I counted six seconds until he dropped beside me. Not too close, sitting about a foot away. And he didn’t say shit to me, just sat there, head hanging low, eyes to the ground.

I pictured Maddie and me in that fucking church. And I told myself that this kid, my blood, wasn’t going anywhere. That he was here to stay and that I wouldn’t fucking hurt him. I thought it, tried to get it through my head, but it was real fucking hard to believe.

Taking another swig of my Bud, I lowered the bottle and asked, “You doing good?”

Asher tensed, then nodded his head. “Yeah.”

I blinked, trying to think what to say next, when I asked, “AK treating you good?”

Another nod of the head and another, “Yeah.”

I knew this wasn’t going real well. I couldn’t fucking talk to folk. I couldn’t ever fucking say anything right. Asher looked out over the woods, but I looked to my left, watching his face. Fucking seeing me in that face. Seeing the same kid I once was. And like me, Asher had been kept in that cellar… and fuck knows what else.

“I ain’t good at talking,” I abruptly blurted. Asher’s face turned to me, and he swallowed. “I mean, I ain’t good at talking. At all. I don’t read people like others can. I’m not good with people’s emotions or shit, or mine. I… I always fuck up things I wanna say, and people get real pissed, and I end up getting killing mad. It just all goes fucking wrong. All the fucking time."

“I know, Flame.”

I frowned. “You know?”

“Viking and AK have told me that… that you’re different from others. That you talk different to most people.” He swallowed and said, “They’ve told me how to speak to you. So, I get it.”

I glanced back to AK and Viking. Viking was fucking around as always, but AK’s attention was focused our way. I flicked my chin at him, and he raised his beer in return.

Asher began pulling the grass from the ground, and as I took another sip of my beer, I noticed his hair. His dark hair, cut in a…

“Your hair’s like mine,” I said. Asher stilled. “You got a Mohawk,” I added, as my hand lifted to run through my own.

Asher’s face went bright red. “Yeah. I… everyone keeps telling me I look like you.” He shrugged. “I needed it cut, because poppa never cut it. So I asked for it to look like yours.”

“I don’t understand. Why the fuck would you wanna look like me?” I asked. Asher’s expression changed. I didn’t know why his expression changed either. I couldn’t fucking read him.

“Because… because you’re my brother,” he said under his breath. I froze and could feel my pulse slamming real fast. “I… I never had a brother before. I was always on my own. But I often wondered what it would’ve been like if I’d had someone else there with me. Poppa always talked about you. He said horrible things, things that he believed in his warped head, things Pastor Hughes had told him, but I never heard them. I never believed them. He said horrible things about me that I knew weren’t true, so I thought that was probably true of you too.”

As his words sunk in, a question came out my mouth. “Did he fuck you? In that dirt cell, did he fuck you?”

Asher froze, and his head dropped.

“Tell me,” I pushed. “I need to fucking know.” I tapped my head. “I need to know because it’s all I think about up here.”

“He tried.” Asher whispered, “Every time he came into that cell, he tried. But he couldn’t ever do it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, my stomach uncoiling in relief at the fact he didn’t fuck him. He hadn’t fucked Asher.

Thank fuck.

“It was the drink, I think. He could barely walk after my mama died, when he put me in the cellar for the first time. He couldn’t get it up, Flame. He’d get mad, he’d beat me.” He held out his arms. “He even tried to cut me at first, but he’d almost drunk himself to death by the time you arrived.” Asher sighed, then said, “Mostly he just kept me in that cellar and called me a sinner, preached his bible talk to me from above. Don’t think he had the strength to do much else.”

I inhaled a sharp breath, then slowly exhaled, feeling all the concern I’d had, leave my body. “That’s fucking good,” I admitted. Asher lowered his head again.

He lifted his hand and ran it through his hair. Just as I’d nearly finished my beer, he said, “I want to look like you because I wanna be like you.”