Asa

“Have you talked to Mom at all lately?” Ayden asked the question from the other side of the Nova where she was fiddling with the old seat belt and staring out of the window. She was getting ready to head back to Austin with Jet on Saturday and had asked to spend the day with me before she left.

I missed her, but sitting around my apartment all day chitchatting sounded like zero amounts of fun, so I picked her up and asked her to come along with me on an errand I had been itching to do for over a month. So far the conversation had been pretty superficial and mellow, but now that she had brought up family, I knew it wasn’t going to stay that way for long.

“A couple months ago. She called from somewhere in Nevada. The guy she had hooked up with ditched her at a truck stop and she wanted money to get home.” Only I wasn’t stupid and I knew money to get home really meant money to stick in a slot machine until the next trucker came along.

“Did you send it to her?” Ayden sounded mad. She always did when our mom came up in conversation. The way we were raised meant we never really had a shot at much. I was so proud of Ayden for clawing her way out of the gutter on her own the way she did.

“No. I told her I would come and get her and she could come stay with me until she got back on her feet. She hung up on me and I haven’t heard from her since.”

Ayden snorted and turned away from me to look back out the window. “Figures.”

I couldn’t disagree with her and had nothing to add, so the conversation sort of waned until the neighborhood around us really started to shift to obviously unsavory and rough. Her dark head turned to look at me again and her eyes narrowed just a fraction.

“Why do you want to talk to this girl? She stole money from Rome, she sounds ungrateful and unapologetic. Why are you wasting your time reaching out to her?”

For weeks I had been thinking about Avett. About the way she just disappeared, the way no one had heard from her, including her parents. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to her terrible attitude than her being an ungrateful and spoiled brat. I knew all too well that that level of defiance and chilly disregard for the way her actions affected others had to come from someplace deep and dark that was so far down very few people could actually understand or recognize it. I was intimately familiar with self-loathing and could feel it rolling off the younger woman in waves.

I cocked my head toward my sister and lifted a questioning eyebrow. “I think there are those that would question why you wasted not only your time but most of our childhood on me, Ayden. Eventually we all need someone to try and save us; even if they fail, the fact that someone tried might be what matters most in the end.”

She blinked eyes that matched mine slowly and crossed her arms over her chest. “You saved yourself. You fought to come out of that coma. You turned your life around when you came to Denver. You have said a million and one times how sorry you are for the things that happened in the past. You were your own savior, Asa. No one did any of the work for you.”

I pulled the Nova to a stop in front of a duplex that had clearly seen better days. It wasn’t a rusted-out trailer in Kentucky, but it might as well have been. I turned off the ignition and sat back in the seat so I could turn to look at Ayden. She was watching me carefully and I could see how frustrated she was with the entire conversation in the way her shoulders were tensed up and the way her hands had curled into tight balls on her lap. It was the way she used to look whenever I got into trouble and she had to do something desperate and drastic to get me out of it. I reached out a hand and put it on top of her fists.

“I died in that hospital, Ayd. There were no angels playing harps. There was no redemption and repentance. I died and it was very clear that I was going to get exactly the kind of fate I had been courting with all the messed-up shit I had been doing to other people. All I could see was every wrong I had ever committed and every bad decision I had ever made exploding all around me. For once I could see how all of that affected you. I was dying, and I knew what was waiting for me on the other side, yet I couldn’t go knowing that was all you were going to have to remember me by. I had to come back and give you something else to hold on to, some kind of good memory to go with the endless miles of bad I laid at your feet. I wanted to have the chance to show you I could be the kind of brother you deserved all along, so no, I didn’t save myself—you saved me. Just like you’ve always done for my entire life.”

I saw her bottom lip tremble until she snapped her teeth around it to keep it still. Her fists unclenched below my palm and she curled her shaking fingers around my hand and her already husky voice rasped with even more emotion when she told me what I think I had needed to hear from her all along.

“I have always been proud that you’re my brother, Asa. Yes, there have been times in the past I would have gladly fed you to the wolves, and it’s no secret that I had to leave home because I didn’t know what to do to help you anymore, but we both made it out alive and are better people for it. I know you’re sorry for the way things went down when we were younger, but I need you to open your eyes and take some credit for the way you have turned it around to make things the way they are now. I’ve long since come to terms with the Asa from my childhood. What I want to do is love the Asa that’s here with me now. You need to let go of those boulders weighted with all the bad things from the past that are dragging you down before you get crushed under them.”

It was eerily similar to what Royal had been telling me the deeper and deeper I sank in with her. I don’t think I was ready to let any part of those stones go just yet, but a sexy redhead was slowly and surely eroding bits and pieces of the rock the more and more time I spent with her. By the time she was done, maybe she would be able to carve out something that was worthwhile, something that didn’t eviscerate me to look at.

I leaned over enough that I could kiss Ayden right on the center of her forehead between her midnight eyebrows and I felt her let out a shuddering sigh.

“I’m never going to let you down again, Ayd. That is the one and only thing in the entire world that I can promise and know it’s a promise I will keep.”

We stared at each other for a long and silent moment. The seriousness of the words I had said to her and the fact that I could see that she understood that I really, truly meant them finally worked to absolve me of some of the guilt that seemed to suffocate me whenever I thought about the things she had done to keep me safe.