Rescue My Heart Read Online Free PDF

more. She didn’t want to beg. Wouldn’t beg.
    Surely he knew that.
    She’d only ever asked him for one thing. When his circumstances had changed and he’d gone into the military, she’d asked him not to break up with her. Go if he must, but keep her in his heart.
    He hadn’t.
    He’d left without looking back: no letters, no contact, nothing.
    He’d moved on, with shocking ease.
    So she’d moved on as well, with the opposite of ease, foolishly getting sucked into a bad marriage with a bad-for-her man. Just like her parents’ marriage, it had been a sham, a façade, and one hell of a hard-learned lesson. These days Holly no longer ran with scissors or led with her heart.
    Or let a man have power over her.
    But as her father always said,
Reids don’t quit
. “So will you help me?” she asked.
    “Where’s your husband?”
    Not the question she’d expected, not from him. But not all that surprising. She’d kept her private life to herself—or more accurately her
lack
of a private life—out of self-preservation. And in any case, thinking about Derek never failed to make her feel vulnerable and stupid, and like a complete failure. “I’m no longer married,” she said. The rest was on a need-to-know basis, and as far as she was concerned, no one needed to know.
Especially
not Adam.
    He studied her thoughtfully. “So why does everyone here, including your father and brother, think you are?”
    Adam was still tight with her dad, and Grif as well. “I don’t know,” she said. A lie, because she did know. It was pride, of course. Hers. She’d come from a fractured family, had been asked to choose between her parents, but never really getting either of them.
    Then Grif had left as well.
    And then Adam.
    The lesson learned had been clear—any sense of happiness, family, and security was an illusion. Heartbroken, she’d gone back to New York for college, where she’d kept to herself for a year. Then she’d met a man. Her professor. Derek had been romantic and nice and kind. He’d been gentle and…beta—a complete change from all the alphas who had always been in her life. He’d sucked her in with that slow charm and sensitivity. God, how she hated remembering how easy of a mark she’d been. A lonely, scared, vulnerable college girl, looking for love. Derek had dazzled her, completely, and even more so when both her dad and Grif had tried to tell her that she was being played. The three Reids had one thing in common—they were stubborn to the end. So of course they’d battled, and her dad and Grif had pushed Holly hard.
    Holly had pushed back, being young and stupid enough to marry Derek at nineteen, giving him all she had, including her already trampled on heart. She’d settled in for her happily-ever-after, but that hadn’t been the ending she’d gotten. Derek had indeed played her with his quiet, passive-aggressive ways, so completely it had taken her taken several years to realize her dad and Grif had been right about him.
    She hadn’t been the only student in her professor’s life.
    Crushed, embarrassed, and completely ashamed—especially at how long she’d been fooled—she’d never told her dad or Grif that they’d separated. Pride before the fall and all that. For a long time she hadn’t even filed for divorce because she’d never intended to get married again. It had suited her, being free but not available.
    She could only assume Derek enjoyed the pretense of being married as well, because he hadn’t made a move to divorce her, either.
    But then a year ago she’d come back to Sunshine for her dad. And in doing so, she had decided to learn to live in the moment and not just pretend everything was okay like her mom had always done. She wanted to take full control of her own life, and be happy. Her way. So she’d filed for that long-overdue divorce, certain that after all this time Derek would agree to it.
    He hadn’t.
    She’d been forced to go to court, which had been a very