She hung up on me and I was left looking down at my phone trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened. I wasn’t kidding about her having to interview, and I could see her and Cora going rounds. It would be entertaining, to say the least.

I put my phone in my back pocket and pushed through the nondescript doors of the Bar and let my eyes adjust to the dimly lit interior. Since it was before eleven in the morning, the bar was quiet and the only customers lined up at the actual bar top were the grizzled old veterans that had called the Bar home long before Rome and Asa had taken over. No one looked up at me but Asa caught sight of me as he rounded the outside corner of the bar, arms loaded full of cases of beer.

He lifted a sandy-blond brow at me as I walked over and took some of his burden from him. Asa didn’t really jibe with the rest of the group. His motivations were suspect, his personality was a little too smooth, a tad too polished for the rest of us to really dig into, but Ayden loved him and Rome had developed an odd fondness for the southern charmer, so even though he was slippery and slick, he was integrating his way firmly into our merry band of misfits. Jet watched him like a hawk and I was more of the mind that until he proved otherwise, he was an okay guy to be around.

Plus he pulled hot tail like I had never seen before. I didn’t know if it was the southern twang, the golden eyes, or that “aw shucks” attitude he artfully played with, but he was a certified babe snake charmer and before Saint had become my sole focus his talents with the opposite sex had been much admired.

“What are you doing here so early?”

I helped him shove the beer on the end of the bar and he walked around the long wooden surface that Rome had just recently refinished, and faced me from the other side. Rome might be the technical owner of the bar, but with the new baby and the bar being open practically all day and night, Asa was the one often making the day-to-day operation run. He was also a million and one times more personable than the gruff ex-soldier, so they made a pretty good team.

“I wanted to ask you some stuff before I have to be at the shop. Do you have a minute?”

He cocked his head to the side and regarded me silently. It was no secret Asa’s choices in the recent past had almost gotten him killed—and nearly had his sister disowning him—so it wasn’t like anyone was rushing to him for words of wisdom.

“Yeah, I got some time; this is the last of the liquor order and I’m just waiting on Brite. He called and told me he would be in later and he had a huge favor he needed to ask me. Want me to have Darcey feed you lunch?”

I shook my head. “Maybe on my way out. I’ll take something back to the shop for everyone.”

He nodded and tilted his head to the back of the bar, where the pool tables were located.

“Let me stick my head in the kitchen and tell Darcey to keep an eye on the front.”

I wandered to the back room and hopped up so I could perch on the edge of one of the pool tables. I folded my hands together and watched as Asa came toward me rubbing his hands on a bar towel.

“She’s gonna throw a bunch of sandwiches together for you.” I nodded. Darcey was Brite’s ex-wife—well, one of them—and she ran the bar kitchen. She was a nice, older lady and her BLT was close to heaven as far as I was concerned. “So what’s up, Nash?”

I sighed and winced a little. “This is sort of awkward, but you were the only one I could think of to ask.”

Both of his eyebrows shot up and he crossed his beefy arms over his chest. Asa looked like the kind of guy that wrangled horses or threw bales of hay around all day. He didn’t do either of those things, but there was no missing his country upbringing in the way he looked and carried himself.

“About what?”

“About changing and perception.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I have history with this girl I’m seeing, not exactly pretty and shiny history, and I don’t really know how to get us past it.” One of his gold eyebrows danced up on his forehead and I felt like a total chick trying to get into all of this with him. Dudes were not supposed to have heartfelt conversations about feelings, but I was at a loss.

“Saint had a rough go of it in high school. She was awkward and shy, got picked on and made fun of. I guess she had a little bit of a thing for me and I sort of blew her off without really meaning to. It was forever ago, but it stuck with her, and to make matters worse, I was running my mouth like an idiot and she thought I was talking about her. That topped with her dad being a cheating ass**le and a college boyfriend throwing her over because she wouldn’t do what he wanted in bed and I’m having a hell of a time getting to the heart of this girl. I know the self-esteem shit wasn’t helped by my big mouth and general stupidity, but I can’t figure out how to get her to trust that I’m not like that. That really I’m a decent dude that was just a dumb kid prone to making mistakes. How did you do it? How did you convince Ayden that you’re a different guy after everything that went down between the two of you? How did you get her to let the past go and prove to her you’re not going to let her down again?”

He just stared at me for a minute, and I thought maybe I had offended him. He snorted and gave his golden head a sad little shake while he hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans.

“I didn’t. Ayden loves me, wants to believe the best in me, which makes her the best person in the world because I used her, flat-out abused our relationship up until a few years ago. I wasn’t just a mean guy, Nash. I was a criminal, a con artist, and I didn’t stop to think how what I was doing would affect Ayden. She was really just a means to an end, and I never saw it until it was almost too late. Frankly, Ayd has every right to hate me, and I wouldn’t have blamed her for leaving me in that hospital alone. Now …” He grimaced and I saw him swallow hard. “I’ll never be able to fully convince her or Jet that I’m living a different life. When the bar got robbed a few months ago she thought it was me, even though I like Rome, like my job here. She automatically assumed I had something to do with it and she always will, and I can’t blame her for it. I wasn’t trustworthy or considerate in the past. The only person I cared about was myself and that’s not a memory I can erase—ever.”

I hadn’t ever been privy to the inner workings of their sibling relationship, but it made more sense why Jet was so leery around the guy, and why there was still so much tension between him and Ayden. There was no bridge in the world tall enough to let all that water run under it.

I threw my hands up in the air and let them fall. “So there isn’t anything I can do? She’s just always going to equate me with that memory and never be able to fully trust me. That blows.”

“Nash …” His drawl seemed a little more pronounced when he said my name. “You’re a good guy, they seem to grow them by the bushel here in the Rockies. You don’t have to do anything but be who you are. Eventually she’ll see that it isn’t an act, it’s just who you are, and what happened in the past was a one-off moment. You’re human. You have to be allowed to make mistakes back then and now. I wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t the gift of second chances.”

“I like her, more than I’ve ever been into another chick. I just feel like she’s never going to get past it and that means no going forward.”

“I won’t give you all the gory details, won’t drag my own sordid history into it, but trust me: if my sister can still look at me and find a way to care about me, then you can work yourself into the heart of this girl.”

Man, maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to think Asa was an okay guy. The more he divulged, the more I kind of wanted to knock his perfect teeth out on Ayden’s behalf.

“So what about you? You weren’t a nice guy and now you are?” I asked it questioningly. “How do you convince everyone you’ve really changed?”

When he smiled at me it was full of mischievousness and secrets I didn’t think I wanted to know.

“I haven’t changed. I’m not a new person. Every day I still have to talk myself out of taking the easy way out, out of sliding into old patterns. I am who I am, and it isn’t always an enjoyable person to be. The difference now is I have a life I want to live. I want a relationship with my sister. I want Jet to eventually look at me and not wonder what my next move is. I want to help Rome make this bar a success so he can support his family. I like it here, there is value in this life I never had in Kentucky, and I will fight with myself until I take my last breath to maintain it. I might not deserve it, but it’s mine and I’m keeping it.”

Wow. I hadn’t planned on Asa being so up front about his own history, but his words struck something inside of me. I had been trying to convince Saint I was a different guy from the one she remembered from back in the day. That wasn’t really true. I was less angry, less in need of validation from my mother, but I had never been a bad dude. I was so busy trying to show her the value in the person I was, I forgot that I had always had value, even if I did get busted running my mouth and acting like a typical teenage idiot. Maybe I needed to start asking why she couldn’t see the value and worth in herself.

She was amazing. Smart and funny. She was gentle and completely lovely inside and out. She tore me up in bed, and if I could just get her to let go, quit holding on with both hands to things that would never change, I had a pretty good idea I would tumble head over heels in love with her. I was pretty close to the edge of that precipice as it was. Maybe I needed to stop trying to make her see how great I was and start making her see, reinforcing with her, how great she was.

I jumped off the table and thudded heavily on the wooden floor.

“Thanks, Asa.”

He laughed a little and I followed him back to the bar. “I’ve made enough mistakes for the lot of you to learn from. Something good should come from all my f**kups.”

“I really hope you don’t go back to your old ways. It would suck for more than just Ayden.”

That grin was back, and this time it was tinged with sadness.

“Got a good thing going here, and I know it. It’s not on my agenda to screw it up, though my agendas never really have a way of working out the way I think they will.”

I gathered all the to-go containers Darcey put together and let her kiss me on the cheek. I was walking out when I heard her ask Asa if he had seen her daughter yet. I had a feeling Brite’s favor he was about to lay on the southern playboy was going to involve family. Yikes, that could end up bad because I had heard from Rome that Brite and Darcey’s daughter was a handful, a real wild child.

I didn’t see Saint for the rest of the week. The shop was slammed with early-spring business, Rowdy got a cold and was out for a few days, and Phil’s condition was rapidly deteriorating. It got so bad at the end of the week I wanted to move him back to the hospital, but he refused to go. He couldn’t keep anything down, and his hospice nurse was talking about a feeding tube. It was stressful, I felt like I was walking across a lake that was frozen and I was just waiting for everything to give under my weight. I stayed the night with him for the entire end of the week, which meant I didn’t see anyone else. At some point during the week, as I watched him get sicker and sicker right before my eyes, my brain automatically started switching him from Phil to Dad in my head. It was my dad that was dying, my dad that was trying to put on a brave front for me, my dad that looked at me with sad, periwinkle eyes because he knew our time together was getting shorter and shorter.

I didn’t want anyone to see him like this. The entire group tried to come by, but Phil just wasn’t up to it. I had to bail on the plans I had with Saint on Saturday night, which bummed me out, but I was where I needed to be. When there was a knock on the door a few hours later, I almost fell over when I opened it and saw that it was her. She didn’t ask to come in, just handed me some kind of protein drink and told me to see if Phil could maybe keep it down. She told me she had asked the oncology staff for a solution that might hold off the feeding tube for a while longer.