Volume Nine
Clover was nervous.
He had every reason to be nervous, he felt. While he and his dads had had sporadic conversations over the past several months, and they were on track to actually rebuilding themselves a real relationship, he still hadn't actually seen them in person since his high school graduation. Hadn't thought of them as his parents, like really his parents, since years before that.
It wasn't that he didn't love them, and it wasn't that they didn't love him. But they'd gone into adopting him thinking they were ready to be parents, and thinking they were equipped to be parents to a child in his situation, and been wrong about both of those things- handing him off to James had been a relief for all of them, for all that James still refused to admit that was what had actually happened.
(He and James had talked more about that since the Fall. Had actually managed to talk about it, now that that barrier of fear had been taken down. Clover knowing about Jacob's sins, and James no longer being afraid of losing his adoration, had done a lot to rip through the barrier. But they weren't quite there yet.)
In any case, their flight had gotten in a little while ago, and they'd texted that they would meet up with them out front once they'd grabbed their luggage, so Clover was watching the door nervously while they waited.