"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, so I'm just gonna say this."
“Yes, Cole?”
“Will you marry me?”
I yanked my hand out of his. “I’m sorry. What?” I couldn’t have heard him correctly.
“I mean, you don’t actually have to marry me, just pretend to be engaged to me until CJ’s adoption hearing.”
"What?" I edged backward on the couch. My stomach dropped, and my heart thumped in my ears.
"Lisa, I've been struggling with this for a week. I know this is a shitty thing to ask after your divorce, and the shit with us. I know that you don't want anything serious with me. I've accepted that, and you're right. Things are too crazy right now to even think about a serious relationship. But Susan thinks it will give me a better chance of getting CJ's adoption approved. I was even thinking I could pay off your student loans in exchange for you helping me, helping us—CJ and me."
“You are aware that siblings adopt each other all the time and that your little scheme is a slap in the face to single men, single parents who are dying to adopt children.” I crossed my arms and had scooted so far away from Cole that the armrest dug into my back.
“I know that. But you heard about Judge Tomlinson. I can’t risk losing CJ.”
“How are you sure that he’d rule against you?”
“He separated me from my family when I was ten.”
“What?” My hands dropped to my lap. I wanted to reach for him; to comfort him in some way, but I resisted the urge. “It’s the same judge?”
Cole nodded and scrubbed his hands over his face. "My birth mom didn't have an easy time trying to raise a kid by herself in New York. She broke the law and got caught. When I was eight, she was convicted of armed robbery."
I gasped.
"She was a lookout. She didn't technically commit armed robbery, but that didn't matter. She had priors and was sentenced to fifteen to twenty years."
“Oh my God. You were eight when this happened?”
"Yeah. Crystal wanted the Simmonses to legally adopt me. So I asked them, and since they were practically raising me for the previous six years anyway, they said yes. It should have been the easiest thing in the world, but the state had a problem with me being adopted by the Simmonses—"
“Because they’re Black,” I finished knowingly.
"Yeah," Cole said in a quiet voice. "They kept placing me in foster homes with white families, and the first chance I got, I would run and come home. After a year of that, they finally gave up, and my parents got an adoption hearing. Tomlinson was the judge. Despite my testimony, letters from my birth mother, my teachers…that asshole decided I'd be better off with Crystal's family in Missouri. They wanted to take me in, and they were my closest blood relatives. I think I cried more than I ever have in my life."
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I was.”
“Was your family in Missouri…nice?” I felt like I already knew the answer.
“No,” was all he said. I nodded, not wanting him to elaborate.
“I don’t know what to say.”
"You don't have to say anything. I ran away after a couple of months, and my parents promised me that I would never have to leave them again." He shrugged. "And they kept that promise."
We sat in silence. I understood why Cole was asking me what he was asking but was I supposed to sit on this couch and pretend that my heart wasn't broken? He said that he'd accepted that we couldn't have anything serious. He called itthe shit with us.
What did that even mean?
It meant that I'd spent too much time pushing him away, and now it was too late.
“Lisa, I would completely understand if you said no. It’s a big ask and if you don’t want to do it, I’ll figure something else out.”
I sat in silence, staring at my hands curled in my lap. I know it must have taken a lot for him to ask me this. It didn't hurt any less. "When is the hearing?"
