“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.”