He was old enough to know that made him biased going in, so he tried to give them all the benefit of the doubt. How they reacted from this point on would cement his dislike or redeem them. All of them except Howard. That piece of shit was, as his sister Courtney liked to say, dead to him.

He tried to pretend he wasn’t listening but gave up because she wasn’t dumb. They pulled down his street and she turned to him as she hung up.

“Everything okay? Sounded like she was trying to reassure you.”

“Jay and my dad had an argument. Jay had gone into the bar to ask them to water the drinks after the third one and somehow our dad figured it out, and you can only imagine what that looked like. Shawn called a cab and waited for it to take my dad home, and Julie dropped Mom off and settled her in with some tea.”

He pulled into the driveway and they got out to head into the house. Not a word about what had happened to PJ, only this other shit?

Still, this was her family, so he attempted to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “Your mom okay? Do you want to go over there?”

“Julie said she set herself up in the guest room and was pretty ticked at my dad. He’ll charm his way back, he always does. Whatever his flaws, she loves him. I’m done with it for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll decide when I’ll be ready to think about it again. For now, it’s me and you.”

He wanted to let her change the subject. Wanted to bury himself in her, anchor her so she knew no matter what he was always there.

But he needed to tell her a few things first. Not least of all because she’d been so brave and had told him all that stuff about her past. She’d given him trust even after he’d not told her about Ellen.

Asa needed to be a man worthy of her. So he pulled her into the living room instead of the bedroom.

“I do seem to recall you like the angle that couch gives you.” PJ gave him a look over her shoulder that weakened his resolve.

“I do. But let’s talk for a bit.”

Her frown was calculated and he laughed, swatting her ass on his way past.

“Very nice try. I promise to show you just how nice in a bit.” Asa pointed at the couch. “Sit.”

“This sounds ominous.”

He settled in next to her. “No reason for that.” He took her hand. “Earlier tonight you told me Courtney had revealed some of the details from my childhood, but you wanted to hear them from me, so you waited.” Asa swallowed hard. “That meant something to me. Well, more than one thing. But let’s start with the trust you showed me, even when I didn’t show you the same. I apologize for that. Honestly.”

There was no reason not to accept a genuine apology. She wanted him to know why it was particularly upsetting to her. “I accept your apology. But, Asa? This is a problem for me. I need for you to understand that.”

“I’m not going to promise to never be an idiot again. I will. I’m fucked up in a hundred ways. But I can promise to do my very best not to hurt you.”

That was a good answer.

“Tell me one of those hundred ways then. Help me understand you.”

“My mom was fifteen when she had me. She’d dropped out of school to follow this loser to Dallas. Estranged herself from her family. And then when my biological father got sent to prison for five years, his parents stole me from her. I lived with them until I was nearly seven. They punished her for her sins by keeping me away from her influence.”

PJ shoved pity as far away as possible. If he saw any hint of it he’d close up. She didn’t dare move and spoil the moment. So she waited and hoped he continued. After he was finished, later, when she wasn’t in his presence, she’d have her full reaction to this story.

“We both had to be reminded of our nature, you see. That was Mr. Jeter’s favorite. I needed to be beaten when I made the slightest infraction. It was the only way to cleanse me of the things my mother had done.”

He shuddered, his gaze gone far away.

“Their mistake was to underestimate my mom. They thought continuing to dangle time with me was a way to keep her in line. Figured her obedience to those dictates meant she’d given up. She was a teenage girl with no education and no resources, while they were respected in their church and community. But she never gave up. She just did what she needed to do to keep her visitation rights, to see me. All the while she worked multiple jobs, got her GED, and saved to get an attorney to fight back.”

PJ was really beginning to love Pat Barrons.

He licked his lips and she took a risk, linking her fingers with his. He let out a long, shuddering sigh and pulled her closer. She couldn’t see his face.

Maybe that was easier for them both. She closed her eyes and leaned into the solid, comforting muscle of him.

“I was seven by the time I came to live with her permanently. She had Lettie about five months after that. Their dad, Lettie and Courtney’s, stuck around awhile. He was okay at first. Or maybe he wasn’t, but what I’d been used to was being forced to kneel for hours at a time in a closet while I prayed to be forgiven for my sins. I guess most people would have been okay in comparison.”

She couldn’t stop the snarl that ripped from her lips. There she was whining about her family and look at what he’d gone through.

“When she was pregnant with Courtney he walked out and never came back. Lettie was right around five. It took her a week to notice her dad wasn’t around. That’s how involved he’d been in her life. The state tried to find him to get him to pay support, but they never did. So my mom just stepped up and handled it. There was nothing else to be done. She worked her ass off, to the point that her health suffered, and she did it because that’s what you do when you’re a parent and she couldn’t rely on anyone else to do it for her.”