Deserted - Auctioned

Oregon in February? Fucking freezing. “Nah.” Gray threw his jacket over Jayden like a blanket and tucked him in properly. “Better?”

Jayden nodded and turned a bit so he could look at Gray easier.

Gray touched the boy’s rosy cheek briefly. “So, I know you don’t want to get adopted.”

“I don’t,” Jayden agreed firmly. The topic put him on edge, and he eyed Gray warily. “You haven’t tricked me, have you?”

Gray shook his head. “No way.”

Jayden relaxed a little.

“I do wish I could take care of you permanently, though,” Gray admitted. “Would that be bad?”

Jayden frowned. “You wanna adopt me?”

Time for Gray to tread really fucking carefully. “I’m not allowed to right now,” he murmured. “But in the future…? Yeah. I would.”

“The future is a long time from now.”

“The future could be in five minutes or a month or a year.” Gray took a breath and suppressed a shiver from the cold. “You’ve witnessed enough of my nightmares and anxiety to know I have some things I need to do to get better. I have to go to therapy and heal.”

Jayden touched a scar on Gray’s hand that disappeared under the sleeve of his hoodie.

“But there are other things you can do at the same time,” Gray went on. “Like, we’re gonna do a lot of fun stuff as often as possible.”

Jayden seemed to perk up at that. “You’ll visit me?”

The hope in his pale brown eyes tore at Gray. Holy shit, his heart already belonged to the kid. His eyes watered, but he managed to push down the emotions.

“Fuck yeah.” He tried to be as lighthearted as he could. “If you think I’m leaving you alone, you’re very wrong. We’re gonna talk every day, and I’ll visit several times a week.”

For a short second, Jayden lit up like a sun, though it was quickly extinguished by experience. “Shelters have a lotta rules, ’specially shelters for women and children. Men can’t visit.”

“Adeline’s place is a bit different,” Gray explained. “Most of the people there are hiding—kind of like you. They’ve been stuck in relationships and families where someone has been abusive. Do you know the word?” He earned himself a duh look at that, and Gray chuckled. “Well. Both men and women live at her shelter. For the most traumatized kids, there are private rooms and floors where some people aren’t allowed, in case they bring back bad memories for the children. But either way, I’ll be able to visit whenever. And I’ll be able to take you out too. We can go hiking or get dinner. We’ll go to the marina when it’s warmer, and I’ll show you around the whole town.”

Jayden shifted around to sit on his legs. “It’ll be like that until you feel better and can adopt me?”

Gray’s heart jumped up in his throat. He wished it were that simple, but he’d make it happen, so help him God. “Is that something you’d be okay with? Living with me, I mean?”

Jayden rubbed his nose and nodded. “You’re not like normal foster families.”

Gray had a feeling he’d never like Jayden’s version of what normal was.

“It’s going to take time,” he cautioned. “We will probably have to come up with something temporary in between—before I’d be allowed to take you home with me.” He didn’t dare mention other foster families right now. “I’m gonna talk to Adeline, though. She doesn’t judge parents by how much money they make or if they have a picket fence and a jungle gym in the backyard. And over the years, she’s managed to find good social workers to team up with.”

“Social workers suck.”

“Not all of them, buddy.” Gray smiled sympathetically. “You’ll see for yourself when you get to know Adeline. She always puts the children first.” He leaned in and bumped their foreheads together. “She knows how to work the system. Remember I told you about her? She used to hate it like you do, but then she learned all the rules and discovered a ton of loopholes. She and her team of lawyers can drag out a process for years.”

Jayden licked his lips and couldn’t really sit still. He was curious. “What kind of process?”

One case came to mind because Gray had volunteered at the facility at the time. “There was a girl once—about four years old—who was terrified of her mother. The girl stayed at the shelter with an aunt who didn’t have custody, so there wasn’t much she could do when the mother found them. And it took a single visit for Adeline to understand that the girl definitely shouldn’t live with her mother—who was a drug addict. So, she contacted some people to find evidence. Because where you find heavy drugs, you also find that at least one crime has been committed. Well, they found three. The mother was tied up in legal troubles for over a year before she was sentenced to prison on drug charges—she’d been selling stuff.” Part of him couldn’t believe he was telling an eight-year-old this, but on the other hand, Jayden was nothing like his peers. “In the end, the aunt was given enough time. Time to go through the process of gaining custody of the little girl.”