“It also has people very willing to kill you, and to hurt Mama and me to get it back. This is a nightmare, Asa, and you know it. You came here for me to fix it, so that’s what I’m going to do, but first you’re going to tell me if you had anything to do with Jet’s studio getting robbed. If you did, I’m handing you over to Silas and walking away.”

He balked and narrowed his eyes at me.

“The rock-and-roll guy? I didn’t even know he had a studio. I was focused on the nerd with the rich family. That guy is so in love with you, I thought it would be a sure thing. The guy in the band seemed a little harder to get at.”

I sighed and leaned back on my elbows. I didn’t know if I believed him or not.

“He has security cameras, so if you’re lying, I’m going to find out and it’s going to be your ass, because those guys make Silas look like a Cub Scout.”

“I swear, Ayd, I didn’t do anything to the studio. Even if you had something serious going with that guy, he doesn’t come across as the type who would be easy to work. You know I pick my marks smarter than that.”

We sized each other up, him looking for some sign of whatever it was I was working on and me, for some sign he was lying about Jet. I dug around in my bag and pulled out the envelope stuffed with the money from Shaw. I tapped it on my thigh and saw his eyes track the movement.

“I want you out of town. I want you as far away from me, and from Mama as you can get. I got the money you asked for to make that happen.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Give me the book to give to Silas.”

His eyes darted from the money to my face and back to the money. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head and the drool collecting at the corner of his mouth.

“Where did you get the money from?”

“None of your business.” I growled at him, actually growled like an animal, because I was pretty sure I was going to go for his throat at any minute.

“Take the money, Asa. Give me the book. That’s the only way to fix this.”

“The book is worth way more than twenty grand, Ayd.”

I clenched the wrinkled bedding in my fingers and told myself to calm down. If I got all worked up, Asa would use it to his advantage and I needed to be the one in control.

“Your life is worth more than twenty grand, as well. I know it would kill Mom if I had to go home and identify your body, Asa. Take the goddamn money and get the fuck out of my life, once and for all. This offer has a time limit. Once I walk out that door, you are on your own come hell or high water and I will do what I have to do to protect myself and Mama and you from yourself, just like always.”

“What does that mean?”

He sounded bored, like he didn’t believe I would go through with any threat I made. Maybe old Ayden wouldn’t have, but I was a kickass hybrid of old and new, who had no time to mess around with my brother’s games, not when I was broken-hearted and feeling so raw.

I got up and held the money out to him.

“It means take the money or I’m calling Silas on my way out the door. Like I said, he’s been following me all around town, and he might even be out in the parking lot now. If you don’t work with me, Asa, I honestly don’t care what happens to you from this point on. I don’t have it in me to save you, to do anything and everything for you the way I once did.”

He must have seen the seriousness in my face, and the fact that I had nothing left to lose, because he snatched the envelope from me and peeked inside. I saw his eyes get big at the sight of all that green, but he made no move to get me the book.

I crossed my arms and tapped the toe of my cowboy boot on the floor. I think he was waiting to see what I was going to do, so I just stared him down until he swore. He took his sweet time going to his suitcase and digging out the little leather-bound book that was about the size of my palm. Why criminals didn’t just digitize all their illegal doings and password protect that shit was beyond me. I caught it in one hand when he threw it at me, and tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans. It felt like it weighed as much as my heavy heart at the moment.

I put my bag over my shoulder and made my way to the door.

“I’m serious, Asa. This is the last time I’m doing anything for you or because of you. I like my life here, I like the person I am here, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep it. Even if you are blood and family.”

He crossed his arms over his bare chest and his radiant eyes glinted at me.

“You’ve changed, lil sister. You’re a lot tougher than you used to be.”

I looked back over my shoulder. “Damn straight, and you would be smart not to forget it.”

“I know you won’t believe me, Ayd, but the things I did, the things I never told you not to do, even though it was obvious it was killing you inside, I was just trying to get us by. I always loved you more than anything. You’ve always been the only one who ever had my back.”

I turned to look at him and had to fight back tears. “When did you ever have my back?”

He looked confused for a second, but Asa was good and could look anyway he wanted to. It sucked that I couldn’t trust whatever was shining out of those eyes that were so like my own.

“What are you talking about, Ayd?” For a split second it looked like he was going to move toward me, to try to hug me or comfort me, but it was way too little and far too late for any of that to exist between us now.

Maybe he really didn’t know, maybe he didn’t want to know, either way it was too late and all those things and him were in the past. It wasn’t a conversation I felt like I wanted or needed to have with him. When I closed the door on him without answering, I was closing the door on more than just my brother. I was closing the door on a past that had held me hostage for too long. I wasn’t sure Asa even knew what love looked like, but I knew that now I did. I had been living a life that was driven by things that seemed like a good idea but had proven to be superficial and were really just armor to insulate myself. Moving forward, it was going to be all about the balance between what I wanted and what I needed. It sucked that Jet Keller was the only thing that fit both those criteria, when I was pretty sure he was never going to want to have anything to do with me again.

Chapter 14

The last week had been torturous. I was emotionally exhausted and running on fumes and a flurry of avoidance. Between scurrying all over hell and back to replace the stuff we would need for the tour at the end of next week, and trying desperately to avoid any kind of run-in with Ayden, I was scattered all over the place and barely holding it together.

So far I had managed to spend most of my time with the band, practicing and working our asses off, to the point that I was just crashing overnight at the studio on a blow-up mattress, or dragging myself home long after Ayden returned from her shift at the bar. I was writing songs that made my head hurt and my heart ache, and I think the guys in the band were sick of ballads about broken hearts.

I didn’t know what to say to her, and didn’t know how to look at her without having it rip me into shreds and burn me up more than I thought was possible. I didn’t want to be constantly mad at her or let her know that the chasm she’d rebuilt between us was killing me, so I thought that distance was my best bet for holding on to my sanity. On occasion, our paths would cross in the morning on the way to the bathroom, or at the kitchen table for breakfast, and I had to admit she looked about as broken as I felt. None of that made me feel any better, and the fact that Cora wouldn’t leave it alone just made it easier to avoid the house as much as I could.

At the moment, I was sitting in court, and even though I had been waiting for this moment, I felt like an igniter on a stick of dynamite. My lawyer kept telling me to stop twitching and fidgeting, but I was anxious, because my dad was sitting on the opposite side of the room, with his bruises healing and looking madder than a sack of wet cats. My mom was sitting behind him, her gaze nervously moving back and forth between the two of us. Her black eye was artfully covered with makeup and I could tell she was trying really hard not to cry. I was also uncomfortable as all get-out, in a pair of pinstriped pants and a white, button-down oxford cloth shirt that made me feel like a big, fat phony. Court clothes sucked, but I could tell by the way the judge was eyeballing my hair and the spikes in my ears that dressing up had been to my benefit.

My dad’s lawyer, opened up by going on and on about how assault was a serious charge, and how I had put my dad in the hospital. He said I had brought trauma and damage to the family. He brought up the fact that I had been in trouble before, and generally tried to make me out to be some kind of wild hooligan who was out of control.

My lawyer countered that my dad had instigated the fight, and that I had only been acting to protect my mom. It went back and forth like that for a while, with my dad huffing and puffing the entire time. I tried to sit still, tried not to glare daggers across the courtroom. The judge interjected that he had seen cases like this far too often in his court, and even though my old man wanted me in jail, I got just what I had predicted—a million hours of community service, probation for a year and fines out the ass. They also made me responsible for my dad’s medical bills and ordered an immediate protection order that said I couldn’t go within a hundred yards of him or the house for ninety days.

I readily agreed to all of it and had the added benefit of watching my dad go purple when I asked about postponing the community service and making sure the terms of my probation didn’t prohibit me from leaving the country for the tour. I heard my mom gasp when the case was ruled closed, but the same cop who had put me in the back of his car came around the table and slapped a heavy folder down in front of my dad. I wanted to get up and do a victory jig. It had taken every favor my lawyer had hanging in the legal world in order for it to go down like this for me and I was beyond stoked that the same cop was the one who had the honor of arresting the old bastard.

“Do you know what these pictures show, Mr. Keller?”

My dad’s lawyer was freaking out, calling out all kinds of crap that no one was paying attention to, and my mom was holding her hands up to her mouth when the clear, bright images, of my dad trashing and emptying out the studio, spilled onto the table in an array of visible guilt.

My dad went from purple to some other color I had never seen before, and stood up in his chair so violently that it fell backward, making the officers of the court tense.

“That’s not me!” He pointed a finger at me. “You little shit! You set me up!”

I leaned back in my chair and tried hard not to smile.

“I had security to prevent something like this from happening. It’s not my fault you got caught, and you bet your ass I’m pressing every goddamn charge he can think of.”

I tilted my head at the cop who was putting my dad in the cuffs.

“You’ve messed with me for the last time, old man. This is it, and I hope you rot.”

“I’m your father, Jet!”

I just shook my head and got to my feet.

“No, you’ve never been that.”