Page 131 of The Perfect Love

I shrug, then look at Chelsea. “You didn’t tell me your family are baseball people.”

“They’re sports people.” Chelsea waves a hand. “I only paid attention to the ones I was interested in.” I gape at her andshe pats my cheek. “Sorry, babe. I promise, I’m interested in baseballnow.”

Which I’m grateful for. With her past, I could understand why she wouldn’t be. I love that she enjoys it because she sees how happy it makes me.

“All right, if we’re going to get into a serious debate, let’s head to the living room. It’s more comfortable and there’s more room for pacing,” Mattie says.

“Agreed,” Hilary, Chelsea’s stepmom, says.

“Actually, Trevor, could I borrow you for a few minutes?” Gene asks.

I glance at Chelsea, but she gives me an encouraging smile.

“Sure.”

He leads me down the hall to an office, then sits down at the desk. I take one of the comfortable armchairs in front of it.

“You’re not going to give me awhat are your intentionsspeech, are you?”

He laughs. “No. Robbie did his part when you first met Chelsea, and with how you treat my daughter, your intentions are obvious. No, actually, I have something for you.”

He pulls an envelope from a drawer and hands it to me.

I take it, still confused, and pull it open to find a picture of my family staring back at me. We’re in front of a canoe, my dad holding the paddle. I pull the small pile of pictures out, emotion gripping my chest.

“This is…”

“Chelsea texted me a few weeks back, asking me to look for any pictures of your family we might have. We regularly took pictures for marketing, but also to remember returning guests. She mentioned your father passed away and thought you’d like to see these.”

Oh, fuck.

I’m not against crying, but I usually don’t do it with someone I don’t know well.

I bite my cheek and look through the pictures, barely keeping my emotions in check. When I get to the last one, I’m shocked at what I see. It’s my dad, holding a wiffle bat, with his arm around Chelsea’s dad.

My gaze snaps to his. “You knew my dad?”

“Got to know him a bit. We always had silly competitions and events. The second year you stayed with us, he overheard me talking with one of my cousins about ideas for a competition, and he suggested wiffle ball. When we decided to do it, I emailed him and let him know. He conveniently booked your summer trip for when the competition was taking place and told me he’d better be on my team. We kept in touch here and there. I don’t know if I’d call us true friends, but he was a good man. Kind. But then we lost contact. Now I know why. When Chelsea said your last name, I thought it sounded familiar, but it wasn’t until she asked me to look for the pictures that I figured it out.”

I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

He reaches across the desk and squeezes my arm. “From one man who has lost his father to another, I do.”

Tears blur my vision as I look at him. “Thank you.”

To my surprise, he gets up and comes around the desk, then pulls me into a hug. “No problem. If you ever need someone to give you a bit of that dad energy, I’m here.”

Fuck.

I sniff back my tears. “Thank you.”

He pats my back and steps away. “If I know my daughter, she’s making some hot cocoa right now. Go find her, maybe enjoy the hot cocoa on the back porch.”

I nod, at a loss for words, and follow him out to the kitchen.

As Gene predicted, Chelsea is standing by the counter where two mugs of hot cocoa sit. I toss the pictures on the counter and wrap Chelsea in the tightest hug I can.

“I take it you liked the pictures?”

---