I had a lot of help with this chapter to make sure all of the laws and policies of foster placements in Washington state are accurate. Thank you so much – you know who you are! If there are any inaccuracies, they belong to me!

Still staying back in time for this one!

Gave our hearts

Made the start

And it was hard

"I think you're even higher this time!"

My breath filtered out in front of me with my every word, the gray wisps blending in seamlessly into the gray sky around us. December winter was upon us here in Washington, and there was just enough time between the last sprinkling of snow to the next to leave the ground dark and hardened beneath our feet. With the snow off the ground for the time being and the temperature still frigid, we were all dressed in our winter's warmest to keep out the chill.

It still didn't stop us from a visit to one of our favorite parks in the area.

I watched from my place on the park bench as he pumped his legs higher and higher on the swings, each kick of his legs bringing him to a higher perch in the world.

"I've been practicing!" He shouted back, the sheer joy in his voice evident even from the distance between us.

I laughed at the six-year-old boy in front of me. "Have you now?"

"Yeah. Mommy takes me to the park after school on Friday's."

"Wow. You're really lucky."

"No, we're lucky!" His mother chimed in from her seat next to me on the bench. I looked over at her at the sound, her voice a reminder of the true purpose of my visit.

"I think you're all lucky to have each other, Heidi." I smiled warmly at her despite the numbness trickling into my face from the weather.

She beamed at my words, pride warming her face pink on this cold day.

Wanting to keep the positive mood of the moment, I tentatively reached for the necessary documentation for today's visit. "How are things going, Heidi?"

"Better." She said, rocking back and forth slowly on the bench in beat to her happiness. "Now that we have him back."

I took my focus away from her and followed her gaze to her son in front of us on the swing. Smiling wide, I looked back over at Heidi next to me, noting how genuinely happy she was. Seeing her happy was just as important to me as seeing the smile on her son's face.

"I'm so happy to hear that. That is always the ultimate goal," I reminded her, never wanting her to forget that reunification, if possible, between parents and child was always the desired outcome in my line of work.

"We're so excited. Marcus was so happy. He smiled so big!" I could only imagine that the smile on Heidi's husband's face matched that of her own.

"Have you done everything we discussed last time about making your home a safe one for all of you?"

Marcus and Heidi were a special case, and one that stayed with me for all the years I had been assigned to their family. They were wonderful people. They were young and in high school when they had met, and still in high school when not so long after, they added a third to join them in their happiness. Now he was swinging on the swing in front of us six years later.

They loved their son and did their absolute best to keep him safe – cognitive disabilities of both parents be damned. Unfortunately, having no family of their own to rely on when times became challenging, it became our job to step in all those years ago. I had watched him grow up, from diapers to pumping his own legs on a park swing. The three of them were always the happiest when they were together, which had been denied for a long time until Heidi and Marcus could provide the necessities needed to keep their son with them. I hadn't seen him this happy in years.

"Yes!" Heidi said enthusiastically on the bench, nodding her head in excitement. Her eyes twinkled like the falling snow of the week before. "Marcus bought us all new toothbrushes and sheets for our beds!"

"That's wonderful, Heidi. Really wonderful." I jotted a few thoughts onto my documentation. "And where is Marcus today? Working, you said?"

"He got a new job last week. They're really nice to him there," she answered.

We watched as the boy jumped from his swing into the air, landing in a playful heap of laughter back onto Earth.

With a smile, we headed back to their house down the street, discussing everything we needed to see from them for future visits. When I was satisfied with what I had gotten out of our visit today, I said goodbye to Heidi and reached down to give the boy a hug.

He squeezed me long and hard, and I remembered then a saying from one of my former supervisors when I was back in college. When a child hugs you, don't be the first to let go. You never know how much they need it. I held him until he released me, his little six-year-old arms sliding from around my neck.

"Bye, Edward!"

Like every visit, I prayed that this would be the time he stayed.

He was growing older now and was becoming more aware that his situation was different than that of his peers. He noticed how they never had to leave their own house and parents and spend time in a stranger's house until Mommy and Daddy were ready to have him back. He noticed that the only time his wardrobe grew was when other people he stayed with added some items to his black garbage bag containing his things.

I saw it in his eyes; I recognized it. I knew the heaviness behind those eyes, the secrets and weight held behind them at just six years old.

I prayed again when I started my car, adjusting the heat to the appropriate level to warm the ache of my bones and the dread out of my heart. I backed out of their driveway, watching as he waved at me from the front window.

You'll be okay, buddy.

I was living proof that it was possible. I was living proof that it was more than possible to be more than just okay.

My life turned out to be pretty fucking amazing.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed from the passenger seat next to me, the red traffic light reflecting off the screen to show a message from Bella.

Will you be home soon?

On days like these, when I saw myself buried beneath one of my cases, I couldn't get home to her fast enough.

On my way.

She answered quickly, one word that made my foot press down on the gas pedal and my pants tighten beneath the buckle of my belt.

Hurry.

Like I said before, my wife was insatiable. Three months of marriage and we were still acting like teenagers making up for lost time. I couldn't get enough of her; she always got home from work earlier than I did and I found her there every evening, ready and waiting for me.

I thought about a different boy this time, a boy hiding in the darkness of a closet long forgotten about, wondering if there would ever be a time in his life when someone would recognize his absence and crave his presence. Smiling wistfully, I told my childhood self in the empty closet that in time, there would come a girl with a purple soccer ball, who would do exactly that.

And then he would marry her.

I accelerated again, thoughts of her making me antsy as I took the quickest way home. There were still patches of snow littering the grounds of The Rec, and now that it was December, the twinkling lights draped across the outside of our cabin in the woods helped guide me down the dark driveway.

It was only a little past five in the evening, and The Rec was still in full swing, the kids filtering through different areas and places on the property. Counselors were in their desired places around the premises, making sure that everything was supervised according to the way I wanted – the way it should have been operated years ago under Felix's supervision. One of our favorite things to do was joke about how much trouble we had gotten away with here when we were kids.

I wanted no trouble on my hands. The only thing my hands wanted were my wife.

"Where's Bella?" I asked Sam, one of the senior counselors here once I had made my way inside and greeted our guests. He was in the kitchen helping to prepare a light dinner for the kids we offered.

"Hall closet last I saw," he answered, taking a whopping pot of broccoli – macaroni and cheese off the burner. Good 'ole Broccoli Mac.

"Hall closet?" I questioned strangely, mostly to myself, but I turned and headed in the direction Sam spoke of. Our sex life was never lacking, and we had definitely disappeared upstairs a few times when we just couldn't wait for operating hours to be over, but the hall closet? With all these kids around?

Risky.

I could never put anything past Bella, though.

"Bella?" I called when I stood in the back hallway away from prying eyes.

"Back here," she shouted back. "Can I have some help?"

Can she have some help, I thought to myself with a smug chuckle. I loosened my tie as I walked to find her in the back corner of The Rec, bending over in a darkened closet at the end of the hall. I'd been waiting all day to help her out. I stopped when I saw that she was bent over because she was trying to move a box way too heavy for her to pick up.

"This?" I couldn't hide the disappointment in my voice.

"Yeah, it's too heavy to carry myself. The girls want to decorate for the holidays. Everything is in this box," Bella replied, brushing the hair out of her eyes with a tilt of her head.

"This? A box? I rushed home for a box?"

She laughed, stepping over that damn box to lean into me and press a kiss against my cheek. "I'll make it up to you," she promised, and I already knew she would keep her word.

"Meet me upstairs in five minutes," I growled, bending down to hoist the box onto my shoulder, "and sit on my face."

-tr-

We spent the next few months in a blissful tumble of real life and our own personal utopia, and the best part of it all was that sometimes it was hard to distinguish between the two. A dark and winter white winter paved the way for a crisp spring, and we watched the rebirth of the land from behind the cabin walls. The days were spent working – Bella had taken a position at an accounting firm nearby, and I juggled enough cases to make my head spin; our evenings were spent with the youth of Forks and all of their shenanigans, but my favorite part of the day was when our ideal real life settled into the shadow of night to make way for that personal utopia in our bed.

I take that back – limiting our adventures to the bed would be the underestimation of the century. Morning and night, Bella and I found new ways to express our vows to one another.

"Can't you call out sick?"

Bella's voice panted from her place above me, our hands locked in the air between us as she rose and fell and I disappeared within her. Her brown hair, wild from a night of sleep, hung around us like a curtain as we raced to a finish line neither of us wanted to cross in the early morning sun.

We never wanted it to end.

I pushed back on her hands, causing her hips to swivel with just a little more pressure. I let out a satisfied groan, my hands dropping from hers to slide slowly up her thighs. "Did that last week, remember?" My eyes dipped from her face to where I was buried inside of her. One of my favorite sights to start my day.

"Call out again," she answered in a whimper when I pulled her down hard by her hips, as if we didn't both have jobs waiting for us later that morning.

I laughed. "Why, do you have specific plans in mind?"

"Just more of this," Bella replied, stopping so her movements were almost non-existent, "if you're interested."

My wife smiling down at me was the last thing I remembered before flipping us over and showing her my answer.

"Am I interested?"

Her responding laughter almost convinced me to take her up on her suggestion of missing work again.

That was how we spent our first year of married life. We worked during the day, came home to spend the evenings at The Rec with the crew and the kids there, then disappeared upstairs into our own little world. It was hard to leave our world once we were lost in its clutches. Being with Bella, in our home above The Rec, was sometimes beyond my realm of understanding.

Sometimes I didn't think it was real.

But then when we had mornings like this one, where her hands began to roam in the hours between dark and light, searching for me beside her in our bed, I realized that no dream could ever be as perfect as this.

This was my reality.

Collapsing on top of her as the sun yellowed the sheets on our bed and painted the walls around us, I rested my head against her chest as my labored breathing returned to normal.

"Change your mind?"

"Don't do this to me," I groaned from my place on her chest before I lazily slid my lips up her breasts to find her lips. I kissed her with a pang of regret. "You know I can't."

"I know, I know." She said, returning my kiss and running her hands up and down my back. "Would be nice, though."

Sighing, I slid off her body to relax next to her. "It's this meeting. I can't miss it."

Heidi and Marcus had lost custody once again and I had a scheduled meeting with the team first thing this morning.

"I know." Bella responded, sitting up and leaning over me to look at the clock on my nightstand. "What time is it?"

"Six."

"Good. We can go back to sleep for a bit."

Little did we know that would be the last restful sleep we would have for many years to come.

-tr-

Running a hand down my face, I stared out of the window in my office, searching for an answer that would never come. The afternoon sun warmed the grass surrounding the building, bees trailing from one flower to the next in preparation for the upcoming season. The buds on the trees threatened to overflow into colorful blooms within minutes. The birds still sung, and the clouds still hovered, the world went on turning, and yet a little boy sat on a cold chair in this building with nowhere to go.

When a teacher at the school had reported that a student had come to school repeatedly with fraying clothes caused by daily wear, empty lunchboxes, and aching teeth, the student's welfare we now held in our hands.

They had been doing so well.

I had visited Heidi and Marcus a few weeks ago, an unannounced visit, and everything I had seen and heard had been in line with our expectations. Seeing the boy here always tore a little piece of my healed heart open once again.

I didn't trust myself to look over at him where he sat beneath the windows on the other side of my office door, his eyes giving everything away that I remembered all too well. He felt too much for a boy his age to shoulder by himself.

Shaking back memories of myself sitting on that very same chair, I spoke over my shoulder to my colleague, Carmen, who had offered her assistance when she noticed I wasn't having any luck in helping this situation as swiftly as usual.

"And the last family he was with? They can't?" I turned away from the window a moment later to ask her this.

Carmen shook her head and hung up the phone with a look of sadness. "We've called every family he's been placed with before. Plus a handful of others. No one can take him this time," she answered. "At least not today, or even next week."

"Shit." I ran my hands through my hair, flopping down into my desk chair. "So what are our options?"

She hesitated for a moment, knowing my stance on her suggestion before she spoke the words. "There's a bed for him."

A six-year-old boy had no business being where that bed waited for him. I would know – I had spent many nights there myself. The darkness provided no comfort, the other boys in the group home battling their own personal traumas in their sleep. The image of him in the air on the swings at the park dangled in the forefront of my mind, never once stopping to ease the intensity of the situation.

I repeated what we had gone over for the last several hours. "No family. Just a bed downtown?"

"Just a bed."

I looked over at him now, the only thing I could see was the swinging of his feet back and forth in the air as he sat on the chair in a building full of adults. The innocence of the swing of his feet, as if they were the very last part of him that retained the child-like remnants he deserved, was what drove me to a conclusion that was equal parts terrifying and absolute.

"There's another option."

-tr-

"Do you like chicken fingers?"

"I guess."

"What about pizza?"

"We have pizza at school every Friday."

"Well, it isn't Friday, but we can have pizza if you want."

"Really? Even if it's not Friday?"

"Whatever you want. It's yours."

-tr-

"I don't –" She stopped, stumbling over her words. "I don't understand. You did what?!"

I found Bella in our kitchen upstairs washing the last of the remaining dishes in the sink. She angrily threw down the dish towel onto the counter and stood on the tips of her toes to get a look out of the window overlooking the sink. She peered frantically down at the grounds below.

"Can you keep your voice down?" I hissed at her, moving her away from the window. We were two stories above the children outside playing in the spring weather, the sun setting later in the day a blessing to those who loved to play outside. There was no way they could hear us, but my nerves had me rattled and irritable.

Bella shook her head and looked at me in warning. "I'm sorry. You bring a random boy into our house and you expect me to be quiet?" She moved past me to look out the window again to see a glimpse of The Rec's latest arrival. Pulling her back again, I moved us into our living room away from any possible audience.

"He may hear you!" I cautioned.

"How is this even possible?" She placed a hand on either temple as if the information coming into her brain was too much for her to comprehend. "What happened?"

I sighed and plopped down onto the couch in an attempt to get my bearings. "Got a call from the school and we had to open an investigation."

"And he was removed?"

I nodded. "Last night."

"Oh God," Bella groaned in sadness, moving to sit down next to me on the couch. "How is he?"

"I can't tell," I responded. "Which terrifies me." The moment a child becomes numb to the situation means that it's happened far too often to bear repeating.

Bella was silent for a moment before turning to me. "But why, Edward? Why is he here?"

Misplaced anger welled up inside of me, not sure if I was taking her words the right way. "Why is he here? Are you suggesting I turn my back on him?"

"Of course not!" She shouted in defense, her tone suggesting I had misinterpreted her meaning. "But how is this even possible? You spring this on me without warning and I'm not supposed to have any questions? Other than a phone call from you telling me to come down to the office to sign an agreement for a background check, I've been completely in the dark. I don't even have a bed for him!"

At this realization, she jumped up from the couch and hustled down the hallway to the closet where we kept extra sheets and blankets and pillows. I followed behind her as she sprawled into our upstairs office, watched as she paused momentarily in thought before moving our desk into the corner so she could take out the mattress from the sofa bed. She hastily snatched the sheets out of my hand when I moved to help her.

"You know I have a license to foster children. You know I've had one since before you came back."

She stopped making the sofa bed and paused to look at me briefly before continuing. I had decided after college that getting approved to be a foster parent in the state of Washington might not be a bad idea, considering my field and how I had firsthand knowledge of what it felt like to be forgotten. If I could help prevent other children from experiencing my childhood, I wanted to make sure I could make it happen.

I had told Bella not long after she had decided to stay here in Forks, so this was not news to her.

I continued. "I made some calls. Asked some questions to make sure this was allowed before I brought him with me. It took a few hours, but you passed a background check so he's able to stay here. With us."

"For how long?"

"Ideally until his parents are proven to be fit by the court," I answered, running a hand through my hair for the millionth time that day. "Or until someone else can take him in."

The sofa bed finished, she pulled her hair up into a messy bun and looked around the room that was in no shape to house a six-year-old. "I'm not prepared for this," she said in a panic, looking over at me with a desperate look in her eye.

"It's not about you, Bella!" I raised my voice, not purposefully, but the memories of my life in the system took over my emotions. I stepped towards her. "Do you know what it's like to have no one in this world? Absolutely no one? Do you know what it's like to have every door close on you before you even get the chance to try to open it?!"

I saw her shoulders drop, her sigh long in sympathized understanding. I went on. "I do. I had no one fighting for me. No one trying to find the best place for me. No one trying to keep me on their caseload just so they could keep tabs on me."

I saw things flash in my mind that I had tried so hard to forget. "If there was no heat, I stayed cold. If there wasn't any food to eat, I didn't eat. If I had to hide in a closet until morning so no one would bother me at night, that's what I did. And you know what I wished? When I was in that closet, freezing cold and starving in another misplaced foster, did you know what I wished?"

"What was your wish?" I heard the catch in her voice.

"I wished I had someone fighting for me."

"Like what you're doing for him."

I nodded, watching her walk towards me and letting her arms wrap around my waist. I sighed when I held her in my arms. "I was him, Bella." I thought about all the times I had opened the door to The Rec the past two years to finally see someone, her, anxious to see me. It warmed me like nothing else.

"And maybe a part of me always will be."

We stayed there in silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in the seriousness of what was happening. She slid her arms away from me for a moment and stepped back to place a kiss against my lips. "I'm sorry," Bella whispered, sliding her arms back around my waist where they belonged. "A phone call would have been nice, you know."

"I know. I should have called. There was just too much happening. My focus was on him."

"Well, do I get to meet him, or what? You've kept me waiting long enough."

With one final glance at our personal utopia that would be forever altered, we headed downstairs towards the front of The Rec. We passed the kids playing video games, passed the area for arts and crafts, passed the library in the corner with the kids who preferred reading to anything else. Hand in hand, we stepped outside into the fresh air and over to where Sam was introducing our Rec Regulars, that's what we called the kids who refused to leave the fun The Rec provided, to The Rec's latest addition.

He ran over to us when he saw me, shyly leaning into my legs. He was as tall as my thigh and as eager to belong as I had been when I was his age.

"I'd like you to meet someone," I said to him, my outstretched arm motioning for Bella to come closer towards us.

I should have known that a smile from her would be all it would take for him to melt into a feeling of completeness.

"Hello," Bella said softly, kneeling down to his level with an open hand to shake. "I'm Bella. What's your name?"

The boy looked up at me hesitantly with a soft smile, and with a gentle nudge from me, he turned to her and placed his hand in her own.

"Benjamin."

-tr-

Couldn't have Benjamin at Charlotte's wedding without an explanation, right?! If you can't remember Benjamin, reread the first two chapters. He's there :)

Keep voting for Pursuing the Proposition!

Join my facebook group, Lily Jill Fics for teasers and some of my other crazy thoughts.

See you next week!

Chapter 5 Sneak Peek

We lived and learned

Life threw curves

There was joy

There was hurt

Remember When