About twenty minutes later, I found my brother and some of his men checking out some steers on the northern quadrant.

“Hey, Tal,” Jonah said when I dismounted. “What brings you up here?”

“I suppose you talked to Ryan.”

Jonah cleared his throat. “I have. Let’s walk a minute.” My brother led me away from his men. “So Jade’s back.”

“Yes, she’s staying in the hotel in town.”

“Did you try to get her to come back to the house?”

I nodded. “Marj did too. She won’t budge.”

“Do you blame her?”

I shook my head. I didn’t blame her. I’d fucked this up all by myself.

“Ryan says you’re in love with her.”

I shuffled my feet in the dirt, scuffing up my ostrich boots. “I am. At least I think I am. I don’t really know what it is to love someone in that way.”

My brother cracked a smile. “You know when you feel it, Tal. If you feel like you’re in love with her, you are.”

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Do you think she feels the same way?”

“I have no idea. I know we have what you might call ‘really good physical chemistry.’”

Joe chuckled. “That’s a good thing.”

“I just don’t know if we can be together.”

“You have to be honest with her, for one.”

“I can’t be, Joe. I can’t be honest with someone else when I have a hard time being honest with myself.”

My brother turned and faced me, his eyes serious. “If you don’t get help, Tal, and deal with everything that’s going on inside you, you’re never going to live the life you were born to live.”

“Are you kidding me? The life I was born to live? So far it’s sucked.”

“It doesn’t suck. You’ve had some tough breaks.”

“Tough breaks? You make it sound like I missed the winning shot in a basketball game. What I went through goes a tough break.”

My brother rubbed his temple. “I’m not trying to belittle what you went through. But you’ve never actually told me about it. Ryan and I can only guess.”

I cleared my throat. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“Our imaginations are pretty good. We pretty much know what went on.”

“What you think went on? Multiply that by a hundred. Then you might get to where I was.”

Jonah shook his head. “Damn, I wish so much it had been me instead of you. I should’ve been there.”

I hated when my brother did this. Ryan too. Acted like they wished it had been them rather than me. That was so stupid. They should be damned happy it hadn’t been them. We’d been through all that before. No need for me to rehash it. I stayed silent.

“You could go see that Dr. Carmichael again. She’s supposed to be really good.”

I cleared my throat. “I thought about it. I was just so… I don’t know.”

“Were you scared?”

“No.” I wasn’t scared. Hell, I wasn’t scared of anything.

Jonah removed his Stetson and wiped his brow. “What’d you come out here for, anyway?”

I swallowed. “I was wondering if maybe you could talk to Jade. Convince her to come back to the house.”

“If Marjorie couldn’t convince her, I doubt I could.”

He was probably right.

“Tell you what. If I can get Jade to come back to the house, would you do something for me?”

I knew better than to make deals with my brother, but right now I was desperate to have Jade back in the house where I could see her.

“What do you have in mind?”

“I get Jade to move back to the ranch house, and you start seeing Dr. Carmichael. Regularly.”

Chapter Eight

Jade

I hastily picked up my cell phone from the carpeted floor where it had landed. I had been breezing through news articles online while I was talking to Marj, and a headline caught my eye. It was a full spread in the Snow Creek Daily. “Local Hero Comes Home.” Complete with Talon Steel in his full dress United States Marine Corps uniform.

Talk about making a splash. A man in uniform—the ultimate man in uniform.

He had been given the Award of Honor.

The fucking Award of Honor.

Why hadn’t anyone told me?

“Jade, are you there?” Marj’s voice came from my phone.

I held it up to my ear. “Yeah, Marj. I’m here. I… I’ll call you back, okay?”

I clicked the phone off in the middle of her good-bye and I started reading.

 

Local resident and Award of Honor recipient Talon Steel returned home to Snow Creek this past week. Talon entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant and quickly gained the rank of first lieutenant and then captain due to his hard work and heroism. He was deployed first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. He received the Award of Honor from the governor of Colorado for making six death-defying forays into a killing zone to save six American troops. Captain Steel was thirty-two years old at the time of his return. He was granted an honorable discharge.

“Captain Steel is a hero to us all and a great example of a model citizen of Colorado,” said the lieutenant governor. “We are proud to have him home to our great state.”

Steel is the son of the late Bradford and Daphne Steel of Steel Acres Ranch outside of Snow Creek and brother to Jonah, Ryan, and Marjorie Steel.

Captain Steel was honored at a ceremony in Snow Creek last Saturday officiated by Mayor Tom Simpson. In front of Steel’s brothers and sister and hundreds of Snow Creek citizens, Mayor Simpson said that the former Marine would serve not only as a lesson of courage but as a reminder to everyone that heroism comes from everywhere.

“Anyone, even someone from our small town of Snow Creek, Colorado, can do great deeds as part of this great country,” the mayor said. Addressing Steel specifically, he continued, “You did more than your duty as a member of the military and a citizen of the United States. Snow Creek is proud to have such a distinguished hero among our population.”

The mayor retold Captain Steel’s story the next Monday at Snow Creek K-12 School. Captain Steel, an infantry officer in command of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, and his troops were ambushed by a group of insurgents in a small peaceful village in northern Iraq after dark. Suddenly, the lights in the village went out, and gunfire erupted. About twenty-five insurgents who had been perched on mountainsides took cover in the village and ambushed Steel’s unit and one other under the command of Captain Derek Waters. Steel, a first lieutenant at the time, defied orders from Waters, his superior officer, to reenter the battle zone and save six of his fallen comrades: Pvt. Clancy Brown of Los Angeles, Pvt. Lance Fox of Gahanna, Ohio; Pvt. Myron Jones of Schroon Lake, NY; Pvt. Kevin Dale of Reno, Nevada; Sgt. Corey Jensen of Santa Fe, NM; and 2nd Lt. Megan Cline of Dallas.