I stared at that baby, and everything inside me went still because I knew too.
It wasn’t logical. Heck, it didn’t even make sense. But I knew that the little boy was meant to be ours.
The first time I held him, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. Penn stood beside me with one hand on my back, and I felt him shaking.
“He needs us,” Penn whispered.
I looked down at the baby in my arms, and tears ran down my face. “Yeah,” I said. “We need him too.”
It wasn’t simple after that. There were calls and paperwork and interviews. There were home visits and temporary custody and nights where I was afraid that something might happen and someone would take him away.
Penn would find me in the nursery on those nights, sitting in the rocking chair with Michael asleep against my chest.
“He’s ours tonight,” he would say.
And that was how we survived it. We took it just one night at a time.
Then, three months ago, we stood in a courtroom with our family filling every seat behind us, and a judge said the words I had been holding my breath to hear.
Custody granted.
Penn and I both cried.
Now Michael is here, and his little hand wraps around my finger as he kicks both his feet.
Penn walks over toward us and crouches beside the blanket. “Hey, buddy.”
Michael’s whole face lights up.
Penn reaches for him, then pauses to look at me first. “Can I?”
I laugh. “Penn, he’s your son. You don’t have to ask permission to hold him.”
His eyes soften. “I know.”
But he still asks sometimes. I think part of him can’t believe this is real. Penn settles him against his chest like he’s the most precious thing in the world. Michael grabs a fistful of Penn’s shirt and immediately tries to put it in his mouth. Penn smiles down at him. “You hungry again?”
“He’s always hungry,” I say.
“Brody trait,” Logan calls from the grill.
Guy walks over and drops onto the grass beside me. “Not all Brodys.”
I give him a look. “You ate three burgers before anyone else had one.”
“That was protein.”
Ozzy snorts from his chair. “That was greed.”
Everyone laughs, and Michael startles for a second before settling against Penn again.
Penn’s hand covers the back of his little head, and my heart squeezes so hard it almost hurts.
This is my family. It’s not the one I pictured all those years ago, but it’s mine.
Sometimes things don’t happen the way we think they should, but this is exactly how it is meant to be.
Sometimes love doesn’t arrive the way you planned; sometimes it’s left at a fire station and carried into a hospital, where your husband takes one look at a baby boy and knows he was meant to be yours.
