Asa (Marked Men #6) (20 page)

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 everyone 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.

The junkie twitched his eyes between the two of us and took a couple of stumbling steps closer to the bar. His skin was an alarming yellow color and his pupils were so dilated that there was no color in his irises, just scary, endless black.

“This is her old man’s bar. She has a right to that money. You and that asshole army guy took what was rightfully hers. So her taking that money wasn’t stealing.”

Asa grunted and moved to cross his arms over his chest. I wanted to tell him that the other guy was way too hyped up to try and reason with or to try and physically intimidate, but I couldn’t take my attention off of what I knew was a major threat. A junkie didn’t just wander in off the streets in the middle of a high this late at night for a friendly chat.

“Yeah, well, what about the stash you took from your supplier that had guys showing up at your place to work her over? I suppose that wasn’t stealing either. They could’ve killed her because of you.”

You couldn’t argue or reason with a junkie and I knew Asa had to be aware of that fact. I shifted just a little so I could keep an eye on Jared and still see Asa in the mirror behind the bar. He was jerking his head to the side as he talked, obviously trying to get me to move toward the back office. I narrowed my eyes at him in the reflection and shook my head ever so slightly in the negative. I dealt with guys like Jared for a living and I was armed. I had my off-duty weapon stashed in my purse if the situation called for it.

“That was a mistake. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt.” The guy moved even farther into the bar and his zealous attention was focused solely on Asa.