #6) (3 page)

“That’s a very pretty girl with a very ugly hurt, and somehow she got it in her head that she deserves to be punished, to hurt even more.”

“So she’s trying to drag you to bed to punish her? That sounds kinky and fun.”

I tossed my bar towel at her and pushed up from the bar so I could do the nightly cash-out and go home. Now the idea of Royal in her handcuffs and nothing else was going to be running around in my head for the rest of the night. Like she needed any help being unforgettable.

“She feels bad and she’s doing everything in her power to make herself feel worse.” I didn’t know all the details of what had started Royal’s recent decline, but I did know her partner on the force, who really was her best friend and had been for most of her life, had been injured pretty badly in the line of duty and that Royal was currently on administrative leave while the department investigated the circumstances that had led to two cops being shot. One of the officers hadn’t made it and the other was still in the hospital. The other being Dominic, Royal’s partner. “I’m not looking to be any part of that.”

I had used enough people in my life, even those that loved me unconditionally, to know what being a means to an end for someone else looked like. I wasn’t going to help Royal self-destruct.

Dixie gave me a soft little grin that reminded me that even though she was tough as nails when she needed to be, she was really a romantic sweetheart at her center.

“Maybe you should give it a shot and you could make her feel better, and maybe she could make you finally see that you have changed over the last year or so.”

I just gave my head a shake and told her flatly, “That’s not what I do.” Nope; I destroyed things not repaired them.

I never lied about the man I had been for most of my life or the things I had done. There were so many kinds of really ugly, twisted, and dark things I was capable of and yet everyone that knew me now seemed to be under the impression that I had undergone some kind of transformation after coming out of the coma I had been in after I died and came back. The truth of the matter was I was never going to be a good guy. I was never going to be the type of man that made things better. Regardless of what anyone wanted to believe or how desperately it seemed Royal needed someone to wade in and pull her out of the mire, I wasn’t made to be a hero or a savior. I was already so far under the thumb of the specters of my past mistakes there was no way I could pull anyone else to safety.

The old saying was true, a leopard never changed its spots; and just like the lurking jungle cat, I was a predator through and through even if others wanted to think I had somehow become a house cat.

When my phone, which I had left lying right next to my head the night before, went off the next afternoon shrieking Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” I almost rolled out of bed onto the floor in my haste to turn it off. I felt terrible. Partly because I was hardly sleeping anymore, so slipping into a restless catnap in the middle of the day was all that was sustaining me, but mostly because the number on the phone was the one I had been waiting for week after agonizing week to show up.

I silenced the bubblegum-pop song with a swipe of my finger across the screen and tried to sound more alert than I actually was when I gasped out a shaky greeting. I didn’t care what anyone thought of my awful taste in music. I slummed in the gutter all day long. I tangled with junkies, and wife beaters, and parents that neglected their kids every single day. I refused to listen to anything that wasn’t upbeat and full of infectious pop. My job wasn’t always fun, so I tried really hard to make sure the rest of the things in my life were.

“You do know I’m busting out of here today, right?”

I shoved a tangled hank of dark red hair out of my face and scrambled up to the edge of my bed. I chomped down on my bottom lip and tried to regulate my breathing. Of course I knew he was getting out of the hospital today. What I hadn’t known was if he was going to want me anywhere around him when he finally got the green light to go home. I squeezed my eyes shut and was so grateful that we weren’t face-to-face. Dominic Voss knew me better than any living soul on this planet, and if we were in the same room he would be able to feel the guilt and self-loathing I had been drowning in lately. Hell, if my current state of distress was apparent to someone as disconnected as Asa Cross, there was no way my best friend and partner could miss it. Dom being Dom, he would know it all came from what had happened to him on that callout from hell.

“I know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come or not. I know your sisters are coming to stay with you until you get back on your feet and I didn’t want to get in the way.”

I sounded pathetic and ridiculous to my own ears.

Dom and I had been inseparable since we were five years old. There had never been a time when he didn’t want me around. There had never been a single moment in our friendship where I was ever in his way, and his entire family thought of me as one of their own. I think that made what had happened weigh even more heavily on my shoulders.

I heard Dom sigh and then he swore. His deep voice sounded strained as he gently scolded me. “Get your cute ass here, Royal. I’ve let you sulk for two goddamn weeks. Get over it. Shit happens and it’s gonna keep happening because that’s what being a cop is about. I’m in a fucking cast from my ankle to my junk. I have a broken shoulder and I can’t breathe without it feeling like I’m drinking acid. I look and feel like hammered dog shit, and my best friend hasn’t been around for any of it. Can you maybe knock it off now?” I couldn’t stop the tears that were starting to leak out of my eyes. I used a knuckle to swipe at them as I climbed to my feet. His next words stabbed through me like I was sure he intended for them to do. “I need you here, girly.”

We had always needed each other, both in our day-to-day lives and on the job. That was why I felt so bad. It was why I couldn’t get my head around how badly I had let him down. I was supposed to have his back like he had always had mine, and instead I had almost gotten him killed.

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up the phone after he barked at me that it was about time, and rushed around my apartment trying to make myself look presentable. After a hard night of drinking I never exactly looked great, but throw in a sleepless night and yet another rejection from an outrageously sexy, southern bartender and I probably could match Dom in the looking-like-crap department. I had dark shadows under each eye, I was way paler than normal, fine red veins threaded through the white in each eye, and I had really ugly bruises surrounding each of my wrists, which made shame and regret battle the guilt for the top spot in the flood of emotions I was choking on.

I knew better, I really did. I wasn’t the type to go out and lose control. I rarely drank, and when I did I always acted responsibly because I had a big picture to think about. Only lately that big picture had narrowed to tunnel vision and all I could see was Dom getting hit by bullet after bullet and falling over the edge of the fire escape on the side of the building. When I wasn’t seeing that, I was seeing the wife of the officer that hadn’t survived the shootout collapsing in the hall of the ER as another officer told her that her husband hadn’t made it. If that wasn’t enough to eat at my soul, the memory of my lieutenant telling me I had to turn in my gun and badge and go on administrative leave while the department conducted an investigation danced around in my head every second of every day.

In order to shake some of those awful thoughts loose, I was determined to do things I never did, things that made me feel free, so that’s why I was hanging out at the Bar. That’s why I was drinking like a fish, and really that was why I was unabashedly throwing myself at Asa Cross. I had never had to chase a guy. I had never been interested in the kind of guy that oozed charm and trouble the way Asa did. And I most definitely had never been one to mix business and pleasure. I knew Asa was bad news, barely tiptoeing on the right side of the law, and it was a firm rule that I never got involved with anyone that had been in the back of a police cruiser. Well, Asa had not only been in the back of my cruiser, but he had also been in and out of jail since before he was old enough to drive. The guy liked to make up his own rules and he didn’t have a very pretty past. Cops shouldn’t be romantically interested in criminals, even reformed criminals. But I was. In fact I was more than interested, but every time I made a move on him and he turned me down, it made me wonder if he could see the failure that was haunting me. I wondered if that was why he kept saying no.

I mean, I knew what I looked like. I knew that when we stared at each other there was interest and attraction glinting dark in his bronze eyes, and I knew he was the kind of guy that liked a sure thing. I was a sure thing. I needed something that felt good. I was searching desperately for something that would help me forget, even if it was for only a second, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wanted him. I made it so easy for him to say yes and yet he kept turning the other way. I didn’t understand it, so it only made me feel even more lost and adrift than I already did.

If he really wanted me to find another bar, I would. I only went to the dive he worked at because I wanted him to take me home. I wanted him to pull me across the bar and kiss away all the hurt and ugliness that was filling me up. I knew I was going about it the wrong way, knew that a guy like Asa had no use for someone that enforced the law and tried to keep the peace. Plus it was a long shot considering I had been forced by circumstance to arrest him for assault not too long ago. Asa might think I was pretty, and he might be trying to save me from myself since we had mutual friends, but I seriously doubted he was ever going to be able to look at me the same way I looked at him after I had snapped cuffs around his wrists and dragged him to the police station.

I pulled my hair into a messy ponytail, shoved my feet into a pair of battered motorcycle boots, and hit the front door. I was about to slam it closed behind me when I remembered to grab my keys. I was forever locking myself out of places—my car, my apartment, and even my patrol car on several occasions. It was a bad habit that was a pain in the ass for more than just me, but I couldn’t seem to shake it even after a mishap had almost led to the breakup of my neighbor and his lovely girlfriend.

I dashed back inside, frazzled and frustrated. I scooped the keys up off the spot they lived in by the door and rushed back out. This time the hallway wasn’t empty, and the neighbor’s girlfriend, who also happened to be my one and only female friend on the planet, was exiting their apartment across the hall. Saint was a sweetheart. Soft-spoken and serene, she just had something about her that had instantly called out to me. It was like the chaotic pace and often dangerous parts of my day-to-day died down and mellowed out when I was around her. I had forced her to be my friend even though she had fought me and the friendship at first. Now she was almost as close to me as Dom was, and just as concerned about my recent behavior.

She was dressed in scrubs under her heavy winter coat, so obviously she was on her way to work at the hospital where she was an ER nurse. Her coppery hair, which was several shades more orange in color than mine, was piled on her head in a messy bun and her face was scrubbed clean. Saint was a doll and could work the whole fresh-faced-girl-next-door thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to rock the less-is-more look successfully, so the darkness under my eyes told the entire story of my wild night without me uttering a single word.

“Dom’s getting out of the hospital today,” I told her in a rush.

She blinked her soft gray eyes at me and the corner of her mouth tilted in a half smile.

“I know. I’ve been checking up on him.”

I sighed. Of course she had, because she was an awesome friend.

“Thank you.”

She nodded slightly and we silently headed for the front door of the converted Victorian we lived in.

“He asked about you every time I stopped by his room.”

I gulped a little. Not because she was passing judgment or being mean, but because we both knew I should have been by the hospital to see him. I squeezed my keys in my hand so hard the metal dug into my skin deep enough that it hurt.

“I just couldn’t. I stayed until they came out and told us that he was stable after surgery, but it was too much.” I shook my head and shivered as the frigid Denver air snaked down the collar of the hoodie I had thrown on. The reason Dom was in the hospital for so long wasn’t the shattered ankle and broken femur but because one of the bullets that had hit him had sliced clean through one of his kidneys. He had almost bled to death before making it to the hospital. “His mom was there watching me without saying a word. I could see her wondering how I had let Dom get hurt. I could see his sisters thinking, ‘Why Dom and not her?’ I knew I was going to have a breakdown and I didn’t want to do it where anyone could see.”

She reached out and squeezed my elbow. “No one blames you for anything, Royal. That is not what Dominic’s family was thinking and you know it.”

Dammit. When had she started to see me so clearly? This is why having friends was hard for me.

“I blame me, Saint.”

She sighed and let go of my arm. “That’s what I figured, but eventually you’ll have to get over that. How’s the investigation going?”

That was a topic I wanted to talk about almost as little as I wanted to talk about how Dom had ended up in his current, broken state.

“It’s going. Internal investigations are always complicated when there’s an officer death involved.” And it was complicated because I was actively avoiding all the things I was supposed to be doing to help myself out. There had been other officers on the scene. There were witnesses from the neighborhood. Dom had given his statement and so had the partner of the officer that hadn’t made it. All the stories matched and laid out the facts that I had done nothing wrong, that there was no fault on my part, and that the kid I had been forced to shoot was going to keep pulling the trigger until everyone in a uniform was out of his way, but I didn’t feel cleared. I felt dirty and unqualified. Not because I had pulled the trigger, but because I had pulled it too late.

“I’m sure everything will work out for you in the end. Is the department making you talk to someone? That’s a pretty intense situation to work through on your own.”

Saint was big on processing feelings. I think that’s why she was so good in the crisis situations she handled every day. She powered through all the tragedy and stress while she was at work, compartmentalized it all, then came home and let it all out so it never had the chance to fill her up and take her over. I wasn’t that great at letting it all go. In fact, as of late, I was holding on to everything that affected me on the streets in a death grip. I guess I thought if I held on to it, no one else would have to deal with the yuck of it all.

“I’m supposed to go tomorrow.”
Supposed to
being the key. If I could find any excuse to skip hearing a shrink tell me I was just suffering from survivor’s guilt, I was going to latch on to it. I had screwed up. I knew it and I didn’t need anyone to lead me to that conclusion, but if I wanted back on the job I was going to have to bite the bullet and force myself to go lie on some stiff leather couch and get my head shrunk.

Saint stopped when we got to my 4Runner and tilted her head as she regarded me solemnly. I stared back at her because I valued her and the honest friendship she offered too much to just dismiss her concern.

“Go. Listen to what the psychologist has to say. You don’t have to go through whatever this is alone, Royal.”

She reached out and gave me a one-armed hug, which I returned stiffly. Whatever
this
was, it was clearly not only affecting me at this point.

When we pulled apart I gave her a lopsided grin and told her, “I tried to get Asa to go home with me again last night.”

She lifted one of her rust-colored eyebrows at me. “Again?”

I wrinkled up my nose and pulled open the door to my old SUV. “He keeps telling me he’s not interested. Maybe he just doesn’t like me.”

She gave a delicate snort and moved to zip up her coat as the wind picked up and turned the winter air into something hovering on the edge of unbearable.

“Of course he likes you. Maybe he can just tell that you don’t like you very much right now.”

I scowled at her but didn’t argue. I didn’t like myself so much at the moment. I lifted up the sleeve of the hoodie on one arm and showed her my wrist, which made her gasp in shock. “I had too much to drink and got myself into something I shouldn’t have. Asa pulled me out of it and then took care of me until I was sober enough to get myself home.”