Page 2 of The Lost Soldier
A year later, Tim had officially adopted Chad.
Chad shivered.
At first, Chad had a hard time calling Tim, Dad. He’d never had a father, or even a male in his life to look up to until Tim. By the time Chad was a junior in high school, the word, dad, rolled off his lips as natural as spreading peanut butter over a slice ofbread. Thanks to his father, he’d gotten accepted into the Naval Academy and their football team.
On the day of his very first Army/Navy game, Chad jolted out of bed after having a dream his father had been killed in a car accident. He tried for an hour to reach his father but got nothing.
Two hours later, he got the call that his father had been killed when an eighteen-wheeler jackknifed on the highway only fifteen minutes after he’d had the dream.
From that moment on, Chad did his best to ignore that tickle in his brain, shoving it deep into his psyche. What good was having a premonition if you couldn’t save the one person you loved the most. Only, ever since Savanah had come into his life, the tickle had turned into a burning desire, and he started seeing things left and right again.
The worst part had been he’d had so many hazy visions about Savanah, and many of them came with a sense of doom.
He couldn’t love someone again, only to know he’d lose them and not be able to save them.
Out of the corner of his eye, he reminded himself. He might have saved that little boy from getting a bump on his head, or maybe a cut on his chin.
But Chad couldn’t save the only man that ever cared enough to even listen, much less make Chad his son.
He pulled out the keys to his father’s house, that he just couldn’t seem to sell no matter how many years had passed. It had been the only real home Chad had ever experienced. It might not have been filled with a mom and siblings, but his father made sure Chad had everything he could possibly need.
Mostly, his father showed him what love and understanding meant.
He pushed open the door, dropping the keys on the coffee table. Savanah sat on the sofa under the window in the frontliving room, her feet tucked up under her voluptuous butt. She twirled her long, blond hair and smiled wickedly at him.
God, he loved her so much it sucked the life out of him.
He plopped down on the chair across from her, next to the fireplace, with his back to the dining room. He’d loved growing up in Baltimore. This big, old, row house with its uneven wood floors and circular staircase had been his father’s pride and joy, having restored much of it with his own two hands.
Savanah’s smile quickly turned into a frown. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We need to talk,” he said, staring at her, trying to push the mirage of her and a future he couldn’t fathom. His father had told him that some people are just intuitive to others and that Chad was sensitive to other people’s emotions. His father always listened when Chad had one of his visions about something, like dreaming about the day he’d been drafted by the Naval Academy. It wasn’t the only school that had wanted him.
But it was the only one he could see himself at.
Most literally.
And now he could see himself with Savanah.
Only, he couldn’t live this way. He couldn’t deal with the visions and knowing things about people, especially when the negative feelings and pending doom overwhelmed him. He’d decided that it was loving someone that brought this out in him.
He didn’t want it.
And he couldn’t have love.
Love destroyed everything.
Her frown grew deeper as lines appeared on her normally smooth forehead. Her blue eyes were like looking into the ocean lapping against the shore.
She shoved the piece of paper across the coffee table.
He didn’t even have to read it. He knew she’d seen everything that happened at the coffee shop, but he would ignore the facts, call her a liar, break her heart, and walk away.
At least he wouldn’t have to know when bad things would happen to her anymore.
“Stop fighting this,” she said with narrowed eyes. “I watched you stop the boy from landing on his head. I saw what you wrote on the napkin.”
He arched a brow. “You must have followed me,” he said matter-of-factly. “Or had someone, like one of your sister’s spy on me.”
