Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits #1)(91)

Joe whispered something into Carrie’s ear. She nodded and left the room. He scratched the back of his head. “Thank you for what you did for Jacob. You transformed this entire family.”

Family. Why didn’t he use razor blades and rip me open that way? “You have a nice way of showing your appreciation.”

“And we were wrong about that.” Joe knelt by some Legos on the floor and absently dropped them, one at a time, back into the container. “All Carrie ever wanted was children. We tried for years, but Carrie has a medical condition. She had surgery to try to correct it, but it created scar tissue.”

Unfortunately, I understood scar tissue.

“After she came to terms with the fact that we’d never hold our own natural-born child, we decided on adoption. We met Keesha through a friend and she convinced us to look into foster care. We attended classes, but never really planned on doing it until we met your brothers. Against everything we learned and were told, Carrie and I fell in love with them.”

He continued to plunk one Lego piece on top of another. “After a few months, we decided to adopt. We had to prove to the court that no one else had claim to them, which we thought would be easy, but it turns out that your mother had living relatives.”

My eyes narrowed. “Mom and Dad were only children. Mom’s parents died her first year of college. Grandma and Papa died six months apart from each other when I was ten.”

“Actually, your maternal grandmother is still alive, as well as your mother’s brothers and sisters. She ran away from home to go to college. According to our findings, your mother had a … less than tolerable upbringing.”

Besides to turn my world upside down and confuse me more … “Why are you telling me this?” And why hadn’t my mom told me herself?

Joe shrugged. “In case you want to know that you still have living blood relatives. And to make you understand that we spent two years negotiating and fighting to keep your brothers from a place your mom ran away from. We won, only to be faced with our greatest challenge … you.”

Just when I thought my life couldn’t be more f**ked up, Joe found a way to do it. He stood and assessed me—the way Isaiah did when he decided whether or not he was going to take a swing. “We’ve been wrong in how we’ve handled you and your relationship with your brothers. In our defense, you had just hit your foster father when we first took on your brothers. The system labeled you emotionally unstable and we were concerned about your influence on the boys, especially when we saw you bouncing around to several different foster homes. At first, we kept the boys away from you in order to protect them.”

“And after the system began to figure out I wasn’t the problem?”

“Then you scared us.” He stared at me and after a second continued, “When you announced your plans to seek adoption, I had people dig deep to find information on you, to use against you in court.”

Joe came closer to the bed and propped an arm on the wooden beam. “What you did to help those children in your previous foster homes was honorable, and what’s happened to you is deplorable. Noah, my wife and I were wrong about you, but we weren’t sure how to stop what we started without hurting our chances of keeping the boys.”

My mind went blank. Joe and I had spent the past couple of years at each other’s throats and because of one chance meeting, he was waving the white flag? He scratched the back of his head, obviously feeling as unsure about this moment as I did.

Joe began again, “The way I see it, you’ve got three options. You can walk out of this house and continue to fight for your brothers and possibly win, yanking them away from their friends, their school, this house and us. You can fight and lose and only end up seeing your brothers on whatever visitation schedule the court allows, if any.

“Or you can withdraw your claim on the boys. Let us adopt them and raise them as we already see them, as our own. But with this option, you become a part of this family. You’ll have unlimited access to them. Phone calls, visitation, school plays, basketball games. Hell, come have dinner with us once a week.”

“Why?” I asked him.

He blinked, surprised by the question. “Why what?”

“Why are you offering the last option?” They’d gone this long hating me. Why be so generous now?

“Because they love you, Noah, and we love them. In ten years, I don’t want to explain to my sons that I let fear and pride keep them away from their only blood relative who cared about them.”

“I don’t trust you,” I said. Because adults lied.

Joe looked me straight in the eye. “I’ll have my lawyer put it in writing.”

I’d heard enough and I needed air. Joe had thrown out too much information, screwing with my brain. I pushed past him so I could find my brothers. Carrie lurked in the hallway, clutching a stuffed bear. For years I’d seen her as the hateful bitch who kept my brothers away from me. Thanks to Joe’s little speech I couldn’t see that anymore. Instead, I saw a broken woman who couldn’t complete her own dreams because of me.

Yeah, I knew all about scar tissue. Problem was, helping her was only going to increase mine.

Echo

I slammed the door to my car and ran up the dark driveway. Thank God, Isaiah was under the hood of Aires’ car.

“I am so sorry I’m late. I had this thing—” I met my mom, whom my dad would freak about if he found out I saw “—and it got screwed up—” she’d rather I spend years never sleeping again because she’s scared of what I’d think of her and then pointed out I’m a heartless, unforgiving bitch “—and I lost track of time.” I’d driven around trying to convince myself she was wrong.