Unexpected Family

What If i Want To Keep Them?

Billie's POV

It started as a whisper in the back of my head.

What if I kept them?

I'd been pushing it down for days brushing it off every time it came up.

Telling myself it was just temporary attachment, that I was tired, overwhelmed, too soft for a minute.

But after that quiet day... the one where Skylar said I "smelled like home"... the whisper got louder.

And now it won't shut up.

I waited until the girls were asleep Skylar curled around her stuffed dinosaur like it was stitched into her ribcage,

Mackenzie's foot somehow on my pillow even though her head was nowhere near it.

I sat in the kitchen again. Same chair. Same hoodie. Same shaky hands.

I opened my phone, typed "How to adopt foster kids" into Google, then immediately erased it.

Too real.

Too fast.

Instead, I scrolled through my contacts until I found her name: Nina, the social worker from the agency.

We'd only spoken once, briefly. She was nice. Gentle. Like someone who'd seen too many hard things but still chose softness anyway.

I texted: "Hey. Can we talk tomorrow? I just have a few questions."

Three dots. Then they disappeared. Then came back. Then finally: "Of course. Call me anytime."

I didn't call yet. I wasn't ready to hear my voice say it out loud.

But I knew what I was going to ask.

I knew what I wanted.

I wanted them.

Skylar. Mackenzie. Their tiny hands, their wild hair, their chaos and questions and love I didn't know I was capable of receiving.

I didn't want to be the celebrity they stayed with for two weeks and forgot about.

I wanted to be home.

But here's the part that scared me: What if I wasn't allowed to be?

What if someone decided I wasn't stable enough? Or too busy? Or too famous, or too weird, or too "not motherly"

to be trusted with something this real?

I've performed in front of millions of people and
never felt stage fright like this.

I don't know what comes next.

But I know this isn't just PR anymore.

This is personal.