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“What?” I ask.

“I can’t think of a better man to teach you than Beckett,” he says. “He is the most patient man I know. He’s kind. He fucking adores you. And you two look good together.”

“Together?” I ask.

“Sierra, honey. He loves you,” Mason says. “Like the man is madly in love with you.”

“He is?” I ask.

“Mhmm. Ask him. You’ll see,” he says.

“Okay…”

“Do you like him?”

“I do,” I admit. “A lot”

“How much?”

“I couldn’t imagine my life without him,” I say. “He is my favorite part of the day.”

“Sounds like love to me, little sis,” Mason says with a smile. “He won’t push you, but don’t be afraid to push yourself. If you want something, he is the man who will burn the world down to get to you. Okay?”

“What about you?” I ask.

“I’m not what you need right now, Sierra,” he says with a sweet smile. “And that’s okay. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t a bad thing that you gravitated to him. Now… I see that he is who you need. I can’t be the one to help you overcome your fear of intimacy. I can’t hold you through the night as nightmares plague your sleep, but he can. He’s been waiting his whole life to take care of someone like that. As a kid, that was you and Bella. But as adults… sometimes we need a comfort that you can only get with someone you love.”

“You love Bella?” I ask.

“More than I probably should,” he says. “Ace keeps reminding me that she is an adult, and that’s the thing… I see her so differently than who she was even just five years ago. The woman who came back from college after dropping out…”

“You found someone you wanted to take care of,” I say. “You look at her the way Beckett looks at me.”

“That is the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time, Sierra,” he says. “That’s how happy I am that Beckett is the one you are relearning life with.”

“Sometimes I feel like a fucking child for not understanding.”

“It’s not childish to be traumatized,” he says. “It’s childish to be a child. That’s about it. You get to respond to that however you want. If that means you regress sometimes, and that man takes care of you while you fight your way out of the memories, so be it.”

I look up at the porch where Beckett and Bella are watching from. They both smile down at us, and I look back at my brother.

“What if it hurts?” I ask.

“I will be more blunt than anyone else has been with you,” Mason says. “I’ve seen that man’s dick, and it might. But… All you have to do is tell him what you like and don’t like. He will never judge you.”

“Why have you seen his dick, Mason?” I ask.

“I’ve seen him change before. Just locker room shit,” Mason laughs.

“So… Can I ask you something as a guy and not my brother?”

“Mhmm,” he says with a smirk.

“So when we were watching the movie, Bex kept kissing my neck because of how I react, I guess,” I say. “What if I wanted to do the same… but like…”

“Are you asking how you can tease him?” Mason asks.

“Yeah… but like… He says he has self-control. I guess I wanna see if that’s true.”