AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I turned toward my window so he couldn’t see my dorky smile. By now, I’d already listed all of my negative traits, none of which scared him in the slightest. After a moment, I thought of another one and turned back to him. “What if I told you I have an unhealthy obsession with Taylor Swift and call into work every time she releases a new album so I can listen to it on repeat until I have every lyric memorized?”
“Is that supposed to intimidate me?”
“It should.”
Mason gazed out the windshield for a moment, watching a speedboat make its way down the river. Maybe dating an obsessive Swiftie was where he drew the line, and this would be the red flag he finally decided was too much for him to handle. “Okay. What if I told you my friends and I won our school’s Battle of the Bands back in 2014 with our ironic cover of ‘We Are Never Getting Back Together’?”
“Shut up. No you didn’t.”
“I would not lie about Taylor Swift,” he said, holding his hand against his chest in an melodramatic manner. “And if you don’t believe me, my mom’s got a video of the whole thing—she’ll probably show it to you someday.”
I inhaled, trying not to overreact to Mason including me in his version of “someday.” He saw me in his future, one way or another. Mason must have realized what he’d just implied with that statement, too, because he stared down at his cup with a tight-lipped smile. I decided to let it go so he wouldn’t feel embarrassed.
“That’s funny,” I said, pausing to take a sip of my coffee, “because my sister calls you Kurt Cobain.”
“Dave Grohl would be more accurate. I was on drums. But wait, why does Jamie call me that?”
“That’s one of her many nicknames for you.”
“You and your sister talk about me, huh?”
“Maybe. But I want to hear more about this band of yours. You were a drummer? I bet you had girls throwing themselves at you all the time.”
Mason smiled and shook his head, but he didn’t deny it. “Not as much as our lead singer.”
“You know, you’ve never told me about any of your past relationships apart from Finley’s mom.” Maybe Mason had some red flags I should know about. “Who was your last serious girlfriend?”
Mason stretched his arms and grimaced, and I almost regretted asking. But at the same time—he knew more about my two most recent ex-boyfriends than I ever wanted him to, and it was only fair that he spilled the beans with me. “Isabel,” he finally said, staring down at his gear shifter as he lazily ran his fingers down the side of it. “We broke up in January after dating for six months.”
“Why?”
He sighed. “I had to keep canceling on her because stuff came up with Finley. At that point, I had Fin every weekend because Whitney was kind of starting to drift… and I wasn’t always willing to give up my time with her. And when Isabel asked me to choose her or Finley—well, that was the easiest decision of my life.”
“Wow—I bet it was.”
“And it was probably for the best things ended when they did, because I don’t think she would’ve handled everything that went down with Finley this year very well.”
“Did Finley like her?”
Mason looked up at me. “She never met her.”
“You dated this woman for six months and she never met Finley?”
“No. I’ve always been careful about the women I let into Finley’s life. I don’t want her getting attached to someone who’s not going to stick around.”
“That makes sense.” There was a long, but comfortable, silence between us following this exchange. Mason asked if I thought it would be safe to go for a walk by the river since it was after dark and the weather was starting to turn cold—which meant nobody else was around. He slipped his hand in mine as we walked along the riverfront beneath the dim light of the streetlamps.
His phone was blowing up with notifications in his pocket. “Sorry, I can’t ignore this,” he said, pulling his phone out. For a moment, I worried something might be wrong with Finley, but judging from the smile on Mason’s face when he looked at his screen, everything was good. “Look at this.”
He turned his phone around so I could see a photo of Finley standing on a dining room chair in a unicorn nightgown, wearing what looked like a Candy Land gameboard as a hat. Beside her, her grandpa’s head was buried in his hands in frustration. “I’m guessing she won the game?”
“She always does. Even when she… doesn’t.”
I laughed, and Mason squeezed my hand as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice the way his arms clung close to his side and he shivered every few steps. I was wearing a thick quilted jacket, but his hoodie looked a little on the thin side. So I dropped his hand and yanked the scarf from the collar of my coat, making him stop so I could drape it over his neck. I used the ends of the scarf to pull him in for a kiss.
Mason chuckled against my mouth. “I should be the one trying to keep you warm.”
“Says who?”
