Rescue My Heart Read online

  “Uh-huh,” Adam said, trying to keep the sarcastic inflection from his voice, but he must have failed because she reached back and smacked him in the arm.

  He let out another laugh and just barely ducked her second smack. Catching her hand in his, he tucked it against her chest. “Your dad is smart as hell,” he said. “And incredibly intuitive. He’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know. He’d give away his last buck. And you, Holly, are the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  She played tug-of-war for her hand back and lost. “Fine,” she said, sounding a whole lot less hostile. “Maybe we’ve got some things in common.” She paused. “But I don’t know about giving away my last buck.”

  He let go of her hand to slip his just beneath her sweatshirt, his fingers brushing the creamy, soft skin of her stomach. “Once you gave me everything you had.”

  “Yes, well…” Her voice was soft now, and thick. With memories? “I’m smarter these days.”

  They were both supposedly smarter now, which was a very good thing. Back in those days, there’d been no history between them, no rolled-up jacket as a barrier, no boundaries at all.

  He’d given her everything he had, which admittedly hadn’t been jack shit. He wasn’t sure anything would be different now, though he honestly hadn’t given much thought to trying. He was still working on being okay with being among the living, when so many others he’d once known weren’t. He’d mostly accomplished this by burying himself in work, spreading himself too thin so that he’d fall into an exhausted sleep at night.

  Tonight wasn’t going to be one of those nights.

  Tonight he was going to lie here, wide awake, fighting not memories of war and destruction and loss but memories of a better time.

  The best time of his life…

  He thought about that for a minute and realized he wanted, needed, her to understand him. Unable to help himself, he let his fingers dance across her abs and felt her muscles quiver. “I told you I wasn’t coming back because I didn’t want you to wait for me.”

  “I know. You’ve said.” She tried to roll away, but his arm tightened on her again, holding her still.

  “You know that if I’d stayed,” he said, “I’d have kept screwing up my life. I needed to get out of Sunshine, Holly. I needed to become a part of something and learn some discipline.”

  “I understood that. You had to go.”

  He grimaced at that, which luckily she didn’t see.

  She loosened her grip on his forearms and gentled her touch, stroking his skin, her words making him feel like an even bigger asshole. “Seems like maybe you got more than you bargained for,” she said quietly.

  He let out a low sound of agreement, then spoke the sentiment he’d held on to for too long. “I just couldn’t have lived with myself, if I’d stayed and dragged you down with me.”

  There was a beat of silence. Then she fought to free herself and he let her this time. She rolled over to face him and he expected…hell, he wasn’t sure what he expected. Appreciation for what he’d done for her, maybe? Certainly a softening toward him. Warmth and affection. Maybe even more…

  Instead her eyes were flashing the heat of anger and he’d have sworn sparks were shooting out of her scalp. “Look at you,” she said, voice tight. “Making decisions for me. Guess that doesn’t make you any different than any other man I’ve ever had in my life, does it?” She shifted back away from him, accidentally kneeing him in the groin.

  Or maybe not so accidentally.

  “And you shouldn’t have worried,” she said while he sucked in a careful breath. “Because in case you hadn’t noticed, I managed to drag myself down all on my own just fine.”

  “Holly—”

  “I’m tired,” she said flatly, turning away from him now, giving him her back and a very cold shoulder. “I’m going to sleep.”

  He tightened his mouth to keep it from running away with his good sense. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” She sat up and replaced the jacket barrier, making a point of patting it into place before plopping back down.

  They both settled and went still. The only sound was their breathing, which seemed far too loud. Long moments went by during which he counted the soft flakes falling out of the sky and lightly fluttering down just outside the opened doorway.

  “Adam?” she whispered after a long moment.

  He sighed. He didn’t want questions or a visit down memory lane. He wanted solitude and decompression. That’s what he’d always wanted. Except…Except in this moment, he didn’t know what he wanted. She confused the shit out of him, twisting him up, scrambling his brain. He had no idea why he even tried to control his feelings around her. Habit, he decided. He always maintained control, in every aspect of his life. It’s what had gotten him through.

  His therapist had warned him that part of the process was learning to let go of that control. Easier said than done.

  Not buying his possum act, Holly rolled over to face him, giving him a little jostle. “Adam.” She was peering at him in the dark, trying to see him.

  Into him.

  Usually just having her look at him the way that she did made every bad thing in his life dissolve into nothing. Now it made him unsettled. They were in far too close proximity for his walls to come tumbling down tonight.

  Retreat…

  Too bad there was nowhere to retreat to. Which meant he had no choice but to man up. “Yeah?”

  She came up on an elbow and he braced himself. She wanted to understand him, the changes in him. He got that. But she couldn’t. She could never understand the places he’d been, the darkness he’d lived.

  Her expression held uncertainty.

  He should reach out to her, touch her, assure her. But he didn’t trust himself to do that, knowing all too well how easily he could lose himself in the physical attraction between them. He could bury himself deep inside her, finding a desperately needed release. But he would never allow himself to use her that way.

  “I have a question.”

  Great. “Okay.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Why did you really let me come with you today?”

  Ten

  Holly held her breath for Adam’s answer. She wasn’t even sure he would answer. She didn’t know about him, but being this close was bringing back memories of other times. Better times. Times when they’d gone camping and been alone. But never with a barrier between them.

  He spoke, his voice low and a little husky, as if he were filled with the same memories as she. “You weren’t going to ever forgive me if I left you back in Sunshine.”

  “And you care why?”

  Another pause. “I owe your father,” he said carefully. “And I owe you, too.”

  Holly tried to read his face. Carefully blank. He was good at that. Hell, who was she kidding, he was the master at that. She knew he’d learned long ago that nothing good came of sharing his deepest, innermost thoughts, and that alone was enough to break her heart. There’d been a time where she would have given up her soul in order to allow his to be shared, but she’d long ago stopped believing she could get him to believe in her, in them, enough to let her in.

  Why that still hurt, she had no idea. “You owe me nothing,” she said. “And my dad—”

  “Believed in me when few others did,” he cut in. “He gave me a job when I was seventeen. And then after that drag-racing wreck, he helped me pay for an attorney.”

  “The charges didn’t stick,” she started, but he shook his head

  “They’d stuck in my head,” he said very softly.

  She knew this. She knew all too well how much guilt and horror and regret he’d carried. But she also knew that even if that cop hadn’t died, Adam had never intended to be with her forever. The accident might have been the catalyst for him to leave, but he’d have left her regardless. “Adam—”

  “Go to sleep, Holly. Tomorrow we’ll find your dad.”

  Hoping that was true, she closed her eyes…an