Suspended from the ceiling were three full-length sketches that had been blown up and elaborated to make them appear three-dimensional. At the center of the room lay another 3D rendering of a very small, sleeping me curled around a stuffed rabbit that was almost as big as I was.
My eyes stung with tears. Mason had given me that rabbit. I was pretty sure my mom still had it somewhere, packed alongside other beloved keepsakes from my childhood. It broke my heart that I couldn’t just call her up to ask for it.
I dabbed my eyes with the napkin Michelle handed me. “Where’s he now?”
“Upstairs being interviewed by a journalist from the New York Times. He should be finishing up soon. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
“Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand again and then left me to take in the exhibit on my own.
I circled the room slowly, floored by how Mason had succeeded in transforming something my mother had deemed criminal into the most beautiful display of tenderness I’d ever seen.
The crowd around me burst into claps and cheers. I glanced up to find Mason making his way over to me, his gaze never leaving mine, even as people tried to snag his attention. My preferred look for him would always be scruffy and paint-splattered, but damn, the man could rock a suit.
“Sorry, I was upstairs,” he said. “I really wanted to be here when you saw the exhibit.” He pulled me into a hug that prompted someone close to us to whisper, Aww, that must be his daughter.
“That’s all right.” I hugged him tighter. “It’s incredible.”
He pressed a kiss to my ear and whispered, “Not as incredible as you in the flesh.”
I could almost feel his arousal thickening the air around us. My whole body tingled in response. He kept his arm around me as we circled the room, coming to stand at the center, next to a three-dimensional rendering of me as a very young child.
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I can’t believe Mom thought these were anything less than beautiful.”
He kissed my temple. “You know, I invited your mother to tonight’s show.”
“You did?” I balked.
“She told me to go fuck myself.” He smirked. “I’d say that’s progress, considering she wasn’t even speaking to me a month ago.”
I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother since the night she came to tell me what a monster Mason was. Dr. Kelley was trying her best to help me work through my resentment toward my mother, but I was a work in progress. I didn’t understand why Mason would want to have her in our lives.
“You know she’d hate all of this almost as much as you hate each other,” I said.
“I don’t hate your mother, Jett.”
“Why not? I would if I were you.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “She gave me the greatest gift a father could ask for. That’s why I can’t hate her, no matter how angry I get when I think about all the years of your life I missed.”
I gazed down at the younger version of me on the floor. Round and sleepy and oblivious to all the pain and confusion that would inevitably follow.
Then again, none of this, what Mason and I had now, would be possible if my mother hadn’t done what she felt was necessary. If he could forgive my mother for driving him away from me, maybe I could find it in myself to forgive her, too.
She would neve
r understand our relationship. Most people wouldn’t. Our love wasn’t clear and crisp like a photograph. It was messy and abstract.
It belonged on a canvas.
“I have some news.” His expression turned grave. “My PI got back to me about Gretchen’s father. He said the bastard ate a bullet shortly after your mom and I took off. Left his fortune to charity.”
The weight of Mason’s words settled over us like dirt being tossed onto a fresh grave. I waited to feel anything besides relief. As far as I was concerned, my mother’s father wasn’t my father. I may have come from him, but I wasn’t him.
He was a monster and he’d been defeated.
“I always wondered why he never came looking for us,” Mason said.