Perry came awake fighting strangling fear, a pervasive sense of helplessness and defeat that sometimes came back to haunt him. His kid brother, the overdose, the would-be hoods who threw the unconscious younger boy out of their car in front of the ranch where the brothers lived with their grandparents. Home on leave from the army, Perry heard the car pass, slow, and then speed away. Although it was late, he went out…
As awareness came, he realized he was being held down by a living weight. His eyes flew open. There was a face, very close to his. Not part of the dream. In a second or two, he recognized the face and the lean hard body pinning him to the mattress. Ike? Ike! What the f**k?
“It’s not real. It’s just a bad dream.”
As the other man’s words sank in, Perry understood they were t
