She really was. She had helped me out of a hard spot not too long ago, and when Rowdy’s girlfriend had needed a safe place for her little sister to recover from a really terrible situation, Sayer hadn’t hesitated to take the girl in. She was as kind and generous as she was lovely. She deserved a guy that was willing to go the extra mile for her even if that guy kinda resembled a tattooed Paul Bunyan.

Zeb pushed up off the bar and lifted both of his dark eyebrows at me. “I question taking romantic advice from a guy that’s repeatedly turning down the hottest piece of ass I’ve ever seen. That’s just wasteful, man.”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “That’s the whole point: she’s not a piece of ass, and I don’t know why she’s suddenly acting like she is. Besides, any chick that can throw me in jail when I piss her off is off the table.” What I really meant but didn’t say was that I knew I was bound to screw up and piss her off. That was just what I did.

Zeb grunted. “I think I’d risk a night in lockup for her. Saying no to all of that is like a Herculean feat. Someone should nominate you for sainthood.”

I laughed drily and followed him to the front door so I could lock it behind him. “The halo would burst into flames if they got it anywhere near my head.”

He gave me a hard look. “You know I don’t think you’re half as bad as you seem to think you are, Asa. Trust me, I know better than most about screwing up on an epic level, but I’ve never let that define who I was going to be for the rest of my life.”

I might have bounced in and out of jail since I was a teenager, but I had never had to spend more than a few weeks at a time locked down. Zeb, though, had served several years behind bars for his mistake. The difference between us was that Zeb had broken the law because he felt like he didn’t have any other choice. I broke the law because I wanted to. The law got in my way, prevented me from getting what I wanted or what I thought I needed, so I ignored it and pretended like it didn’t matter.

“Some people screw up, and then some people are screw-ups. I fall firmly into the second category.”

There was no other explanation as to how Ayden and I could have half of the same genetic makeup and be so vastly different. Granted there was a good chance I absolutely took after my scumbag of a father, a father we didn’t share. Yet we were so opposite I often had to wonder how we had been brought up in the same house and lived the same hard-knock childhood. I had no clue how she could be as together, as composed and steady, as she was. I don’t know how she had found a space in her new life for me or how she had stayed by my side when I was dying. I knew she had every reason to walk away from me, but instead she had done everything in her power to save me and she had given me a new life of my own. One I was terrified I was going to rip to shreds any second now.

Zeb shook his head a little and yanked the door open. “I think you need to cut yourself some slack.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

I shoved him on his shoulder out the door and closed it in his face. I liked Zeb. We had a lot in common, but he didn’t know the whole story, didn’t know some of the really terrible things I had done. He didn’t know that when I died, when everything went black and I knew I wasn’t coming back to rejoin the mortal coil, every single, terrible, awful, horrible thing I had ever done in my life floated before me live in vivid color.

The way I used Ayden. The way I had never stopped her from doing what she was doing, which I did so that I could get what I wanted. The sex, the drugs, all of it a kaleidoscope of regret so hard and heavy I was sure it was dragging me to hell. I loved my sister more than anything in the world and yet I hadn’t ever been able to stop myself from treating her like a pawn in one of my games. Watching what I did to Ayden, what I allowed her to do for me, was worse than every blow from the baseball bats the bikers had wielded. Seeing the heartbreak in her whiskey-colored eyes when I finally caught up to her after years apart was enough to make me glad I wouldn’t ever be opening my own eyes again.

On top of that, there were the old ladies I scammed and the bikers I ripped off. There were the cars I stole and the men I knew my mom was sleeping with to pay our rent while I did nothing to stop it or help the family out. There was the debutante I had charmed into giving me her college fund, which I promptly wasted on a backroom poker game. There was the elderly gentleman looking for a companion that I had convinced not only that I was gay, but that I was interested in him, convinced him just enough to get him to write me a check so I could pursue my passion for photography; needless to say, I wasn’t gay or a photographer, but his ten grand had gone a long way in funding my next scam. The number of people I had screwed over was endless, and as their faces rolled like a movie behind my eyes as life leached out of me, I knew I was getting what I deserved.

When I had woken up, had seen Ayden looking down at me while I struggled to realize that even the devil in hell didn’t want me, I realized something bright, sharp, and clear. I was an asshole. I was a bad man that had done bad things and I was always going to be that guy, but I never, never wanted to hurt my sister again. I never wanted her to have to worry about me, never wanted her to have to suffer for me or lose anything because of me ever again. I was always going to be a screw-up, but I was going to actively try to avoid causing any more damage, and so far it had been going pretty well. I just had to hold on to those memories, those regrets and that remorse, tight enough that my hands would be too full to ever do the devil’s work again.

I pulled the cash drawer out and put it and the sales receipts in the safe that was in Rome’s office. I made sure all the cameras were on, especially the ones in the parking lot that he had recently installed. I got jumped one night after work by a bunch of kids with a vendetta that had actually led to my arrest and a legal headache that had taken longer to deal with than it should have because of my past. So now I was hypervigilant and always made sure the eye in the sky was watching my every move.

It was a little after one in the morning. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a few cars that were left over from people that hadn’t wanted to drive home after drinking or local neighborhood cars that Rome let borrow a slot. The Bar wasn’t in a terrible part of town and I was now pretty used to keeping odd hours since I didn’t get out of work until well after most of the world went to bed. I kind of liked the quiet of it all.

It was cold out. Being from the South like me, it had taken a couple of winters to get used to the frigid mountain air. I didn’t love the chill. My dislike of winter was enough that I was seriously considering buying a car even though the studio apartment I rented was barely two blocks away from the Bar. That was another thing that had changed after I came back to life. Now I could care less about things. I used to want the best of it all. The nicest clothes, the flashiest ride, the biggest house, and of course the prettiest girl. I wanted everything I had never had growing up and I wanted to show it all off and prove my worth. Now I wanted nothing. The less I had, the less there was to lose.