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“I’m not ready.”
“’Course ya are. Been looking forward to this day for months now. All you could even think about.” He steps further into the room, hands—natural and prosthetic—resting lightly on her shoulders. “Sweetpea, what’s all this about? Do you wanna go? We can leave right now, have you back at the trailer before suppertime.”
“No!” He grins and she can’t help but return it.
“That’s better. Now, what’s wrong? Just nervous?”
She shrugs, unsure how to say it, maybe even unsure what it is—but no, she knows, she’s sure. “I’m not going to be Rey Logan anymore,” she whispers, tears welling up.
“Aw, now, stop that,” he says, grabbing at a tissue and dabbing lightly at her eyes. “Sweetpea, you will always be Rey Logan.”
Rey sniffs and dabs at her eyes again and nods. He’s right, he is. “Thanks, Daddy.” She flings her arms around him and sniffles again. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Sweetpea.”
💕💕💕
Clyde’s heart seizes up for a moment when he sees her, all curled in on herself and looking so small and defeated.
He thought they’d moved past this, and that’s on him. He knew—knows—how hard it can be to start to trust that sometimes people really do mean what they say, ‘specially as when some’s showed they can’t so many times before.
“Rey,” he says, and her head snaps up, eyes going too wide as she goes pale (paler) and clenches her fists. “Come on, let’s go home.”
He half expects her to run again, before they get across the parking lot, but she just sighs and slumps her shoulders and walks to the truck. She scrubs at her eyes when he gets into the driver’s seat and turns the key, the engine cranking to life and making the whole vehicle shudder for a second.
“Should have Earl look at that,” she mumbles, and he can’t help but smile.
“Nah, I’ll just make you fix it.”
She gasps a little bit, but neither of them speaks again as he puts the truck in drive and backs out of the space.
💕💕💕
So many people. Too many, really, and it makes her nervous. All those eyes on her, and they’re happy for her. She knows that, she does, but all she can think about are all the times that wasn’t the case. The times the eyes trained on her were full of malice or lust or greed, nothing good to be found.
Dad hooks his arm through hers. “Ready?”
She nods.
She watches as the man at her side takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “Let’s go,” he says, and jerks her backwards, the double doors swinging out behind them as she stumbles and laughs and…
And it’s not too much anymore.
Because Logans take care of each other.
💕💕💕
They’re halfway home before he gives in and says it, the thing that he’s wanted to since the call came in that she was safe. “You scared us, you know? Me and your ma—um, Phee. We was worried.” He shakes his head a little bit and pulls over to the shoulder, putting it in park and setting the emergency brake. “I know it ain’t easy,” he begins, hoping he’ll find the right words. “There’s folks that say one thing and mean another, or they use and hurt people to get what they want.”
He swallows hard, anger and horror lodging in his throat, because there’s no official reports, and no one’s said it, not even Rey, but he knows someone somewhere at least tried to...
“There’s folks that try and make people do things they don’t want to, and it ain’t right, Rey. Ain’t right, ain’t fair, and I hope you know by now that you can come to me, to us. We love you, Rey. You’re our daughter. Don’t need no blood tests or legal papers to make it true. Family ain’t about that. It’s the people you love, who love you back, and they might make mistakes, because they’re not perfect. No one is.”
She sniffs and scrubs at her eyes again, stares down at the backpack hugged closed in her lap. “Is…is she okay? M-mom? And the baby?”
She looks up, shy and scared and hopeful, and he nods. “Yeah, yeah, they’re fine.”
He doesn’t comment about her calling Phee ‘Mom’ and she pretends not to see the tear that escapes him at hearing it, and they go home.
💕💕💕
Rey’s not the only one laughing. Half the people there at least chuckled at Rey’s outraged and plaintive “Da-ad!” and those who aren’t laughing are mostly grinning. Mama shakes her head at them both, and Uncle Jimmy whispers something that has Aunt Sylvia swatting him while Aunt Mellie and Uncle Joe snort-laugh.
Sadie makes eye contact with Rey and rolls her eyes.
And Ben…
Well, he’s all Rey can see.
💕💕💕
He’s not listening, really, but he’s in the next dang room, and it’s only separate by the breakfast counter, not even a whole wall.
Rey and Sadie, making their acquaintance.
“I’m your cousin Sadie!”
“We aren’t family!” Rey practically hisses, all curled up and hugging herself, like she’s hurtin’ something awful. Sadie tilts her head and gives Rey that look, the one that means—
“You’re way dumber than you look,” Sadie mumbles, and Rey stares in shock. “Family ain’t about papers and blood and all that.” She keeps talking, but it’s low and fast and he can’t really make it out. Whatever it is seems to be working, though, because Rey’s leaning in, listening all close like, and it’s…well it’s more progress than he and Phee have made in the two weeks since they found her in that old hunting blind during an ice storm and took her in.
They still don’t know what’s going to happen, if they can keep her or not, even though them friends of Sylvia’s seem to think so.
But she’s theirs, as if she was always meant to be. Phee done loves her so much already, and Clyde just wants to keep her safe, give her the things she ain’t never had.
💕💕💕
Everything is just…gone. No crowd, no sounds. If not for Daddy’s arm to hold her down she might just float away rather than walk.
Everything’s all blurry, and she can’t quite figure out why until the tears are already slipping down. They stop and Clyde pats at her eyes with the handkerchief his Granny made for his Grandpa, and then he says something she doesn’t catch and kisses her cheek as he presses the hankie into her hand.
For a split second she thinks she might fall, but Ben is there, and he takes her hands in his and she tries to pay attention, she does but…
💕💕💕
She edges into the room, hunched down and back to the wall, hands twisting together and her lower lip between her teeth.
It hurts, that she still does that, hurts that she’s afraid of them—of him.
Clyde tries not to move too much, slides down in his chair a little bit, the best he can do to seem smaller, and reaches for Phee’s hand under the cover of the table as Rey pauses in the corner.
She straightens, a few inches taller than Phee already, and with probably a couple more to go.
“I want…” Rey begins, then takes a deep breath. “I want you to adopt me,” she blurts out. “You said it doesn’t matter, that we’re a family, and I want that. I want to be Rey Logan.”
💕💕💕
Ben’s Uncle Luke talks…a lot. It feels so much longer than it should, and the music is pretty but she just wants to get it over with. Skip straight to the good parts.
But first is the part that makes her cry all over again, but she’s not alone in it and Ben’s eyes are red rimmed and his voice is shaky and hers squeaks but they get through it together, even as she hears Mama and Daddy both sniffling there behind her.
Ben’s already kissing her by the time Uncle Luke gets to the “I now pronounce you,” part and it’s over far too fast for Rey’s liking even though Uncle Joe let out a wolf whistle and the Purple Lady is mumbling something about indecency over by the organ.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Uncle Luke says. And this is it. This moment, the one she’s both longed for and dreaded in equal measure. “It is my honor to introduce you for the first time to—” Ben squeezes her hand and she glances at Mama and Daddy. “Mr. and Mrs. Logan-Solo.”
💕💕💕
Fishing.
She gets up at four in the morning to go fishing with him.
Truth be told, he’s surprised. He figured…well, he thought maybe she’d done decide she was too old, or it wasn’t a girly enough thing to do, now that she’s on the cheerleading squad and bound to be on homecoming court. Most of her weekends are spent at the mall or working on her college essays or volunteering with one of the clubs she’s in.
Not much time for an old man.
Rey passes him a biscuit and swings her legs out over the end of the dock as she finishes hers and sips at her soda.
“Don’t tell your Mama, I let you have that with breakfast,” he mutters.
“I remember the first time you brought me here,” she says softly, their lines in the water as the sun creeps over the trees and the hills in the distance. “I didn’t…I wasn’t sure if you meant to drown me. But you just cast my line and you sat and you didn’t make me talk. I was a Logan then, and I didn’t even know it yet.” She leans her head against his shoulder. “I want to always be Rey Logan.”
“You will be, even if you decide to run off and get married and change your name to Darth Vader.”
She squawks and laughs and he realizes she’s almost grown and…
“You’ll always be my little girl,” he mumbles.
💕💕💕
The photographer caught it. The look on her face when Daddy tried to pull her out of the church, effectively settling her nerves with the little prank. The expression of shock is nearly the same as the one he wears in the picture beside it, filling the other half of the double frame: the moment Uncle Luke said “Mr. and Mrs. Logan-Solo.”
Rey smiles and dusts off the frame, centers it next to the one of herself and Ben. The door opens and she turns with a grin as Ben opens the door. “We’re here, Sweetheart!”
💕💕💕
She brings him home for Thanksgiving, the RA kid from the day they moved her into her dorm. Friends, she says, and he doesn’t have anywhere to go.
Phee pinches him and leans in, lips against his ear. “Stop glowering, Mr. Logan.”
Clyde frowns as Rey passes that Solo kid the mashed potatoes and Phee makes Rusty take his matchbox cars off the table again. Hazel squirms and coos in the bassinet, and Jimmy and Mellie and Joe Bang are plotting together at the other end of the table.
They get through dinner with minimal crises, though, and the kid volunteers to help with dishes but Clyde still doesn’t like him.
Not even when Phee insists “he reminds me of you.”
Especially not then.
💕💕💕
Daddy groans as he leans down to hug her, and Mama manages to get Rusty and Hazel out of their coats and boots before Ben takes them into the kitchen where she absolutely, one-hundred-and-ten-percent knows he’s sneaking them cookies before dinner.
Rey rubs at her back and maybe groans a little bit herself. Ben’s parents elected to stay at a hotel so the Logans could have the guest room with the kids on the pull out in Ben’s office.
Rey’s fine with that.
It’s crowded enough already, and Uncle Lee and Dayton haven’t even arrived.
It’s her first year hosting Christmas, and she’s already over it. She glares in the general direction of her feet, even though she can’t see them. OK, so it’s not really the hosting that’s the problem.
Her back aches again, a little more sharply, and…no.
It’s fine.
💕💕💕
“We’re getting married!”
She’s happy, so very happy, and the ring on her hand is sparkling almost as much as Rey.
How can she be grown enough to get married? Feels like only last week he was taking her to get braces and giving up popcorn and crunchy tacos and anything else she couldn’t have until they come off.
Only yesterday they were fishing at sunrise, just the two of them, because nobody else wanted to get up that early just to be quiet. Phee pinches his side and he forces a smile and he’s happy for Rey, he is. Just maybe a little sad for himself.
They only had her ten years, and now some fella’s taking her away.
💕💕💕
“Rey? Sweetheart, come on, we need to go now.”
She shakes her head and tries to breathe through the pain. “Mmm, nope, no, not going. Can’t…I can’t do this.”
He’s going to pick her up, she thinks, going to pick her up and make her go and…
“Daddy, please, help me. I can’t do this. I can’t. Tell him I can’t.”
“Yes you can, Sweetpea. You can and you will.”
Another contraction and she whimpers. “I’m not strong enough.”
“Yes, you are.”
“But I’m afraid. What if I’m no good? What if I’m like…” and she can’t finish it. She can’t say it, but he knows.
“Rey Anne Logan,” he says, “you stop this right now. You are strong and smart and fierce, and you are going to be the best mama the world has ever seen.”
💕💕💕
Ben smiles and stares at the tiny bundle in his arms.
“You did real good, Sweetpea,” Clyde says, and his voice doesn’t even break when Rey offers him a tired smile. Phee fusses over her, and Ben gets up, makes Clyde take his chair there by the bed, then settles the bundle in his arms.
“Bennett Clyde Logan-Solo,” Rey whispers.
He can’t wipe his eyes and hold the baby too, but that don’t matter none.