The way I love you

18| Forever Together

"Morning.", Lana chuckled, seeing everyone sitting around the table in the garden, already having breakfast since it was quite late for the kids to eat. The desk was nicely set up, with a fresh bunch of flowers as decoration, whilst everyone was wrapped up in a blanket since the mornings were still quite cold in Vancouver. 

"Mummy!!", Leo yelled expectantly, jumping down from his chair and right into Lana's arms with a loud giggle and of course one of his new dresses. Something Sean had to explain to Flynn in the morning since he was quite irritated about it.

"What's going on?", the woman chuckled, giving Leo a long hug and a big kiss on the cheek, before looking over to the nicely made breakfast again.

"Happy mother's day!!", Flynn smiled, causing Lana's facial expression to go blank. For a second she thought that her world stopped spinning. His words repeated in her head, again and again, sounding more beautifully from each time she heard them. Within all the chaos and traveling she completely forgot in addition that she would have never expected the kids to turn to her on mothers day. It was simply something she had never thought about.

"I did that for you in school!", Leo exclaimed, giving her a mothers-day-card and a lovely crafted flower to the completely stunned woman that tried to comprehend what was happening. 

"Close your mouth before you're catching flies.", Sean grinned, having a bite from his apple whilst enjoying the show. Lana's face was just the cutest right now, looking completely irritated in Sean's eyes. "Don't look at me like that. This wasn't my idea. The kids set it up. I was just helping.", he chuckled. 

"You like it??", Leo asked with sparkling eyes, still glued to Lana's legs. 

"It's… I don't know what to say… thank you… so so much. You're the best children in the world.", she smiled, giving each of them a big kiss on the cheek.

"And we got another present for you… well… it's just a piece of paper but… Ehm… anyway… there you go.", Flynn explained, giving Lana a big envelope with a quite nervous hand. "I hope you like it…", he confessed, slightly biting his finger when his stepmother pulled the pieces of paper out of the envelope. 

She frowned at the forms, not understanding what exactly these were since on the first look they sounded all quite complicated, with way too much information on them.

"These are adoption papers. Completely filled out already. There is only your signature missing.", Sean explained, his words sounding all blurry in Lana's head. Her hands began shaking when she searched for evidence that Sean was telling the truth until her eyes landed on the words she needed to read. 'Adoption files'. 

Her heart was sent on a roller-coaster ride of emotions, which shot tears right to her eyes without having any control over them. She pressed the paper close to her heart, sobbing all over it whilst going down on her knees. 

"Thank you.", Lana managed to say, opening her arms for Flynn and Leo to hug her, which they gladly did straight away, even though Leo was quite surprised that Lana would cry about it but he figured that these were happy tears.

"Happy mother's day.", Leo said again with a huge grin on his face. You will be our real mum with that paper. And no one can say otherwise." 

"I don't understand why we need a paper at all.", Flynn confessed. "Why can't we just love you and tell everyone that you're our mum?", he wondered. 

"It's the world we live in. Remember for later that it's not the piece of paper that makes you a mom or dad. It's the love you give to your children and the attention and care they need.", Lana smiled softly. "There are a lot of step moms and dads out there that chose to keep their children safe and that is worth so much more than some files im a folder.", she explained with a smile.