“On what? What do you mean?” she asked.
“Come on, Lucy, keep up. I’m giving up my rights. I don’t want her. I don’t want to pay for her. I don’t even want to deal with her. I’ll always love her—I guess I’m supposed to—but she doesn’t like me. She likes that guy. So you guys go ahead, be a happy little family.”
She gasped as she looked up at him, unsure what the hell was really going on.
“Wait, are you serious? Just like that?” Lucy asked, her heart almost cracking her ribs it was beating so hard.
“What, you don’t believe me?” he asked. He grabbed a pen from a passing waitress before taking a sheet of paper from the file. They watched as he wrote something and then signed it, laying it on the table. Tapping the file to the edge of the table, he nodded at them. “That’s that. See you guys Thursday.”
And then he walked away.
Like it was nothing.
Like he hadn’t just agreed to give up his flesh and blood.
Reaching for the piece of paper, she read it through tear-filled eyes.
On Thursday, I, Rick Hart, will give up my rights so that Benji Paxton can adopt Angela Lynn Hart.
And then there was his signature and the date. That was it. Wide-eyed, she looked over at Benji. “What?”
He looked at the sheet, shaking his head. “Really?”
“Did that just happen?” she asked and Benji gulped beside her.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think he just gave me Angie. Like, actually, gave her to me,” he said, his voice breaking as her body went numb. Looking over at her, he smiled. “She’ll be mine. Like, I’ll be her dad. Her real dad—she’ll have my name.”
Her jaw was slack as she held his gaze, unable to process this. Who just gives their kid up like that? But then…who the hell cared? She wanted Rick gone, and he’d be gone. But above all that, Benji would be Angie’s dad. Well, if he wanted her.
“You want her, right?”
“Fuck yeah,” he laughed and then his face lit up, tears flooding his sweet, gray eyes. “Lucy, we’ll be a real family. All of us. One.”
As her tears rolled off her jaw and onto her lap, she cupped his beautiful face. Her heart was in her throat. She couldn’t believe it. While she hated Rick with everything inside of her, she could honestly kiss him for making Benji this happy. For giving him everything he ever wanted.
What Lucy wanted.
A good man to love her daughter.
Their daughter.
Around the lump in her throat, she whispered, “We’ve always been a family, but now it will be official.”
Covering her hands with his, he looked deep into her eyes. “Officially complete.”
As their mouths met and Benji pulled Lucy into his lap, she couldn’t believe that, at one point in her life, she didn’t think she could ever love someone, that a man could complete her. As her mouth moved with Benji’s, her heart slamming in her chest as his slammed back, she believed it. She believed that two lost souls had become a full one, no longer lost but together. And she believed with everything inside her that nothing could ever break them apart.
Her life was finally beginning.
And what a life it was about to be.
Four months later
Everyone had come.
At least, the people who mattered to him.
As Benji looked around the room, Lucy’s family—well, his too, now—stood front row, while his core Assassins teammates and their wives sat in the rows behind them. The room was full, a packed house. Even Lucy’s dad was there. It wasn’t just because he was their lawyer, but because they wanted him there. They wouldn’t have gotten here if it weren’t for him.
As Angie wiggled between them, her fingers laced with theirs, Judge Walker looked them over and smiled. It had been Angie’s idea for all three of them to wear his hockey jersey, with his name on the back but her number. She was very insistent about having her number, not that Benji minded. He just wanted this day to come.
The day he became a father.
Again.
But this time, he wasn’t some drunk the way he had been for Leary. No, he was going to be a good, solid father who would love Angie soberly until his dying day. It wouldn’t be easy—he knew that because he was in love with her mother, the most headstrong pain in the ass he had ever met—but he wouldn’t change a thing about her. He loved them both, and he was ready to start their lives together.
“Now, I have a petition here for the adoption of Angela Lynn Hart by Benjamin Walter Paxton, is that correct?”
Mark stood beside Benji and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Funny turn of events. Not that I’m complaining,” the judge said, his face lighting up, and he wasn’t kidding. Rick hadn’t lied when he said he’d sign over his rights. Before the judge could even ask him if he wanted to consent to the new parenting plan, he’d volunteered that he wanted to give up custody, his rights, and everything to Lucy, as long as he didn’t ever have to pay child support. The judge agreed for good reason, and Benji still couldn’t believe it.
But he was fucking thankful.