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She rolled over, glancing at me with a crease between her brows. She apparently hadn’t considered the repercussions either. “Hey, babes.” She smiled at my son like nothing was wrong. “You’re full of sunshine and rainbows this morning.” She brushed his hair across his forehead and kissed him. “Where’re your glasses?”
Instead of answering, he snuggled into her side, throwing his arm across her middle with his face smooshed against her chest, and she closed her eyes as she curled around him like peas in a pod.
My heart split in two. One half for my son. One half for Kennedy. “I’ll get your glasses,” I murmured, kissing the back of his head. “And maybe make waffles for breakfast.”
Kennedy opened her eyes to me, deep brown and still hazy with sleep. “Mm, waffles.” Then she whispered against Finn’s ear, “Did you hear that? Daddy’s gonna make us waffles.”
I turned, heading out to Finn’s room as she continued to murmur to Finn, nothing I could hear, but whatever it was made my son giggle. Inside his room, I placed a stuffed dinosaur onto his bed, collected the sippy cup from last night, and grabbed his glasses from a shelf next to his bed. Returning to my room, I paused in the doorway to watch them tickling each other, Kennedy shrieking in fake laughter whenever Finn’s tiny fingers scratched her shoulder. Then she would poke him in the belly, earning big, leg-shaking cackles from him.
After a moment, during one headshake, Kennedy spotted me and smiled. “Come on, Finnie. Daddy’s got your glasses. Let’s put them on and go brush our teeth.”
She stood and held out her arms so he’d jump into them. She positioned him on her hip before walking over to me, and I put his glasses on him, kissed his cheek, then kissed her cheek. I figured it was okay since Finn didn’t seem to notice or care.
While they brushed in their bathroom, I slipped into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt then brushed my own teeth, wondering how we would move forward. As far as I was concerned, I could clear out some drawers and space in the closet for her, though I wasn’t sure how we’d fit all of her makeup into my bathroom.
Then again, maybe she wouldn’t want to make my bathroomourbathroom.
In the kitchen, Kennedy had Finn seated with some orange juice and one of their ugly homemade hand puppets. This one was…a nutcracker? When I laughed, she raised her eyebrows at me. “What?”
I refused to answer, proceeding to gather a bowl and the waffle mix. I wasn’t a great cook, but I could mix up some batter with the best of ’em. Two years ago, my mother had gifted me a Belgian waffle maker, and I tended to pull it out for special occasions.
As I poured a ladleful of the mixture into the iron, Kennedy smoothed her palm down my back. “You laughing at my gingerbread man puppet?”
“I thought it was a nutcracker.”
“Oh my god!” She laughed, dropping her forehead to my arm.
“It’s great, really. Mine would look even worse.”
As the waffle cooked, we both glanced back at Finn, who was quietly singing to himself.
“He seemed fine with…everything this morning,” I said, and she met my gaze with a nervous little tic to her mouth. “How are you with everything this morning?”
She lifted her shoulder, her attention on the hem of my T-shirt as she toyed with it. “I’m fine, but I don’t want to make anything harder for you.”
“You’re not making anything harder for me.” I grasped her upper arms, forcing her to look at me. “You make everything better. For me and Finn.”
“You don’t think it’ll be confusing for him?”
Again, we glanced Finn’s way. He was scribbling a crayon over a piece of construction paper.
“Hey, guy.”
He turned to me over his shoulder.
“If Kennedy sleeps in Daddy’s room, would you care?”
His forehead crinkled for a moment in thought. “I seep addy’s room?”
“No. You sleep in your room still, but Kennedy might sleep in my room. Is that okay?”
He nodded then went back to scribbling, so I faced Kennedy. “Is it okay with you?”
When she didn’t answer right away, I cradled her cheek with my palm. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. There’s no pressure or rush.”
“I want to go slow,” she said with an impish smile. “But I want to go fast too.”
I chuckled and pressed my forehead to hers. “We’ll take it one day at a time, how ’bout that?”
