Rachel Gibson - Rescue Me

“Why?” She’d seen the air mattress and double sleeping bag when he’d shown her around the apartment. “Does it do something extra special that other mattresses don’t?”

“It will once I get you on it.”

“Are we gonna spoon nekkid?”

He nodded. “Nuts to butts.”

Her soft laugh turned into a yawn. “You’re so romantic.”

Something was wrong. Sadie sensed it before her lids fluttered open. For several disorienting seconds, she couldn’t remember where she was. She heard a thump and looked about the dark room. She was at Vince’s. In his sleeping bag on an air mattress. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but it was full dark now. She turned her head and looked across at the empty pillow next to her.

“Roger that!”

Sadie rose and grabbed Vince’s brown T-shirt off the floor. Another thud and she threaded her arms through the shirt and moved toward the hall. It sounded like he was fighting an intruder.

“Fuck it!”

“Vince!” She had a fleeting thought of grabbing something to help, but she knew there was nothing.

“Kill all those goat-herding fuckers!”

Light from the kitchen stove worked its way into the hall. One darker shadow moved within variegated light. “Vince?”

“Oh God.” He panted hard, like he’d been running for ten miles in the blazing heat. “Oh fuck! . . . Wilson.” He moved a few steps back. “Hang on, buddy . . . Shit. I’ll fix you up.”

Wilson? Who was Wilson?

He knelt; the dim light shone on his naked thigh and waist. Tension made the air thick. “Don’t do this, Pete.”

“Vince?”

His breathing got worse. More rapid. He coughed and gasped. Light caught on his hard arm, the veins bulging like he was lifting weights. He was huge, crouching in the narrow hall. “Stay with me.”

“Vince!” She didn’t touch him. Didn’t go any closer. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid for him. Afraid he was going to hyperventilate or hurt himself. “Are you okay?” she asked, although he clearly wasn’t.

He jerked his head up and she thought he might have heard her. “The helo’s coming. Hang on.”

She turned on the bedroom light and knelt on one knee in the doorway. “Vince!” His wide eyes stared into hers, staring at something that only he could see. Her heart broke for him. Cracked all apart. She didn’t mean for it to happen. She had no control.

He jerked his head up and back like he was watching something in the sky. His mouth opened as he pulled air into his lungs, and his hands moved in front of his chest like he was grabbing at some invisible something.

He was usually big and powerful and in total control of everything around him. “Vince!” she yelled.

He blinked and turned his unseeing gaze toward her. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

His mouth snapped shut and his nostrils flared as he breathed through his nose. His brows lowered and he looked around him. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Where am I?”

Her heart heaved and cracked a little more. “In your apartment.”

The sound of his heavy breathing filled the hall and he returned his wide gaze to hers. “Sadie?”

“Yeah.” It felt like she was falling through the cracks in her heart. Right there in the hall of his unfurnished apartment. On the worst possible day of her life. She tried hard. Tried hard not to fall in love with Vince Haven, the most unavailable man on the planet, but she did.

“Jesus.”

Yeah. Jesus. She moved toward him and placed her hand on his shoulder. His skin was hot and dry. “Can I get you something?”

“No.” He swallowed hard and leaned his back against the wall behind him.

She rose anyway and moved through the living room to the small kitchen. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. She tried hard not to cry for him and for her, but her tears slid down her cheeks and she wiped them away on the hem of Vince’s T-shirt. When she returned, he still sat with his back against the wall, his forearms resting on his bent knees. His gaze staring up at the ceiling.

“Here.” She knelt beside him and unscrewed the bottle cap.

He reached for the water but his hand shook and he made a fist instead.

“Are you going to be okay?”

He licked his dry lips. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t fine. “Does that happen often?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

He obviously wasn’t up to talking about it. She kissed his hot, dry shoulder. “I love the way you smell,” she said. He didn’t say anything and she sat next to him and wrapped her arm around his bare waist. She loved him and it scared the hell out of her. “Who’s Wilson?”

He looked down at her, his brows drawn. “Where did you hear that name?”

“You called it out.”

He turned his gaze away. “Pete Wilson. He’s dead.”

“Was he a buddy?” She grabbed his fist and forced the plastic bottle into his hand.

“Yeah.” Water leaked out the corners of his mouth as he took several big gulps. “He was the finest officer I ever met.” He wiped the water away with the back of his hand. “The best man I’ve ever known.”

“How’d he die?”

“Killed in the Hindu Kush Mountains in central Afghanistan.”

Anger rolled off him and tension turned his muscles even harder. “What can I do to help you?” she asked. He’d been so good to her the past week. Just when she’d needed him, he’d been there. Driving her and walking beside her with his hand on the small of her back. Talking to her and sometimes not saying anything at all. Rescuing her even when she didn’t ask. Working his way into her heart when that was the last place he wanted to be.

“I don’t need help.” He stood, and her hand slid down his bare leg. “I’m not a little girl.”

She stood up and looked into his green gaze. “Neither am I, Vince.” Right before her eyes she watched him draw inward. She didn’t know where he went, other than he was gone. “Vince.” His name caught in her chest, clogged with emotion, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She pressed herself against his hard, hot chest and rambled, “I’m sorry. It must be horrible. I wish there was something I could do.”

“Why?”

“Because you helped me when I needed you. Because I’m not lonely when you’re around. Because you rescue me even when I don’t ask you to.” She choked back her tears, and opened her mouth to tell him that he was big and strong and wonderful. That he was the best man she’d ever known. Instead something raw and new and really horrible tumbled out, “Because I love you.”

Awkward silence stretched between them until he finally said, “Thank you.”

Oh God. Had he just thanked her?

“Let’s get you home.”

His hands stayed at his sides, but his words felt like a physical push. She’d just told him she loved him and he reacted with a thank-you and an offer for a ride home.

“It’s late.”

She dressed quickly in her black dress and shoved her feet into her cowboy boots. Neither spoke much as she grabbed her hat and clutch purse on the way out the door. An uncomfortable silence filled the cab of the truck as Vince drove toward the JH. An uncomfortable silence that had never existed before. Not even the first time she’d seen him standing by the side of the road, the hood of his truck raised.

She didn’t ask if he would call or text. She didn’t ask when she would see him again. No more declarations of love. She had more dignity than that when the last thing he wanted was her love. He’d always been clear about that, and as she watched the taillights of his truck fade, she knew it was over.

What had she expected? He’d been upfront with what he wanted. It was what she’d wanted too, but somewhere within the past few weeks she’d started to have feelings for him. Started to feel something more than just lust.

She’d buried her father, fallen in love, and been dumped all in the same day.

The cool, humid wind brushed Vince’s knuckles and cheeks and ears. The bad dog pipes of his Harley rumbled the air on Morning Glory Drive in Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. The back of Conner’s helmet hit Vince’s chin for about the tenth time as the two of them slowly rode up and down the street in front of Conner’s house. They wore matching leather bomber jackets, but Conner’s was tighter on him than the last time the two had driven up and down the street.

It had been five months since he’d left Washington. Five months that somehow seemed like years.

The bike slowed as they rolled toward the split-level house with the rental truck in the driveway.

“One more time, Uncle Vince!” Conner hollered over the reverberations.

“You got it.” He flipped a U and headed back down the tree-lined street. Vince lost count of how many times they rode up and down the street. When he did finally pull into the drive behind the truck, Conner protested.

“I don’t wanna stop.”

He shut off the bike and helped his nephew to the ground. “Next time I’m in town, we’ll have to get you a new jacket.” He hooked the kickstand with the heel of his boot and lowered it. “Maybe your mom will let us ride to the park.” Autumn hated the Harley, but Conner loved it so much she’d always let them ride in front of the house. No faster than fifteen miles an hour.

Conner reached for the strap beneath his chin. “Maybe I can drive.”

“When your feet touch the ground, we’ll talk about it.” He rose off the seat of the bike and swung his leg over. “Don’t tell your mom.”

“Or Dad.”

“What? Your dad doesn’t like bikes?” Figured.

Conner shrugged and handed Vince the helmet. “I don’t know. He doesn’t got one.”

That’s because the guy was a pussy. “Go tell your mom I’m leaving.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

Vince set the helmet on the seat. “I don’t want to go.” He knelt on one knee. “I’ll miss you.” The seams of his jacket popped as he hugged Conner. God, he smelled the same. Like the laundry detergent his mom used and like little kid.