Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(133)

“Call it purging.” Adam blew out a breath. “This kid—anyone else hear what he told you?”

My mind reeled. For some reason, Randy’s pathetic pouty face kept ghosting through, clouding things. “I’m not sure. Maybe? Several of my team tried to free me when the patient grabbed me.”

“He grabbed you?”

I nodded, startled by his strong reaction. “Just my scrub top.”

He tugged my arm, straightening it. “Fucker hurt you?”

“No.” I withdrew my arm from his intense scrutiny. “I’m fine.”

Adam frowned. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Completely unharmed. But you’ll have to ask that Detective Holihan if anyone else heard what the kid said. I think he questioned the rest of my trauma team. I honestly don’t know.”

“Okay, I’ll ask him.” Adam thumbed the card with the detective’s name and number on it, frowning when his phone chimed. “What the…?” Confusion rippled his face. “It’s my mom.”

I could relate to his concern, considering it was almost one thirty in the morning. Within moments he turned white as a sheet.

“What?” he breathed out, trying to keep his voice from faltering. “Oh God.” He covered his eyes. His mother was crying so hard, I could hear her echoing out of his cell.

I pulled out a chair, needing him to sit down before he fell. Adam was tall and solid but the bits I was picking out of his side of the conversation were enough to buckle his knees.

Someone had been seriously hurt.

Jason.

Jason? Oh, his youngest brother.

He alive? Yes, he’s alive. Oh, thank God.

My heart squeezed so hard, hearing him comfort his mom as best he could. She was nearly hysterical; he kept repeating “Mom” and “slow down,” encouraging her to calm and breathe.

I pulled out the chair next to him and put my hands on his knees. Seeing his eyes turn watery, his anguish twisting his normally stoic features, I wanted to cry for him.

“My brother stepped on an I.E.D.,” he said after he ended his call, his voice choked on the last word.

“He’s alive?”

Adam nodded, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eyes, trying not to show me his tears. “His C.O. just called my parents. He’s being air lifted to a hospital in Germany. It’s not… they said he’s in bad shape.”

“Oh my God, Adam.” I was in his arms within the next breath, holding him just as tightly. His fingers clenched into my skin. He buried his face into my neck.

I knew his pain intimately.

God, how I knew.

It was crushing and cruel and utterly devastating.

But his heartache was my heartache.

And my heartache was his.

His shoulders shook beneath my hands.

A tear trickled down my neck, and then another.

My own eyes swam in their unshed pain. Knowing this solid, formidable man had been reduced to tears was killing me.

I held him tighter, hoping my arms would be strong enough to hold him together.

Love wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t skin smacking and orgasms and superficial shit. And maybe it wasn’t about fears unfounded either.

It was a private moment in an empty conference room when you were gutted and completely vulnerable, only to find strength willed to you through another beating heart.





ADAM PICKED THE business card up off the conference table after taking a series of steadying breaths. He swiped his face several times, trying to hide the evidence. “I need to find this Holihan guy, talk to him before they blow a tri-state investigation.”

“Adam—”

“None of my leads are telling me that there was a hit put out, so somebody f*cked up. I’ve got to figure this out. None of the Mancuso family has ever been convicted of murder, but nothing surprises me anymore.”

He was numb, wooden, and growing distant quickly.

“Hey.” I drifted my fingers over his cheek, combing them from the shadow of his sideburn back through his hair. His face was still damp. “It’s okay.”

He sniffed and tapped my thigh. “Hop up.”

“No.”

“Erin—”

“No.”

He nudged but I refused.

“I don’t have any rope handy, but we do have four-point restraints for combative patients. Don’t make me use them.” I knew he was suppressing his anger and frustration. His muscles were coiled tightly, straining all the way up to the stretched tendons in his neck. Had he really wanted me off his lap, he could have easily stood and deposited me onto the floor. “Look at me. Just relax a minute.”

Adam’s lips twisted at my lame threat but he slowly eased beneath me. “My mom’s a mess,” he finally said on an unsteady breath. “No parent wants to bury their kids.”

“Hey, no. Don’t think like that. We’ll go to Germany. I can book flights right now. You have a current passport? We can use the computer by the lounge.”

Adam clamped a hand on my thigh let out a deep exhale. “Hold up. Jason’s commander said he’d contact my parents as soon as Jay arrives at the hospital in Germany. Until then, we’re supposed to sit tight.”

“But—” My mind was already packed and ready to go. I needed to see vitals and CT scans and X-rays.