He kissed my shoulder first, then the side of my neck, then the place under my ear that tickled. I smiled before I opened my eyes, knowing where I was. In our bed, in our home, with my fiancé wrapped around me like morning was not allowed to start until he said so.
“Julian,” I breathed, not even pretending to be annoyed.
“Mm?”
His hand slid over my stomach, drawing me back against him, and then his lips found mine. We didn’t say anything for a while after that. Just kept kissing like he had nowhere to be, and the world outside our room could wait. He kissed me like I was kept. Like he was too. By the time we pulled apart, my breathing was uneven, and his hand was still caressing my back.
“You trying to make me late for court, Mr. Wade?”
“You’re not due in court until ten.”
“You checked my calendar?”
“I live here,” he said, like that answered everything.
I laughed, and he kissed the corner of my mouth again, softer this time. Then his hand slowed on my back and he looked at me seriously.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said. “For a while now. I want to run it by you, and I want you to tell me the truth about how you feel. Not the answer you think I want.”
I pushed up on one elbow. “Okay.”
“I want to adopt Micah.”
Everything in me went still. Julian kept his eyes on mine.
“Legally. My name on his. If you want that. If he wants that. I’m not deciding it for either of you. I’m asking.”
I couldn’t answer right away. I couldn’t do anything right away. Malik had given Micah his blood and his name and not much else.Fatherhood to him was a bill to pay, a roof to keep over our heads, and a thing he got credit for because he came home at night, even when he was not really there. And the one time my son had needed him to care for him, to be present, he had been in our bed with another woman while Micah fell and split his head open. I still carried that. The guilt and shame of having chosen a man who could fail my baby so completely.
Then Julian came into Micah’s life and never once treated him like extra weight. He taught him how to stand up for himself. Took him to the barbershop. Learned his games. Corrected him. Protected him. Made space for him in his homes, and in his heart.
He had already given Micah more than I would have ever asked for.
More than I knew how to ask for.
“Julian,” I whispered, and my voice faltered. I put my hand on his face. “You have been so good to him. So good. You didn’t have to be. You love him. You make time for him. You correct him like he matters and listen to him like he matters and show up for him like he matters. You’ve given him a kind of fathering I thought he’d never get to have.”
Tears slid down my face. “So yes. I would love that. I would love for him to have your name. I would love for the world to know what we already know. That he’s yours too.”
Julian’s eyes glistened, but he stayed quiet.
I pressed my forehead to his. “You have to ask him. Not because I don’t want it. I do. More than I can say. But because he deserves to choose it with you. Man to man, the way you two do.”
Julian closed his eyes for a second, then he opened them, and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll ask him.”
He askedMicah the next afternoon, the two of them out on the back porch. I watched from the window without hearing a word of it. I saw Micah’s mouth drop open, eyes wide as he looked up at Julian, then launched himself at him hard enough that Julian had to catch him. My heart was so full, I couldn’t help but cry watching the two of them.
Micah never asked permission or announced a decision after that. He just came into the kitchen a few days later, got a juice from the fridge, and said, “Dad, can we ride our bikes on the trail later?” like he’d been calling Julian Dad his whole life.
“We’ll see,” Julian replied in a voice that wasn’t his usual steady.
And that was that.
The process started not long after Julian asked him, and the paperwork went through two weeks before Julian and I got married.So when Micah stood beside Julian, Zhaire, and his uncles at the wedding, he stood there as Micah Wade first. My son became a Wade before I did, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. It was made official in a courthouse, with a judge and a pen, and we celebrated with balloons and a cake that saidMicah Wade. Julian surprised him with the puppy Micah had been begging for. When it came time to name him, he didn't hesitate onDiesel. Julian looked too pleased that his name pick won. Micah brags that he has two birthdays now.
Six monthsinto officially being Mrs. Wade, and three months after we agreed I’d stop taking the pill, I locked myself in our bathroom with two tests on the counter, both of them saying the same thing.
