Page 15 of A Hero Comes Home

The Beach Boys launched into “Good Vibrations,” countered by “Shagging, USA” by The Shakers.

Oh, yeah!

Forever is a long, long time . . .

Jake stared at the cell phone in his hand before laying it down on the bedside table. He’d just ended his awkward call to Sally and wondered, sadly, how they’d managed to land in this rocky place. Their marriage had been on shaky ground before he went MIA, too many tours, too many broken promises, and now . . . ?

Could it even be salvaged, especially with all the problems of his “resurrection” thrown in?

Would he really be welcome back in Bell Cove? By Sally, who’d made a new life for herself? By his kids who didn’t even know him anymore? By townsfolk who revered a dead hero, not a live nonhero?

And how about the new boyfriend?

How had the love that had bloomed almost instantly between him and Sally nine years ago gone so far off course?

Lieutenant Jacob Dawson and five of his buddies had just come from a funeral for a fallen comrade when they sidetracked through Central Park on the way back to their hotel. The guys would have much preferred a bar with cold beers on tap in this heat and were griping about wanting to get out of their uniforms and into civvies.

Jake had heard that The Shakers, a North Carolina band, were playing in a beach music–themed concert. Being from the Outer Banks, where The Shakers were well-known and where Shag dance music was still popular, he’d convinced his friends to make the detour.

But then he saw her.

She was average height, about five-five, but small boned, making her look kind of petite. But maybe it was the sundress she wore, held up by thin spaghetti straps that gave a guy ideas. It was peach-colored, like her skin, with big splotchy ivory flowers. Her hair, brown with gold highlights, picked up by the sun, was long and luxuriously thick, but held off her face into a high ponytail. Freckles, which were oddly attractive, dotted her nose and cheeks and upper arms. The freckles, too, gave him ideas. Can anyone say, connect the dots? Like with a marker? Or a tongue? And, hey, where else does she have freckles?

This was crazy. He shook his head to clear it. There was nothing outstanding about this girl. He’d seen and dated ones much prettier. In fact, normally he would be more attracted to her friend, the taller blonde wearing a red figure-hugging sundress.

But, no, it was the one with the caramel eyes who drew him. He couldn’t stop staring.

She noticed his staring. And stared back at him, her head tilted in question.

His heart skipped a beat, and then began pounding. Ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom.

She’s the one, a voice in his head said.

The one what? he answered.

But he knew. The men in his family were reputed to fall hard and instantly for their “one true love.” Yeah, hokey as that was, it was a tradition they all believed in, those who had fallen, that was. He’d always jeered at the notion. Until now.

This could not be happening to him. Not at this time. He was only twenty-three years old. A recent college grad, two years into his military duty, he’d recently joined the elite Delta Force unit.

Without thinking, he smiled at her.

She blinked several times, then smiled back at him.

And he fell, “hook, line, and sinker,” as his dad, a commercial fisherman, was wont to say, into a deep, deep, forever love.

Or so he’d thought for many years, Jake mused now in his hospital room. Until the arguments with his wife kept him away from home more than necessary, until a sadistic Taliban operative taught him that maybe she’d been right, maybe he was not worthy of love.

Call me maybe . . . or not . . .

For the next week, every evening Outer Banks time, Jake made phone calls home, which he loathed, but looked forward to with a passion that scared him. He didn’t want to be that needy. Neediness made him weak, even weaker than he already was.

And, despite the option being open to him, he passed on FaceTiming calls. He wasn’t ready to show his sorry self to anyone, not even his family. He didn’t want to scare anyone, especially his young boys.

The first call to his father was the hardest. Their relationship had been broken for a while after he’d refused to go into the commercial fishing business with him after college, but they’d put that behind them in recent years, or so he’d hoped. After that, they’d been awkward with each other, always nervous of saying the wrong things. Like now.

“Jacob? Is it really you?”

“Yep. It’s me, Pop. How’s the fishing?” That’s certainly a safe question. Totally irrelevant but what the hell!