“I’m not sure how you can do that. But I can see you love the boy.”
“I do love him. I know what he’s experiencing every time he goes back to that home. Every time Poppy picks him up, she builds up false hope in him. And every time she lobs him back there, she shreds a piece of his innocence away until there’s going to be nothing left. I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.”
There was so much to unravel from her passionate speech, the most important one being her declaration that she was aware of what Finn was going through. That she’d experienced it.
Had she grown up in a home?
“Yeah, I did.”
It took a second for him to register he’d spoken his thought out loud and that she’d confirmed it.
“I didn’t know.”
Lame, Brodie, lame.
Of course he didn’t know. He’d only spoken to her twice before he’d run into them at the diner this morning. Tension pulled at his shoulders, a sensation he always had when he found himself in an awkward situation. While this wasn’t the worst situation he’d been in, he had a feeling that if he opened his mouth he’d say something equally as obvious as what he’d just said.
“Well, how could you know? We’ve only just met.”
Brodie dug his hands into his pocket, feeling around for the set of dice he always carried with him. Pulling them out he began to roll them in his hands. The smooth corners, and indentations of the dots, were familiar and his shoulders relaxed. Once he felt more in control, he slipped them back in his pocket, aware that Cerise had watched his every move. “I’m sorry. That was a silly thing for me to say.”
Cerise reached out and took hold of his hand, giving it a squeeze before releasing it. “It’s fine. We all state the obvious sometimes in tense situations. I got passionate about Finn and blurted out a lot of information that I don’t normally tell people when I first meet them.”
Talking about her past would be for another time, that is, if they had another time together. He hoped they would. He liked Cerise. She was fun and quirky and caring. There was no artifice with her. Just after he and his buddies had hit the five-million-dollar profit mark and their success could no longer be denied, there had been a few girls who’d tried to latch onto him. Not because they liked him, but more that they liked his money. Cerise seemed very independent and he didn’t believe she’d be impressed by his huge bank account.
“What’s your plan for Finn? Are you going to see if you can be his permanent foster mom? And is that even possible with Poppy always wanting to come back into his life?”
“No, I don’t want to be his foster mom. I want to be his mom. I want to adopt him.”
Whoa, that declaration right there was the last thing he thought she’d say. “You want to adopt him?” he asked, making sure he heard her correctly.
She took a couple of steps closer to where Finn was still standing in the creek, his head bent and his brow furrowed in concentration as he studied the water, no doubt looking at the small fish that skittered around his feet. Or maybe he’d spied a frog. “Yes, I do. I want to give him a safe home where he doesn’t have to worry that if my boyfriend doesn’t like him, he’s going to be shunted out of the house. I don’t want to see this innocent boy hurt anymore. I don’t even think he’s grieved properly or been allowed to grieve the loss of parents,” she finished on a whisper.
Acting purely on instinct he pulled her close, knowing that his shirt was going to be covered in glitter, but he didn’t care. Every little thing she said opened her up a little to him and he had to wonder if she hadn’t been allowed to grieve her own loss. That if her life in a home was the same as to what was happening with Finn.
Had she grown up with a relative who took her and then handed her back? Or maybe it was a family who wanted to adopt her and then changed their minds.
“I know you will give him everything he needs, Sparkles.” He pressed a kiss on top of her head and pulled away. He smootheda strand of her dark-chocolate-colored hair off her cheek. “It’s not going to be easy, is it? The odds of an adoption to a single woman being approved would be less than if a couple was adopting him, right?”
He hated to burst her bubble, but he also didn’t want her to dream and then have it shattered at her feet.
“I know it’s going to be difficult, and I know I’m going to have to make adjustments to my life, but that little boy over there”—she pointed to where Finn was attempting to skip stones across the bubbling surface of the creek—“is worth every sacrifice I have to make.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Makingsure that Finn was busy watching his favorite after-school show, a show he said he couldn’t watch at his aunt’s because she didn’t have the channel, Cerise headed for the kitchen, phone in hand.
The call she was about to make had her stomach jumping around like she was on a trampoline. She’d spent most of the night going over everything in her mind. All the changes she would have to make in the hope that she could adopt Finn.
Brodie hadn’t said anything else after showing his initial concern about how hard it would be to make this dream come true. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the creek, playing in the water. Brodie had taken some time with Finn to help him work on his skipping-stone technique. Of course, a bubbly creek wasn’t conducive to lots of skips but the end goal was to show Finn a good time and that’s what they’d done.
On the way home Finn had chattered non-stop about how much fun he’d had. The darkness from when she’d picked him up had well and truly gone, and Cerise wanted to ensure it stayed that way. After he’d talked about what happened between him and one of Poppy’s boyfriends, she’d expected him to regress a little, but the boy was more resilient than she gave him credit for.She imagined he’d told all his friends at school today what he and Brodie had done.
“Okay, enough procrastinating. I’ve got this,” she whispered to the universe, hoping that courage would miraculously slam into her body. Yes, the call was going to be difficult and the outcome might not be what she hoped it would be, but she wasn’t going to let those thoughts manifest.
She blew out a breath and unlocked her phone. After pulling up Daphne’s name, she hit the connect button. Behind her back she crossed her fingers, hoping that Daphne was in her office and not out with a child.
“Daphne West speaking.”
