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The wide gate that marked the northernmost boundary of El Sueño.
Jake slowed the car, then let it roll to a stop.
He’d forgotten what it was like, seeing that huge wooden gate, the weathered cedar sign that spelled out El Sueño—The Dream—in big bronze letters.
It was all the same, except for the fact that the gate stood open.
His sisters’ idea, he was certain, a sweet way Lissa, Em and Jaimie had thought of to welcome him and remind him that this was his home. They’d be hurt when they realized home was the last place he wanted to be but he didn’t see any way around it.
He had to keep moving.
He stepped hard on the gas and drove through the open gate, a rooster tail of Texas dust pluming out behind him.
He wouldn’t even have come this weekend, except he’d run out of excuses.
“Yeah. Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Jake had replied, and Caleb had said, very calmly, fine, good plan, and if he decided that what he couldn’t do was come home for a visit then, by God, he and Travis would have no choice but to fly to D.C., hog-tie him and drag his sorry ass home.
For all he knew, they would have.
Jake had thought it over and decided it was time to show his face—and wasn’t that one hell of an expression to use, he thought grimly.
It wouldn’t come as a surprise to his family. They’d all been at the hospital, waiting, when the transport plane first brought him back to the States. His sisters, his brothers, even the General, reminding everybody he was John Hamilton Wilde, General John Hamilton Wilde, United States Army, and he damned well wanted a private room for his wounded son and the attention of the best surgeons at Walter Reed.
Jake had been too out of it to argue but as the days and weeks crawled by, as he came off the painkillers and his head began to function again, he’d laid down the law.
No more special treatment.
And no more family visits.
There was no point, no reason, no way he wanted to watch Em and Lissa and Jaimie trying to be brave, his brothers pretending he’d be back to himself in no time, his father being, well, his father.
That was one of the reasons he’d taken so long to come home, even for a visit.
“You’re an idiot,” Travis had growled.
Maybe.
But he didn’t want to be fussed over, poked at, stroked and soothed and told nothing had changed, because everything had. His face. His sense of self.
Was he even a man anymore?
It was a damn good question.
A better one was, How did you dance between the reality that everything was normal and the brutal knowledge that it wasn’t?
Forget that for now.
Tonight, his job was to put on a good show. Smile, as long as he didn’t terrify anybody. Talk, even though he didn’t have anything to say civilians would want to hear.
Behave as if time had not passed.
He’d figured coming to the ranch by himself would give him the chance to acclimate. Immerse himself in familiar things. Smell the clean Texas air and listen to the coyotes making their beautiful music in the night.
All of that without an unwanted rush of emotion engulfing him in a place like an airport.
Every solider he knew said the same thing.
Coming home was tough.
