Page 97 of Crack the Ice

Lily also wanted to come to the bakery with me today, and who am I to tell her no? They start school next week, so I told her she could try out her own recipes today. She’s blessedly preoccupied while we have this conversation in my office.

“Yes,” he says around a mouthful of chocolate chips. “I know it’s not ideal, and in the state of Florida you can do it now. Once he’s granted his adoption, you can file as a second parent. It wouldn’t be together, if that makes sense.”

Mav eyes me warily. I know he wants this so bad. I do too, but I don’t want to marry him because of it. I want to marry him for me, for us.

“I…” I start, but my words fail me. I don’t want to be the reason he doesn’t get approved. I don’t want to be the reason he loses something else.

“What are the chances this gets denied if we aren’t married?”

Tom shrugs. “I don’t see it being an issue. You live there. You’re an active part of their life. They clearly love you. Your name just wouldn’t be on the adoption papers. That’s it.”

I turn to Mav, taking his hands in mine and squeezing. “I don’t want to marry you for this. When the time comes, I want that to be for us, not because of something else. I don’t want you to lose this chance either, so I’m fine with whatever needs to be done, but those are my feelings about it.”

“I would never ask you to do something you don’t want to do, Cess. If I need to push this off until after we’re married, I can. It’s not pressing. I want to know they’ll be taken care of if something were to happen to me. I wanted them to be Reed’s because it was all I had, and I was all they had, but we have you now. The four of us? We make a great family. I can wait to make that official until you’re a Reed. I don’t mind.” He looks around me at Tom. “I can do that, right? They won’t get removed from my care before then?”

“They are legally under your care and will remain that way unless you are deemed unfit. Which I don’t see happening.”

“If Sheila doesn’t have anything to say about it first,” Lily says, surprising us all as she walks into the kitchen with a mango.

“Can you cut this for me?” she asks, holding it out for me.

“Sure, Lil Bit. Come on, let the boys talk.” I take the mango and her hand and close the door behind me. Mav needs to decide what’s best for him and the kids. I understand my role in this situation, and truthfully, the closer we get to them starting school and the start of hockey season, the more anxious I get.

We’ve all been so busy that it’s been easy to stay on a semi-consistent schedule. Mav’s at practice while I’m here. Every once in a while, he’ll have dry land, and I’ll be with the kids on my own, but they’re so self-sufficient, it’s like hanging out with my friends. Nothing like my brain tried to convince me it’d be.

My knife makes contact with one side of the mango and cuts until it reaches the pit. “Do you want them in cubes or slices?” I ask as I turn it, so I can cut it on the other side.

Her finger taps against her lip as she thinks. “I don’t know that it matters. I’m going to try to make that gooey stuff on the inside of a cupcake.”

“Filling?” I ask with a small laugh.

“Yeah, Cade’s girlfriend likes mango. She’s coming to book club at the bookstore again this week. I want her to like me.”

“Why wouldn’t she like you?”

She gives me a quick shrug of her shoulders as she turns her iPad toward me with the recipe on it. “I’m the annoying little sister. You know how that is, right?”

Scoring the mango, I pop a few of the slices into a bowl. “No, Markus was never like that with me. I don’t see Cade being like that either. He loves having you around.”

“At some point I’ll cramp his style.”

“Maybe, but at the end of the day, you two are best friends, and if some girl comes along, or some punk boy at some point, tries to get in the middle of that, you know they’re not the one. For you or for him.”

“Is that how you knew Mav was your person?”

A slow, dreamy smile stretches across my face. My chest fills with a quiet rush of adrenaline, and for a second I stare at the shiny metal top of the prep table, letting the memories of Mav and me water my soul.

“No, I knew he was my person because he was the first person I wanted to tell everything to. Good or bad. He was the first person I thought of in the morning, and the person I fell asleep talking to on the phone at night.”

I place the knife in the sink to my left, and hand her my hand mixer and some gelatin. “I knew he was my person because my heart was home when it was with him. When I tried to run, it always tried to come back. It never faltered in wanting him to be the person beside me.”

Her hair has been braided into Dutch braids today, courtesy of Maverick and his ridiculous braiding skills. Her light blue eyes curiously look me over. “How’d you find your way back?”

I roll my lips between my teeth, my head nodding before I let my lips go with a quiet pop. “Well, I’m a firm believer that what’s meant for you will never pass you by. Sometimes you have to take a scenic route or two. Even the painful route can be beautiful sometimes.”

“Huh, I like that.” She pours the gelatin into a measuring spoon before dumping it into the bowl.

My office door opens, and both of our heads turn to face two men with smiling faces. “These are delicious, Cecilia. Compliments to the baker.” Tom winks as he holds up the half-eaten bag of cookies I gave him when he first got here.