“Allow yourself to love someone fully, Asa. It’s what will finally set you free from the past. There’s no room for anything else, no space for all that regret and recrimination when you’re filled up with that kind of love. I know you said you woke up from that coma for me, but you haven’t been living, and I think Royal might be the one to finally give you a reason to start.”

She climbed out of the car and Jet started to come down the stairs toward her like the fifteen feet separating them was just too much to bear. I called Ayden’s name and she bent down to poke her head back inside the car.

“I miss you. I just want you to know that.”

She winked at me and I saw hands covered in heavy silver rings slide around her waist from behind.

“I miss you, too, but I think I’ll worry about you less after this trip.”

Jet bent down and told me hello, then hauled my sister out of the way and kissed her like he hadn’t seen her in weeks instead of hours. If that was what living looked like, I really had been doing it wrong for the last couple of years, and Ayden was right.

CHAPTER 16

Royal

I wasn’t really sure what had possessed me to ask Asa to meet my mother. I don’t know if it was the need I had to get him to see that this thing working between us was important, more important than anything he was trying to hold on to before, or if I was pulling one of his tricks and trying to see if he could handle my temperamental parent. Either way I knew I had ulterior motives for asking him to go with me, and considering he was smarter than anyone I had ever met, I knew he had to know that as well.

Even so, when I knocked on his apartment door right after work, still dressed in my uniform, he just leered at me and told me never in a million years did he ever think he would find a badge sexy. Then he kissed me hard enough to knock my hat off the top of my head and reminded me again that my handcuffs had more than one use. I just rolled my eyes and followed him to the 4Runner. One of these days I was going to surprise him and let him make good on all the wicked promises I saw in his amber gaze when he teased me about that particular tool of my trade.

On the way to my mom’s place in Littleton I gave him a brief rundown of what to expect. I told him how she liked to jump from spouse to spouse. I gave him the glossed-over version of my own origins, which had him lifting a questioning eyebrow in my direction. All I could do was shrug and tell him I had never had a relationship with my father and never wanted one. My mom had worked her ass off to be more than enough for me and I never felt lacking in the parental love and support department. The guy that had contributed the other half of my DNA already had another family when he started fooling around with my mom, so it wasn’t like I was missing out on any kind of stellar role model. Asa just snorted and told me that a philanderer was far better than a career convict when it came to father figures, and I had to admit I agreed.

“Mom’s been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. She’s never liked to be alone, and ever since I went to work full-time, she’s been even more prone to looking for love in all the wrong places. I really worry about her, and sometimes I think she’s going to cross the line and I won’t be able to look the other way. Her men and the way she is with them has always been the one sore spot in our relationship. But nothing I say about it seems to sink in. It would break my heart if a man ever really drove a wedge between us.” I gave him an arch look. “So don’t flirt back if she starts to lay it on pretty thick. Sometimes I think she actually loses her mind around good-looking men.”

He grinned at me and I felt my heart flip over in my chest. Just the fact that he had agreed to go with me meant so much and I doubted he even realized it.

“Stop worrying. If there’s one thing you don’t have to worry about, it’s me being able to handle your mom.”

“Handling her isn’t what I’m worried about; tolerating her is.” My mom was my favorite person in the world, but if she made googly eyes at Asa while I was in the room, I very well might flip out. I had never been the jealous or possessive type before him, but now I was in so deep, so far down in the depths with him, that I wouldn’t hesitate to stake my claim even if I logically knew there was no way my mom would ever want to hurt me or upset me like that on purpose.

Asa reached out a hand and put it on the back of my neck, where he could give it a squeeze. It made a shiver race up along my spine. I wanted to pull the SUV over and climb in his lap. To be honest I always wanted to climb all over him, but the fact that he was trying to reassure me, that he was willing to go through the motions of meeting my mom just to make me happy, made me feel even more amorous toward him.

“Moms are a piece of cake. The dads used to take more work, but then again I wouldn’t want my daughter anywhere near a guy like me either.” His tone was full of self-deprecating humor and I wanted to purr as his fingers stroked along the curve of my neck.

“It’s hard to picture you doing the sit-down-and-meet-the-parents thing.” It was hard to see him as anything other than this complicated and difficult man that had become the center of everything to me.

“I did whatever I had to do to get me what I wanted, including meeting the parents.” There was no humor in his voice now.

I turned to look at him as I pulled in front of the town house and cocked my head to the side as I told him, “And yet here you are doing it for me.”

He just stared at me for a long moment and then a tiny grin tugged at his mouth. He bent forward and pressed his lips lightly against my own. “Here I am.”

I knew what he was saying to me. Not just was he here to meet my mom for me, he was here with me in this moment. Not because he necessarily wanted to be, not because he was going to gain anything from it, but simply because I had asked him to be and he was making a concentrated effort to be present, for me. There was no question about it any longer, I had handed my heart over to the southern charmer with a criminal past. Probably not the smartest move I had ever made, but I couldn’t regret it. Not when he was looking at me with that warm shimmer in his eyes and that knowing smirk on his too-pretty face.

We walked up to the front door and he put his hand on my lower back. I had ditched my hat in the car and pulled my hair out of the coiled-up bun that held it up and out of the way while I was on duty. I actually groaned out loud when Asa raked his fingers through the long locks and rubbed his fingers across my scalp. I gave the door an obligatory knock before walking in and hollering out a hello to my mom. She yelled back that she was in the kitchen, and I headed off in that direction only to be drawn up short when Asa paused at the hallway wall to look at the various pictures that decorated the flat surface. They were all of me, several of me and Dom and his sisters, and a bunch of me and Mom. His eyes seemed glued to the images and all his good humor and gentle handling from moments ago disappeared behind a hard veneer that dulled the typical molten sheen in his gaze. His jaw clenched so hard that I actually heard his teeth grind together and his arm felt like steel when I reached out to touch him.