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Delight fills my chest, my heart expanding with lightness. “You invited Mason here for Easter?”

“Yeah. He seemed really stoked about it too.”

“Is that what you were talking to him about when we were saying goodbye?”

She nods. “I’m going to invite Oliver too, even though he’s a weirdo.” Her nose wrinkles, and then she sighs. “I guess he’s our weirdo now. You know, I thought my family was messed up, but yours is worse, I think. At least Oliver is. Mason seems cool.”

I swallow back a lump of emotion building in my throat.

Her hands slide up, cupping my cheeks in her palms. “Get rid of your condo in Dallas, close your storage shed, and bring all your stuff here.” She searches my face. “Make this your home.”

“Finley.” I duck my head to get closer. “You are my home. I love you.”

She grips me harder, pressing her mouth to mine in a quick, hard kiss before pulling back with a sniff. “I love you too.” Her smile is bright and wide and shoots an arrow of delight straight through my chest.

I tug her knee up over my thigh to get even closer.

She traces a finger over my jaw. “Are you sure it doesn’t bother you that I have more baggage than a luggage factory?”

I rub my nose against hers. “We all have baggage, Fin.”

“Some more than most. I still have healing to do.”

“We’re all a little tattered and torn. It’s okay to not know, to not have all the answers.” I hesitate. “And you’re not the only one. I’ve been alone for so long, I don’t even know how to be a part of a couple, let alone a family. I might make mistakes.”

She cups the side of my face in her hand. “Something tells me you’ll do just fine, but I know what you mean. Life is messy. It can’t be tied up in a neat little bow. We can’t control everything. But we can enjoy the time we have now with the people we love most.”

“So wise.” I trail a finger down to the edge of her tank top. “I can think of a really good way to enjoy some of this time we have.”

Her chuckle is low, and her breath hitches when I slip under her bra. “That’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

Then I proceed to show her just how enjoyable the rest of our lives will be.

Epilogue

Finley

One month later

“You can’t mix the colors. That’s cheating.” Mindy frowns over at Oliver, who’s sitting on the opposite side of the dining table.

I rip open a package of blue dye and pour it into a little plastic cup. “It’s not a competition. How can it be cheating?”

Mason lifts his egg partway out of the container in front of him with the little tin scooper, checking the bright-pink color. “Besides, mixing the colors makes them ugly, so if it is a competition, he’s losing.”

“It’s not ugly, it’s unique.” Oliver pours a little purple into a cup filled with orange liquid and stirs it. “You simply have pedestrian tastes.”

Everyone is sitting around the dining table, which is completely covered with little cups of dye, decorating tools, and about a hundred hard-boiled eggs. It would be perfect if Jacob were here. And if Taylor and Mindy were on speaking terms . . . and maybe if Piper didn’t look so exhausted, her skin tight with fatigue.

Mindy wrinkles her nose. “Okay, then it’s gross. No one wants an ugly brownish-reddish-greenish-purplish egg or whatever.”

“I like the ugly ones.” Piper drops a yellow egg into a red-colored cup.

Mindy rolls her eyes heavenward. “You would.”

My eyes stay trained on Piper. Is she getting thinner? Her cheekbones are more pronounced than they were just a few weeks ago.

“Does anyone need more eggs?” Taylor pops her head in from the kitchen, where she and Jess, Nora’s wife, have been doing all the boiling, which is really just an excuse for Taylor to avoid being in the same room as Mindy.


Tags: Mary Frame Romance