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The eighth time Adrian Cole stopped me from becoming his wife, he still expected me to wait for him. We were ten minutes away from finalizing our civil marriage at the Cook County courthouse when he slid a second folder across the table and told me to sign it first. Inside were preliminary adoption papers for Emma, the four-year-old daughter of Vanessa Blake, the woman Adrian had spent years calling “family.” My name had already been typed onto the forms as Emma’s prospective adoptive mother.