Nobody's Hero (47 page)

Megan reached out to squeeze her mother’s
hand. “Momma, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were put in a
horrific situation where you did what you had to just to
survive.”

“Well, the grand jury did rule self-defense
and didn’t choose to take it to trial.”

Adam wasn’t sure what was going on, but was
pretty sure they were talking about that night that had sent him
running. But what they were saying didn’t mesh with the flashbacks
he’d had. “Mom, are you saying that you took a baseball bat to Dad
that night?”

She crinkled her forehead. “Bat? No, he used
the bat on me. That’s what put me in a chair.”

Something wasn’t right. “But I remember
standing over him with a bloody baseball bat in my hand. He was
lying in a pool of blood. His head was bashed in.”

“No, Adam. After he paralyzed me, I shot him.
That’s where all the blood came from, the head wound. You just
picked up the bat that had been lying in his blood when you came
into the room. Dear Lord, surely you haven’t thought all this time
that you’d…”

Adam shook his head. “Actually, I’d blocked
it out until recently.” But the images he’d seen had made him so
sure that he’d done it. How could he have gotten it so wrong in his
head?

“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry you thought that,
even for a second. You never could have hurt a fly. You always
tried to protect me, but you don’t have a malicious bone in your
body. No matter what he would do, you usually just tried to put
distance between the two of you, rather than fight back. Even
earlier that day, when he started a fight at the Thanksgiving
table, you just left the house to cool off.”

Emotional avoidance. Somewhere along the
line, Adam realized he’d never stopped avoiding emotional
confrontations, hell, emotions period. Until Karla. But he’d still
tried to avoid admitting he loved her, or anyone else he cared
about. Avoidance and lack of commitment made it easier when the
time came to run. No sticky attachments.

Shit
. He needed to get back to Karla,
to tell her he loved her, to ask her to forgive him for hurting
her. But he couldn’t run from dealing with his mother and her needs
at the moment either. At least she had two good kids to look after
her.

“Tell me about your life, Adam. Not a day
went by that I didn’t wonder what you were doing, where you were,
if you were okay.”

He heard the catch in her voice and wished
he’d tried harder to find her. Hell, if not for Karla, he might
never have found her until it was too late.

Adam described his first year on the run,
eventually being taken in by some people who ran a shelter and
helped him with GED classes. If not for them, he might never have
been accepted into the Marine Corps.

“I came back to Minneapolis to check on you
once, soon after I finished boot camp at Parris Island. Some other
family lived in our house. You’d moved on.”

“I had to get away. Too many nightmares.
Moved to Chicago. That’s where I met Ryan, my second husband. He
rescued me.”

“I met my wife during that visit.”

“I didn’t realize you were married. I thought
Karla…”

“No, we aren’t. My wife Joni died nine years
ago this month.”

“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry.” She reached toward
him.

“We had twenty years together, including all
my deployments.”

“Tell me about Karla. She seemed like someone
you’d want to have on your side rather than against you.”

Adam grinned. Truer words had not been
spoken. “Well, ma’am, I met her right after Joni died. She’d run
away from home and I helped get her back home to her parents. She
sort of latched onto me and we struck up a correspondence afterward
that lasted until this past summer when she showed up at my cl…my
house in Denver.” He didn’t need to go into what he did for a
living now. Better to stick to the more “vanilla” version of his
last thirty-four years.

“I could tell she cares a lot about you.”
There was a twinkle in his mother’s eyes.

“Yes, she does. I care about her, too.”

His mother smiled, but didn’t say anything
more. Then his newfound siblings shared a bit about their lives.
Sounded like his mother had been well-loved and cherished by Ryan
Gallagher, her second husband, which made Adam feel better about
not being around to take care of her.

His mother stifled a yawn and he glanced at
his watch to see that it was nearly midnight. “Look, I think I’d
better shove off, but I’d like to come back again, talk some more,
if that’s okay.”

“Of course, Adam. Anytime. Consider this your
home, too.”

A home. He’d had a home with Joni, albeit in
base housing. With Karla, he’d like to have a place they could call
their own, without worrying about Marc, Damián, or anyone else
stopping by unexpectedly all the time. He loved them like family,
but he had plans for Karla that didn’t need an audience. A home
without a sex club on the lower level. Maybe just a private
playroom or dungeon tucked away in some out of the way room for
their private enjoyment.

Don’t be thinking about dungeons in front of
your mother, jarhead.

Ignoring the Joni voice, he stood and closed
the gap to his mother and reached down to hug her.

“I love you, Adam. I never stopped. Not for a
single moment.”

Adam closed his eyes and held on tighter,
morphing back to the little boy who’d never quite been able to
protect his mother as well as he should have. “Love you,
too…Momma.”

After his mother loosened her hold on him, he
stood and hugged Megan, then shook Patrick’s hand, his brother
having relaxed his guard a little bit. As he turned toward the
door, Adam’s gaze fell on the portraits on the piano and he was
drawn to them like steel to a magnet. He remembered how the five
men in their Marine uniforms had enthralled him as a boy. Four
generations of Montagues—plus his father. He’d wanted nothing more
than to be one of them.

The first photo was of his father, Staff
Sergeant Virgil Griffin. Odd that his mother kept the photo here.
Maybe it was a reminder of some sort. After serving in the Corps
himself, Adam had come to understand the man better, although he’d
never forgiven him. He’d been a casualty of Vietnam, raging at life
and everyone around him. Not an excuse, but Adam remembered how
Damián had been during those first months after he’d come to live
with him.

Right after he’d lost his foot, Damián tended
to turn his rage inward, wanting nothing more than to end his
nightmare, his torment, his life. Between the therapists at the VA
center in Denver and Adam’s forcing him to deal with it by talking
about it, they’d managed to get to where Damián had regained some
control over his life again.

Sado-masochistic scenes at the club seemed to
push him to gaining better and better control. He’d never harmed a
masochist, never scened when he was angry or in the belly of the
beast. But Damián sure had given Adam a scare in San Diego when
he’d come very close to killing Julio in cold blood, not that the
dickwad didn’t deserve killing.

Adam hadn’t wanted Damián’s war trauma to
lead to drinking or uncontrolled violence, a fate like his
father’s. While PTSD would always be there for the man he called
his son, he was managing and coping with it as best he could. Maybe
that’s all Adam could hope for.

He glanced back at the proud young Marine in
his father’s portrait. Sure beat the alternative. Adam realized how
different this boy was from the man Adam had come to hate. He
wished he could replace those images with this one and wondered how
things might have been different if there had been better
treatments for his father’s PTSD.

Adam’s gaze continued down the line of photos
until he reached the one of Captain Johnny Montague, a Marine who
had spent the later Civil War years enforcing the blockade of the
South. Adam had been riveted by the stories of how, long after the
war, he’d rescued Adam’s great-great-grandmother, an innocent
immigrant from Ireland, from some horrible fate his mother only
hinted at. Adam thought it must have had something to do with sex,
given the face his mother had made when she told the story.
Intriguing now, but he hadn’t wanted to know more when he was a kid
or a teen.

Adam turned to her. “Do you still own the
Montague cabin?”

She smiled up at him. “Yes. Patrick’s been
refurbishing it, but trying to keep its old-fashioned charm.”

“One of my best memories ever was the summer
you, Dad, and I spent there.”

“Dear Lord, Adam, I don’t guess I remember it
as fondly. Your dad had lost another job. We couldn’t pay the rent
and that remote cabin near Deadwood was the only thing between us
and homelessness.”

“All I remember was fishing and hunting with
Dad, cooking out…”

“There wasn’t any electricity in the cabin.
Cooking out was the only option if we wanted to eat. You all
provided the main courses for our table, while I tended a small
garden.” She shook her head. “It was so hard living there.”

Funny how their perceptions of that summer
were so different. For eleven-year-old Adam, it had been a grand
adventure—and one last chance to get closer to his Dad before all
hell broke loose. With money scarce and liquor stores not within
easy reach, his father had actually been pretty decent to him and
his mother. Then he’d gotten another job and they’d moved back to
Minneapolis. Beginning of the end.

Patrick came to stand next to him, having
lost his defensive stance. “I’ve been working on the place as I can
and hiring help as needed for the past year. There’s electricity,
hot and cold running water, indoor facilities, and the whole nine
yards now.”

Adam smiled. “I’d like to see it sometime.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

He still couldn’t believe he had a younger
brother and a younger sister. Looking at Megan, standing next to
their mom with a protective hand on her shoulder, he didn’t know
how he could be much more blessed.

Well, there was still one thing missing from
his life.

Adam said his good-byes, promising to stop by
again before he headed out of town. He made his way back down to
the parking garage and his car. The drive back to Karla’s parents’
house had him so deep in thought, he nearly missed her street. He
had so much to tell her, he didn’t know where to start.

Maybe he’d just needed to start with “I’m
sorry.”

When he let himself back into the darkened
house using the key the Paxtons had told him was in the flower pot
on the porch, he tiptoed upstairs. Dark and silent. He’d have to
wait until the morning to talk with Karla. He got undressed and put
on his USMC sweatshirt and sweatpants, and stretched out on the
rack. But sleep wouldn’t come. The events of the evening played
over and over in his head. He needed to talk with Karla, but she
needed her sleep.

Seeing how she’d looked when he’d arrived
Wednesday and her being so sick yesterday morning renewed his worry
about her health.
Fuck
. Why hadn’t it occurred to him
sooner? A sense of dread came over him that sent his heart racing
and his gut into a tailspin. While he was on leave recovering from
the shrapnel wounds in Afghanistan, Joni had exhibited many of the
same symptoms—loss of appetite, weight loss. He didn’t remember her
vomiting, but he was out of it most of the time on pain killers.
Obviously, she wouldn’t tell him if she had been sick. But at some
point he’d noticed and asked her. She’d told him she’d just been
worried about him. Months later he learned her cancer had
metastasized to the liver.

Sweat broke out on his forehead, cooling
rapidly in the room’s chilly air. He needed to get Karla to a
doctor. Why hadn’t he thought to do that sooner? What if Karla had
something serious, too? Oh, God. He’d only just come to realize how
important she was to him. Surely to God, the universe wouldn’t fuck
the two of them up the way it had him and Joni. No way. But Karla
was young and, until recently, seemed healthy. It had to be
something simple like the flu.

It just had to be.

But his heart continued to beat rapidly as
images of Karla going through what Joni had endured putting him on
edge for the next few hours. Finally, unable to stay away from her
any longer, he tossed the sheet back and crossed the room into the
bathroom. The door to her bedroom was ajar and he opened it
further, thankful the hinges were oiled, and slipped into her
room.

Moonlight came in through the window and his
eyes, already adjusted to the dark, made out her facial features.
Calm, peaceful, sleeping. He expelled the breath he’d been holding
and his body relaxed. She was okay; for now, at least. He glanced
around and saw a chair in the corner and decided he’d take up watch
over her tonight. No sense going back to his rack, because he
wasn’t going to get any sleep this night. He needed to be near
her.

God, how he’d missed her.

Adam missed when she challenged him. He
missed when she surrendered to him sexually. He missed when she
loved him in so many ways. Most of all, he missed that he hadn’t
loved her back.

Well, fuck that shit.
He did love
her.

No need to hide it or run from it. He loved
Karla. He’d loved Joni, too, even if he hadn’t been able to tell
her. But he wouldn’t leave Karla wondering. He’d tell her, just as
soon as she woke up, and every day together for the rest of their
lives. Again and again—and often.

He just hoped she was okay and they would
have many, many years to wake up beside each other.

Karla’s stomach churned with the now familiar
queasiness she’d woken up to for the last week. She dreaded sitting
up, because she knew she’d have to make that mad morning dash to
the toilet and she just wanted to stay burrowed under the blankets.
But the sound of someone breathing brought her eyes open and she
found herself staring across the room into Adam’s intense gaze.