Tell Me It's Real (At First Sight, #1)

by T.J. Klune

tried to pretend the new system that they’d made us start using weeks before made sense and wasn’t a train wreck like the rest of us knew it was (“This will make your jobs so much easier” turned out to be code for “We may not have known exactly what we were doing, but we put too much money into it, so you’ll kind of have to suck it up and work with it, even though it’s so broken that it makes your jobs ten times harder.”

I figured it must come with having your name be something as pretentious as Tad, because, really? Who names their kid Tad?

If you’re responsible enough to become a parent, then you should be responsible enough to accept your kid no matter how they turn out. It doesn’t matter if they’re disabled or gay or not as smart as others or green or black or blue or whatever the hell they turn out to be. You have them, you love them. Always. Being a parent isn’t about getting to pick and choose what you want your kid to be. Being a parent means protecting your kid from anything that could ever harm him. Being a parent means you shelter, but you also make them stronger so one day they can stand on their own.

“You’re so used to what you had before that this is scaring you. And it’d be easier to walk away. It would be easier to pretend this never happened. But the things we want in life will never be easy, and if you want it, if you really do, then you need to fight for it with everything you’ve got.