Rescue Me

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.”
    S omething 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