I wanted Asa on the first plane back to Kentucky.

Adam touched my arm lightly and gave me his typically friendly grin. “I have some free time. I can show your brother around campus while you’re in class, if you want.”

Oh hell no, that was the last thing I wanted. Adam was too nice of a guy to be left alone with Asa. My brother was working some kind of angle and I needed to figure out what it was.

“No, that’s okay.” I said it at the same time Asa chirped, “That’ll be great.”

We glared at each other out of matching amber eyes. Before, all I had ever wanted was for Asa to protect me, and to take care of me because we were family. I wanted him to see and appreciate the sacrifices made for him. It was only now that I understood that blood didn’t make family and that sacrifice didn’t matter. I had made bad decision after bad decision time and again for my brother, but now I had my own life and my own path, and he wasn’t going to screw it up or drag me back.

Adam must have sensed the tension building between us, because he cleared his throat and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Well, I’m going to get some coffee. Asa, it was nice to meet you and if you want, the offer of a tour is open, but I’ll let you guys figure it out. Ayd, I gotta say it’s good to see you, you look good.”

I sighed and grabbed my brother’s arm as he made a move to follow Adam. “Thanks. It was nice to see you, too.”

I held on to Asa until Adam disappeared, then jerked him around so that we were face-to-face. I poked him hard in the center of the chest and was satisfied to see him wince.

“What. The. Fuck.”

He rubbed his palm over the place I jabbed and narrowed his eyes at me. “What happened to all those Southern manners you used to have?”

“What are you trying to pull, Asa? I already told you I’m not going there with you anymore. If you think Adam is a pawn, then you are wrong. He’s smart and he’s broke. College students don’t have any money.”

He pushed his blond hair away from his face and propped his hip on the stair rail. I saw a couple of younger girls check him out and wanted to scream at them that guys like Asa were poison, and that they should have a natural defense mechanism to warn them away from men like him. He grinned back at them and then turned to me with nothing but cold calculation in his eyes. This was the Asa I knew. This was the brother that I had fought so hard to separate myself from.

“He might be broke, but his family isn’t, and that boy is head-over-heels in love with you. When I told him I was your older brother, I think it was all he could do not to ask for your hand in marriage.”

I took a step back, like he had physically struck me, and blinked my eyes. “It’s not like that between us. We had a casual thing going on but it’s over.”

“Over for you, not even close for him. He doesn’t even care that you’re hooking up with the guy in the band. I bet he thinks it’s just a phase. After all, what girl can resist a guy in a band, right, Ayd?”

I had to concentrate on my breathing. The fact that he knew about Adam was bad, and the fact that he knew about Jet was worse. I felt my hands curl into tight fists at my sides.

“What is going on, Asa? For real? I’m not playing games with you anymore and if you don’t come clean with me, I have no problem letting several very large, very tattooed guys know that you were behind the break-in at my house. I swear it won’t end in a way you like.”

He narrowed his eyes at me because he hated being threatened, and being threatened by me was just unheard of.

“I told you I was in trouble.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to shiver. “What kind of trouble?”

“I took something that didn’t belong to me and now some really bad, really pissed-off people want it back.”

Now there was no stopping the shiver. “What did you take?”

Eyes that matched mine flared with genuine fear and I felt my stomach turn into a cement brick.

“Let’s just say it wasn’t something I can easily replace.”

I figured he meant drugs or money and that meant the people were not bad, but really bad. Once again he was in a situation that was going to lead to the jail or the grave.

“How much money?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. He looked at something over my head for a solid five minutes before letting his gaze settle back on mine.

“Twenty thousand.”

I wanted to throw up. It felt like a punch in the gut. I squeezed my eyes closed and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly.

“Oh my God!”

“I’m in deep, Ayd. They’re going to kill me if I don’t do something.”

“So you’re first thought was, of course, to come screw up everything I’ve worked so hard to build here. It was to come ask me to bail you out like I always do, no matter what that meant for me?”

“We’re family, we take care of each other and do what we have to do to survive.”

I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, only that always meant I had to take care of you, Asa. I’m done. I’m not sleeping with anyone to keep you from getting your legs broken, because that is the only option. I’m not hanging out with guys that are too old for me, or only interested in using me to get you in the door anymore. I’m not doing lines of coke to numb myself and forget how crappy doing all the things I used to do made me feel. I’ve got a good thing going on here and I’m not going to let you or your idiotic choices mess it up.”

He scowled at me. “You won’t help me, but you’ll sleep around with any guy who can play the guitar?”

It was as close as my brother, my flesh and blood, had ever come to admitting that he had some kind of idea of the deplorable things I’d taken upon myself to do in order to keep him in one piece. It made me feel worse about it than I normally did, and I had beaten myself up over the truly awful decisions I’d made back then on a regular basis.

I poked him in the chest again and got in his face. “I sleep with who I want when I want, Asa. You have no right to say anything, after everything I’ve done for you. I’ll tell you one time: leave Jet alone. He isn’t a nice guy like Adam. He isn’t stupid, and the bumpkin act you have going on isn’t going to fool him.”

He jumped off the stair and glowered up at me. “Oh yeah, and how do you think all your fancy new friends are going to feel about Good-Time Ayd? Do any of them know what you used to do for fun, how you used to get by? Do any of them know where the real you came from, or do they all just see the polished version and take it at face value? Even if Rocker Boy is cool with it, what about the rest of them? Could he still look at you the same if the rest of them decided you were nothing but trailer trash?”

I sucked in a breath and rocked back on my heels. That was exactly what I was afraid of, but it was a cut that went miles deep coming from him. Half those trips around the block had been because of him because I was forever wanting to save him. Most of the things that I wanted to keep buried now were because of him. To this day I still never had concrete proof that Asa had any idea of the lengths I had gone to to keep him alive and breathing. And if he did know, how he could dare ask me to give him even more. And if he didn’t know, the fact that he never asked any questions about it was frankly just as heartbreaking. I loved my brother, and I liked to think somewhere in someplace inside he loved me back, but I just wasn’t sure and that’s why I could never trust him fully.

I pulled the cloak of indifference that I had been building since the last time I saw Woodward around me and headed up the steps so I could go to class without bothering to engage him further. I was pissed because the class was now almost halfway over.

“It doesn’t matter. What I’m doing with Jet is none of your business, and I have no intention of being invested enough to let my past matter or not. Stay away from Adam, and stay away from me. If I can think of a way to help you with the money, I will, but this is it, Asa. I’m not doing this with you or for you. I think it would kill me to have to bury you after everything I’ve done for you, and I deserve better than that.”