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Then what are you worried about?”
“Finley,” I stated, like it was obvious. “We don’t know who they’d replace me with. Who would become Finley’s teacher if I got fired? She needs stability more than anything right now, and that would shake everything up.”
“You’re worried about… Finley.” It wasn’t a question. Mason blinked at me a few times, and the corners of his mouth subtly curled upward.
“Well, yeah. That would be a rough transition for her.”
“You’re right,” he said. “And I have to admit, I hadn’t even thought about that as a possibility. But if it happens, we’ll get through it, just like we’ve gotten through everything else. The three of us—we’re in this together.”
Mason’s gaze was intense. The three of us, he’d said. He was once again referring to us like we were a little family or something. I thought of how he, Finley, and I danced together at the wedding, and how happy he looked. The nagging guilt I had felt when he told me he loved me returned.
“I don’t know if I’m the one, Mason,” I said quietly, holding his stare. “You’re searching for someone who can step in as some kind of maternal figure for Finley, and I’m just—I’m terrified that I’m not the right person to one day fill that role in her life. To be someone she looks up to in that way.”
Mason’s face softened into a gentle smile. He set his coffee cup on the ground and angled his body toward me on the bench, reaching up to pull a few loose strands of hair away from my eyes. “But Kendall,” he whispered, sliding his fingers down my jawline to lift my chin. “You already are.”
My eyes welled up with tears. He was right, wasn’t he? Finley cared about me so much already—and it was mutual. “I really love her, Mason,” I said, my voice trembling. And there was that guilty feeling again. Only now, it was because I was so quick to admit I loved his daughter, yet I still couldn’t make myself say the words to him. They were right on the tip of my tongue.
“I know you do,” he said, playing with the ends of my hair. “And she loves you, too. We both do.”
Now he’d said it twice. I leaned against his chest, feeling him wrap both arms against me tight. I inhaled, taking in the clean pine scent that had become so familiar to me. But it was the stupid Nirvana/Hanson t-shirt that brought a smile to my lips. I loved everything about this man—and I could say that out loud. “I love you, too,” I said. Piece of cake.
His grip around me tightened. “There you go,” he said, like he’d been expecting those words. He rested his chin atop my head. “Now we’ve got to figure out what to do.”
“We need to tell Owen to convince his asshole friend to keep our secret.”
Mason nodded. “I’ll talk to him.”
“And I’ll talk to Sarah.”
“Maybe we should wait until they’re back from their honeymoon before pestering them with our drama,” Mason said.
“Probably.”
We held each other just like that for a few minutes, completely oblivious to the people walking past us. I was ready to ask about his interaction with Whitney, but I held my tongue—he’d bring it up when he was ready.
When he pulled away, I thought he might have been ready to spill what happened, but he held my face in his hands and said my name softly. “Kendall. I need you to know you’re more than worthy of being loved. I think you’ve got these voices in your head telling you you’re not good enough, and I’m going to make it my personal goal to get them to shut up.”
I attempted a grin to cover my vulnerability, but my mouth involuntarily contorted into a half-frown, half-smile kind of a grimace. “They’re really loud sometimes,” I admitted.
Mason wiped away the tear rolling my cheek with his thumb. “I know. You just replace them with my voice now, okay? Imagine me telling you how perfect you are instead.” He paused for a moment, smiling. “You are exactly what Finley and I have been waiting for.”
I bit my bottom lip in an attempt to hold in a sob, but there was no use. And once I saw that Mason’s eyes were welling up with tears, too, I was a goner. “If you keep talking like that, I might start believing you.”
“All part of the plan, princess,” he said with a chuckle, leaning in for a kiss.
A few months ago, Mason Reed was nothing more than pixels on an app—a potential one-night-stand to help me get over an ex. But now, he and his daughter had worked their way into my heart—and I couldn’t be happier to hold them both there.
chapter forty-eight
mason
The day was an emotional rollercoaster.
Kendall cried again when I told her about the encounter with Whitney. I almost didn’t want to share what happened, because I knew she’d find the news disturbing. And because she loved Finley so much, she hated the thought of this new development reaching her ears. “That’s going to break her, Mason.”
“I know.”
We parted ways because I had promised Finley we could make a Christmas paper chain countdown that afternoon. But before we got started on our project, I told her to wait for me downstairs. I asked both of my parents to join me in their room where Finley couldn’t hear. They both sat on the edge of their bed, exchanging worried glances as I stood before them on the rug.
