Page 102 of Chasing Dreams
She shook her head and signed the invoice. “Thanks. Just leave it here.”
“What’s zat?” Jack stood behind her.
“I don’t know. Something else from Austin, it looks like.”
“Open?”
She grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and slit the packing tape. Beneath a mountain of bubble wrap, she discovered a hand-made wooden rocking horse. She wrestled it from the carton and carried it into the living room.
“It’s for Jack?” he asked, pointing at the beautifully crafted toy.
“It’s for Jack,” she said. “Auntie Shaine would look a little silly on it. Want to ride it?”
He nodded solemnly.
She lifted him on and showed him how to rock.
Shaine backed to the edge of the sofa and sat, watching him. She pictured Austin scrolling and ordering it from his phone, and a smile tugged her lips upward.
A sense of familiarity nagged at her. She’d seen the horse before. She focused on remembering. It had been in one of her visions of Jack. She’d seen him sleeping in what looked like a loft bedroom, and this rocking horse had sat under the eaves.
At the time, she’d been afraid that Jack would never be returned to her, and that she may have to resign herself to the fact that he was okay, but that he wasn’t with her.
Her prophetic dreams could come true. Or they could be changed by circumstances. She recalled the dream of Jack and the dark-haired toddler playing in the sandbox. The man who’d come home was the dark-haired baby’s father.
So...if Jack was with her now, and Jack had a little brother, the brother would be her child.
She couldn’t really draw any comfort from that.
Her dreams didn’t have to come to pass. Finding Jack in time had prevented the awful images she’d seen. She’d been able to take action to change the outcome. Thank God.
Her dream of Jack with the brother and the man who hugged him didn’t have to happen, either. She might do something to prevent it.
Shaine checked on her casserole in the oven and stood in the doorway watching Jack.
The realization hit her like lightning.
She’d already done something to prevent that dream from happening.
By allowing Austin to pass out of her life, she’d stopped the chain of events that led to that moment in time.
She would never want to marry anyone else. He had been the one.
But he hadn’t wanted a commitment, she reminded herself.
“I think our supper’s ready, Jack,” she said.
He stopped his energetic rocking and looked skeptically at the floor. “Me want down.”
“You got it, buckaroo.” She swung him off the horse and into the air. He laughed, and the sound eased her heavy heart. She kissed his cheek soundly and sat him on his booster seat at the table.
“We have to blow on this. It’s hot.” After he spilled the first glass of milk, she got him a second and ate her macaroni and cheese happily because he enjoyed it so.
He hadn’t wanted a commitment.
Her feelings had been so raw, she’d taken that as the truth. But the truth crystallized before her like a divine revelation.
Austin Allen was the king of self-preservation.
