Page 70 of Loving Trent
“You ready for this?” Uncle Leon leans over and asks, interrupting my thoughts.
There is a lump in my throat and a tightening in my chest, but I’m not backing down. Standing up, I clear my throat, and everyone stops talking and looks at me. “I have one more gift I’d like to give before we eat… If that’s okay?”
“The floor is yours, sweetie,” Nana says. I look at her, and she winks because she knows what I’m about to do. Of course, I needed validation that she was okay with it. She cried while she held me and told me how much she loved me. Just like she did with Daddio on Thanksgiving.
I take a deep breath and turn toward the only men I want to be my parents. “This is for you two,” I say, holding out the envelope.
Daddio takes it and looks at me with so much love that all my nerves fly away. I don’t know why I’m scared that they won’t want this because I know how much they love me. They not only tell me, but they show me every single day. Daddio slowly opens the big envelope and pulls the stacks of paper from inside. When Raven came up with this idea, I knew it would be a stretch to getit done quickly, but I needed it to happen. I owe everything to Uncle Leon, Grandpa Sonny, and Demon.
Daddio gasps, his hand coming up to cover his mouth as tears fill his eyes. Dad chokes on air and starts to cough. The papers fall to the floor as they both rush to stand. Daddio gets to me first and throws his arms around me. “Is this real?” Dad asks as he hugs us both.
“Yes,” I manage to say through tears.
“What is going on?” Dylan asks someone.
“I have no idea,” Uncle Zak answers her.
Daddio pulls back and cups my face. “You want us to adopt you?”
Shocked gasps fill the air from everyone besides the three who knew about this. “I really do,” I say. “I know you have guardianship over me, but I want to carry your last name.” I look over Daddio’s shoulders at Dad and say, “Both of your last names. I was thinking, Harley Jean Foster-Anderson sounded perfect.”
“Perfect,” Dad says as a tear slides down his face.
“So that’s a yes?” I ask, needing to hear them say it.
“Of course it’s a yes. You’re ours, Harley. We love you so much,” Daddio says, pulling me into him.
We are quickly surrounded by the whole family, who congratulate us and tell us how much they love us.
“Best Christmas ever,” Dad says, and we all agree.
Thirty-Five
TRENT
The holidays and New Year have passed, but I will never forget my first holiday season with our new family. It’s been three weeks, and I’m still in shock over what transpired on Christmas. After Harley gifted us the adoption papers, everyone huddled around the room to discuss them. I will admit that not only did I get pissed when I found out exactly what she did, but so did every other member of our family—except one: Nana. Nana was nothing but proud of her.
It turns out that Harley, Leon, and Sonny drove back to Ohio the night they picked her up from the house. Demon met them there from wherever he lives. Once they met up with Demon, they drove straight to Harley’s birth parents’ house, where she not only confronted them about what they had done to her but demanded that they sign the adoption papers. When Demon had them sign the guardianship papers, it didn’t terminate their rights to her. But we never worried about them coming for her. However, I guess Harley did.
“You should have seen her,” Leon says, waving his hands in front of him as if he could paint us all a picture. “There Harley stood in the middle of their living room staring Jaxx and Megan down with fire in her eyes. Her voice never shook, her shouldersnever rose, and her body never tensed up as she told them that she had a new family. A family that she was meant to belong to. Harley never raised her voice or got disrespectful, but man, her words…” He pauses to whistle, and Sonny picks up the story.
“Her words cut them deep like a sharp steel knife. I wish I could remember them clearly,” Sonny says, looking over at Harley, who is still in Shawn’s arms.
“I told them that they were never my parents, but simple donors put on this earth to show me exactly what I didn’t deserve. I told them that I had new parents, the best parents a girl like me could ever wish for, and that in the last two months, my two dads had shown me more love, acceptance, and care than they did in sixteen years. I looked them dead in the eyes and told them that I wasn’t dirty, broken, or wrong for doing the simplest thing to ever be created… Loving someone for who they are, not what’s in their pants.” Pride shines bright in Harley’s eyes, and all my anger fades into nothing but unconditional love for the girl who is choosing us.
“Then she shoved the papers into their laps and demanded they sign them. Once they did, seconds later. She turned to me and said 'Come on, Grandpa Sonny, take me home to my dad’s.” Sonny crosses the room, lays a wet kiss to her cheek, and whispers. “Best fucking feeling in the world, I’ll tell you that.”
Our appointment to go before the judge to finalize the adoption is next week, and the whole family has taken off work to be there with us. I just have to handle one little problem before then.
“Okay, show me what you have,” I say, shutting the door to Uncle Joey and Ryan’s house. They found a cute Tudor-stylehome two blocks from ours and snatched it up quickly. I was honestly surprised that Uncle Joey moved here because of his business. But he said that he wanted to be closer to family, and that was that. Adam, Levi, and Uncle Joey are in talks about combining their companies to form a single, larger construction company.
I kick off my shoes and walk into their cozy living room. The first thing I noticed about this house is how it screamed Uncle Joey from the get-go. He fucking loves dark colors in a home, especially paneling, and this place has that all over. Not me, I could never stand it, but I won’t rain on his parade. The overstuffed white couch is pushed against the wall with the coffee table lying face down on it. The wing-backed chairs that Ryan loves have been moved out of the way, and in the middle of the room, Uncle Joey and Ryan sit on the floor surrounded by papers and two laptops.
“Thanks for coming,” Ryan says, not looking up from his computer. “Come in and I’ll explain everything.”
Making sure not to disturb any of the piles of papers, I watch as Uncle Joey clears a space for me in front of them. “Okay, as you know, we have been going over Shawn’s records from the restaurant. We went all the way back to the beginning,” Ryan says, still typing away at his computer. He pauses and looks at me for a quick second. “I have to say that your boyfriend has impeccable taste in record keeping. He kept everything, and that worked in our favor.” He hits a button, jumps up, and takes off down the hall.
I turn my attention to Uncle Joey and see that he’s holding out a stack of papers for me to take. “These are the records when he first started to lose money,” he says as I take the papers. I don’t bother looking at them because I’m not a big numbers guy. “It started as small transactions that went unnoticed, but Ryan caught them.”
