Rescue My Heart Read online

  years now, he’d not felt much, including hunger. He’d eaten in order to fuel his body, nothing more. But lately he’d been hungry. Famished, even. He found a big, fat turkey club sandwich. Score.

  “Shoulder okay?”

  Adam nodded as he dug into the sandwich. When he looked up, Dell was there, too, exchanging a long look with Brady. “What?”

  “You’re eating my sandwich,” Dell said.

  “Yeah.” Adam took another huge bite. “It’s good, too.”

  Normally Dell would call him an asshole, but he didn’t. This was because both Dell and Brady had been treating him with kid gloves ever since he’d gotten back from Fallen Lakes—which, FYI, he hated. Hated.

  “Poker night,” Dell said. “My place.”

  They played bimonthly with Lilah and Cruz, her partner at the kennels. Poker night was taken very seriously. Adam had won big the past three times they’d all played, so he knew everyone would be out for his blood tonight. Normally this wasn’t a problem. He was good at being unreadable. Few could outbluff him. It was a talent that had served him well through his teenage crime spree, and then the military. And now at kicking some poker ass.

  But he wasn’t in the mood to play. He shrugged, signaling maybe he’d be there, maybe not. And since Dell wasn’t going to stop him, he ate more of the sandwich.

  Dell glanced at it longingly but didn’t say a word.

  “What does that mean?” Brady asked Adam. “That shrug. You’re coming, right?”

  “Maybe. I’m tired.”

  Brady and Dell exchanged another look.

  “What now?”

  “You tell us what,” Dell said, eyeing the sandwich, and if Adam wasn’t mistaken, his brother’s mouth was watering.

  Adam took another big bite and shook his head. “Not a clue.”

  “Okay, can we stop with the bullshit?” Brady asked. “You went on a rescue.”

  Ah, so the kid-glove treatment was from the rescue out at Bear Lake, not related to Holly at all. “Yeah,” he said. “I went on two rescues this week actually. So what? I do it every week.”

  Of course it wasn’t every week that he also banged his co-rescuer on a mountaintop, but that was best kept to himself.

  Twinkles eyed Adam’s food and whined. Brady scooped the little guy up and cuddled him. Brady, the big badass, cuddling a damn dog. It’d be funny, if Adam could find the funny in anything right now.

  “Here’s the thing,” Brady said. “You don’t go on rescues.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Except Adam knew exactly what he was talking about because it was true. Adam hadn’t been on a rescue, as in hands-on, since he’d gotten home from overseas, and they all knew it. How he’d actually thought this was some kind of secret, he had no clue. He ate some more of Dell’s sandwich, which helped ease his pain in a big way. “Jade makes excellent sandwiches.”

  Dell sighed as Adam finished it. “How do you know that Jade made it?”

  “Cuz you barely know where the kitchen is, much less how to use it.” Adam opened a bottle of water and drank deeply. When the last drop was gone, he swiped his mouth and studied his two brothers, who were in turn studying him like a bug on a slide. “Jesus. You two need a life.”

  “Actually,” Dell said slowly, as if speaking to the village idiot, “we have lives. We’ve been thinking that you need a life, but you appear to be getting one. Want to talk about it?”

  Still with the fucking kid gloves. Adam shook his head and slid him a look, because, really, since when did they talk about feelings? Without a word he turned back to the refrigerator and eyed a plate with three chocolate cupcakes on it. Nice. He pulled it out and went to work on the first cupcake.

  “Those are mine, too,” Dell said.

  Adam finished the first cupcake in two bites and when Dell didn’t stop him, he went for another one. “Wouldn’t want to upset the crazy person,” Adam said. “Best to let him have the cupcakes.”

  Dell sighed again.

  Adam licked the last of the chocolate off his fingers and handed over the empty plate before heading for the door.

  “I think he’s fine,” Brady said to Dell.

  “Could’ve told me that before I let him eat all my fucking food,” Dell muttered.

  Adam didn’t go to poker.

  Instead, he crawled into bed and slept like the living dead and woke sometime near dawn, just before whoever was coming up the loft steps got to his front door. The urge to reach for a weapon and point it at the intruder was still as strong as it had been two years ago but he no longer acted on it.

  Brady let himself in and hit the light. “Don’t shoot.”

  Adam shook his head and flopped back to the bed. “You’re supposed to say that before you come in.”

  Brady laughed softly. “Trigger finger still twitchy, huh?”

  Brady would know the feeling. He’d been army, Special Forces.

  Adam closed his eyes.

  “Ignoring me,” Brady said. “Good plan.” He dropped onto the bed, sprawling out on his back next to Adam. Tucking his hands behind his head, he crossed his feet, and studied the ceiling. “You’re going to have to get a duster up there, man,” he said idly, staring at the dust bunnies in the rafters. “Women don’t want to look at that shit hanging down on them while they’re concentrating.”

  “Your women have to concentrate?”

  Brady grinned. As his wife, Lilah was the only woman in Brady’s life now. She’d grown up with Adam and Dell, and Adam loved her like a sister—he absolutely did not want to think about what Lilah did to put that particular smile on Brady’s face.

  “Lilah has no complaints,” Brady said.

  Adam grimaced. “Why are you in my bed, then, if you’ve got Lilah in yours?”

  “She’s got a duck emergency.”

  “She finally decide to cook Abigail?” Adam asked, referring to the duck that Lilah watched at her kennels. Abigail was a menace, and half the town had been threatening to cook her for years, but Lilah loved that thing. Lilah loved everything. Even the idiot currently lying in his bed.

  Brady looked pained. “Do yourself a favor and don’t let Lilah hear you talk about cooking Abigail.”

  Adam just looked at him and Brady sighed. “Look, I know something happened to you when you went after Donald with Holly. What was it?”

  If he let himself, Adam could still smell the caves. Smell his failure. Turning his head, he eyed the dust bunnies in the rafters.

  “Okay, tell me this,” Brady said. “Is something wrong, or are you feeling sorry for yourself for some reason?”

  “I’m good.”

  Brady went still for a long beat. “Shit.”

  Adam nearly smiled. “I’m good” was code for “I’m not going to talk about it.” It had been evoked years and years ago, when they’d been punk-ass kids. Adam had gone out and done something stupid. Shock. He’d had a run-in with a guy several years older than him, and Adam had actually gotten the best of the asshole. Said asshole had vowed revenge, and he’d gotten it a week later, when he and four of his friends had jumped Adam and beaten the shit out of him.

  He probably should have gone to the hospital, but they’d been in a foster home, the best foster home Adam and Dell had ever landed in, run by a guy named Sol Anders. Sol had been a good man, the best any of the three boys had ever known, and they hadn’t wanted to risk getting sent away.

  So Adam had invoked the “I’m good” code. They’d managed to hide his injuries, and he’d recovered. Ever since, if any of them needed to be left alone, they said, “I’m good,” and that was that.

  But Brady was lying there looking like he’d just swallowed a bitter pill, though he held his tongue as he rose from the bed. “Whatever. I’ll stop asking if you’re okay, but you’re on your own with Dell. You know he’s as bad as a chick.”

  This was true.

  Milo was on his own bed at the foot of Adam’s, and Brady crouched in front of him. The yellow Lab ro