Page 40 of Hearts of Fairlake

"Sometimes it's easier for people, even people in power, to bury what horrifies them. Not because they don't care or it's messy, but because it's too hard to face personally."

"Yeah, well, if you can't do that, thenmaybe you shouldn’t be in the position where you need to enforce laws and help people."

"You're not going to hear me argue with that."

Admittedly, we weren't being given permission to adopt outright. That was still months away. Our sexuality wasn't that big a deal, and our being together for three years had helped, and eventually, being married for longer would too. No, it was going to be that I’d been in so many forms of trouble over the years that made the agency look askance at us.

There wasn't much I could do about the past, which I’d tried to explain even as I showed the changes I’d gone through. Years of therapy, steady employment, and more bills than I'd ever had before that were never paid late, let alone unpaid. We looked better with Luke's involvement. He hadn't seen legal trouble in his life, and his credit had been spotless for almost a decade. His former job as a long-term personal assistant to a well-known employer had raised brows, but I remembered the social worker chuckling when she remembered we’d moved to Fairlake a year after dating.

"Strange but wonderful town, Fairlake," she had said before getting down to business.

I wasn't surprised when Luke let me sit in silence as we drove down to Denver. I had gotten the stronger of my feelings out, and now I had to sit and peel them apart. Now, it felt like I’d been bottling things up for so long, only now dealing with them, giving me no time to adjust or figure out what I was going to do about them.

I stiffened when I realized we were in the parking lot, Luke waiting patiently for a couple of minutes and turning toward me. "We can turn back. I'll make the call, give her some excuse that sounds right, and come back for another try when you're ready."

"I'm never going to be really ready," I said with a grimace. "And if people waited to do something they wanted but were scared to do only when they were ready, nothing would ever get done."

"True."

I took a deep breath, and after giving him a lingering kiss, I pushed myself out of the car, and we walked together into the building. Social Services was not the happiest place. It was pretty rundown. They’d tried to brighten it up, but you could tell from the cracks in the floor, the stains on the ceiling, and the whiffs of mustiness that the building wasn't given the budget.

Our social worker, Jen, was all smiles when she saw us. "Well, it's good to see you two showed up."

"Did you doubt us?" I asked, waiting until she'd shaken Luke's hand before reaching for hers and shaking it.

"I sensed more than a little case of the nerves," she said with a wink before motioning for us to follow her. Like most social workers, she didn't have a private office, just a cubicle, but instead, she led us into a small room at the end where a table with chairs waited.

"You're talking about me...about the nerves thing," I said nervously as I sat at the table.

"I was," she said, closing the door.

I winced, sucking in a breath. "I was that bad, huh?"

"Bad?" she asked in confusion, sitting down. "For first-time fosters? If you weren't at least a little nervous, I'd have buried you in paperwork until you gave up, most likely. We've talked about this. Some foster parents see the children as tickets for government money or...worse."

"I know worse," I swallowed.

"So you do," she said, leaning back in her seat.

I blinked. “Uh...what?"

"Background check," Luke muttered. "You never changed your last name, unlike Gra…your brother."

"Shit, that's why you wanted to talk to us today," I said, letting out a breath and deciding whether I was relieved or disappointed that’s all this was.

Jen raised a brow. “Absolutely not. I knew from the first background check we did. But what did I tell you when I brought up that your criminal record would make things difficult?"

"That...you believe a person's past doesn't always mean that's what their future is. You have to look at the whole picture."

"Exactly. People like to say those abused when they were kids will often continue the cycle, but that's not true either. Most get stuck in some version of it, and in recent years, they've been the kind that breaks the cycle by just not having kids. But some do break it, and they fight like hell to do it. And all I've seen out of you is someone still dogged by their past," she said with a gentle smile. "Which, in all fairness, so are these kids. But you've been fighting to get out of that pit. And if you can do that, maybe you can help someone to get out too, before it's too late for them."

"Helps when I have someone like this constantly around to make sure I don't fly out of orbit," I said, squeezing Luke's hand.

"Having a strong support system is always a good thing to have," she said with a wink. "And your relationship with each other is another thing I've had to keep an eye on. And all I've seen is two people who not only love the crap out of each other but fight like hell to make that relationship work."

"Not exactly a ringing endorsement," I said with a snort. "But, I guess that's pretty accurate."

"There are far worse things you could be considered," she said with a wink. "Now, let me go get the files, and we'll see what we can do from here."

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