Asa. Jay Crownover

how we had been brought up in the same house and lived the same hard-knock childhood. I had no clue how she could be as together, as composed and steady, as she was. I don’t know how she had found a space in her new life for me or how she had stayed by my side when I was dying. I knew she had every reason to walk away from me, but instead she had done everything in her power to save me and she had given me a new life of my own. One I was terrified I was going to rip to shreds any second now.

      Zeb shook his head a little and yanked the door open. “I think you need to cut yourself some slack.”

      I shrugged. “Maybe.”

      I shoved him on his shoulder out the door and closed it in his face. I liked Zeb. We had a lot in common, but he didn’t know the whole story, didn’t know some of the really terrible things I had done. He didn’t know that when I died, when everything went black and I knew I wasn’t coming back to rejoin the mortal coil, every single, terrible, awful, horrible thing I had ever done in my life floated before me live in vivid color.

      The way I used Ayden. The way I had never stopped her from doing what she was doing, which I did so that I could get what I wanted. The sex, the drugs, all of it a kaleidoscope of regret so hard and heavy I was sure it was dragging me to hell. I loved my sister more than anything in the world and yet I hadn’t ever been able to stop myself from treating her like a pawn in one of my games. Watching what I did to Ayden, what I allowed her to do for me, was worse than every blow from the baseball bats the bikers had wielded. Seeing the heartbreak in her whiskey-colored eyes when I finally caught up to her after years apart was enough to make me glad I wouldn’t ever be opening my own eyes again.

      On top of that, there were the old ladies I scammed and the bikers I ripped off. There were the cars I stole and the men I knew my mom was sleeping with to pay our rent while I did nothing to stop it or help the family out. There was the debutante I had charmed into giving me her college fund, which I promptly wasted on a backroom poker game. There was the elderly gentleman looking for a companion that I had convinced not only that I was gay, but that I was interested in him, convinced him just enough to get him to write me a check so I could pursue my passion for photography; needless to say, I wasn’t gay or a photographer, but his ten grand had gone a long way in funding my next scam. The number of people I had screwed over was endless, and as their faces rolled like a movie behind my eyes as life leached out of me, I knew I was getting what I deserved.

      When I had woken up, had seen Ayden looking down at me while I struggled to realize that even the devil in hell didn’t want me, I realized something bright, sharp, and clear. I was an asshole. I was a bad man that had done bad things and I was always going to be that guy, but I never, never wanted to hurt my sister again. I never wanted her to have to worry about me, never wanted her to have to suffer for me or lose anything because of me ever again. I was always going to be a screw-up, but I was going to actively try to avoid causing any more damage, and so far it had been going pretty well. I just had to hold on to those memories, those regrets and that remorse, tight enough that my hands would be too full to ever do the devil’s work again.

      I pulled the cash drawer out and put it and the sales receipts in the safe that was in Rome’s office. I made sure all the cameras were on, especially the ones in the parking lot that he had recently installed. I got jumped one night after work by a bunch of kids with a vendetta that had actually led to my arrest and a legal headache that had taken longer to deal with than it should have because of my past. So now I was hypervigilant and always made sure the eye in the sky was watching my every move.

      It was a little after one in the morning. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a few cars that were left over from people that hadn’t wanted to drive home after drinking or local neighborhood cars that Rome let borrow a slot. The Bar wasn’t in a terrible part of town and I was now pretty used to keeping odd hours since I didn’t get out of work until well after most of the world went to bed. I kind of liked the quiet of it all.

      It was cold out. Being from the South like me, it had taken a couple of winters to get used to the frigid mountain air. I didn’t love the chill. My dislike of winter was enough that I was seriously considering buying a car even though the studio apartment I rented was barely two blocks away from the Bar. That was another thing that had changed after I came back to life. Now I could care less about things. I used to want the best of it all. The nicest clothes, the flashiest ride, the biggest house, and of course the prettiest girl. I wanted everything I had never had growing up and I wanted to show it all off and prove my worth. Now I wanted nothing. The less I had, the less there was to lose.

      I was rubbing my hands together briskly and blowing into them to try and warm them up when headlights suddenly illuminated me and a vehicle rolled into the parking lot and didn’t stop until it almost reached me. The lights cut out and the driver’s-side door swung open. I would’ve worried, tensed up and walked the other way, if I didn’t recognize the ancient SUV and the female driver. Royal was always going to be prettier than any of the other trophies I used to flash around back in my heyday … prettier even when it was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping well.

      I pulled the collar of my shearling coat up around my jaw and stepped around the door to where she was sliding out of her seat to the ground. She looked like she had just come from the gym. She had on some kind of stretchy skintight pants and a big sweatshirt. Her hair was tangled in a messy knot on the top of her head and her eyes looked a few shades darker than their normal sweet chocolate color. She also had on running shoes instead of her typical sexy footwear, and she was shivering in the night air.

      “You’re out and about late.” I tried to keep my tone even. She was unpredictable and I never knew which way she was going to go with things. I was used to being able to read people like an open book, but she kept turning the page on me. It was always surprising and unexpected.

      She pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her fingers and looked up at me in a way that made my dick twitch hard behind my zipper. It should be legally prohibited for anyone to be that effortlessly sexy.

      “I was at the gym because I haven’t been sleeping well. The powers that be cleared me to go back to work at the end of the week as long as I keep seeing the department shrink for the next three months.”

      I thought she would sound happier about that fact than she did. “That’s good news … isn’t it?”

      Her shivering turned to outright shaking, and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with the cold outside. Against my better judgment I reached out and hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her against my chest. I pulled open the sides of my coat and let her burrow into me while she shook uncontrollably. I felt her hands snake around my sides and search for warm skin below the edge of my shirt on my lower back. I jolted and I wanted to tell myself it was because her hands were like ice, but that wasn’t it. Her touch made my skin ripple in excitement.

      “I’ve never worked a shift without Dom. He’s like my other half. They’re assigning me a temporary partner to work with until Dom comes back.” She pulled away so she could look up at me through her silky lashes. “Only they didn’t say when Dom comes back, they said if. I don’t know if I can do what I do without him.”

      I felt her fingers dig into the hollow right at the top of my ass and I had to fight down a full-body shiver.

      “You love your job.” I knew it was true. Even though she was acting wild and off the tracks lately, she was so much of what she did for a living. “You don’t need your partner in order to be a good cop, Royal.”

      We stared at each other silently for a long moment and then the corner of her mouth kicked up in a grin that made my gut tighten and turned my blood thick. I needed to let go of her and get to getting before I did something stupid.

      “Did you miss me this weekend, Asa?”

      That was a loaded question if there ever was one. Of course I had noticed she wasn’t around, but I had steadfastly refused to acknowledge how her absence made me feel, so I sighed and asked her, “What are you doing here so late?”

      She cocked her head to the side and her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Her fingers dipped below the