The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(100)

It’s broken.

“Phoebe, tell me he didn’t dump you,” she whispers, giving my arm a soft squeeze and nudging me toward the door, more firmly, like she didn’t hear the person on the phone.

I scan the room.

There are plastic molds all over worn and cracked cafeteria tables. Bags of sugar. Chunks of chocolate. An array of spices and fruits and nuts that all look fresher than anything I’ve seen since landing in Tickled Pink. The ancient stovetop in the galley kitchen along the wall is on, and there’s steam rising from a pan.

“Phoebe?” She pushes.

I dig my heels in. “Stop talking.”

“So it is Teague.”

The sound of his name slices my heart open and does some damage to my lungs as well, but I’m a goddamn fucking Lightly.

Except I’m not.

I’m a marshmallow. “Quit hurting me,” I whisper.

“Phoebe. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to know if I have to hurt him.” She nods to the back door. “Let’s go take—”

“You were eating a hamburger.” I yank my arm out of hers and step around her, deeper into the kitchen, looking for something—anything—to latch on to so I won’t have to face that I’ve just screwed up the best relationship I ever had, which wasn’t a relationship at all if he’d keep something like his basic identity from me.

From me.

Who’s so much more like who he was than anyone in this town.

That’s what hurts the most.

“I—” she starts, but then I find the cheeseburger.

She tried to bury it under a towel next to the stove.

“Phoebe.”

I sniff. “This is real beef!”

“Shh.”

She snatches the cheeseburger, eyeballs a trash can, mutters, “Screw it,” and then shoves another gigantic bite in her mouth while she reaches for her phone and hangs up on someone.

“You eat hamburger and cheese.”

Tavi—my sister, Octavia Lightly, vegan fitness influencer who shames people who let their dogs play with stuffed chew toys shaped like meat, and who would never let a grain of sugar pass through her lips—is eating a hamburger drenched in cheese and bacon and talking to someone on the phone about truffles while she stands in a kitchen full of everything she needs to make a chocolate feast for an entire town of broken-hearted people.

She has a secret twin.

That’s the only explanation. Our mother hid my father from me, and now I’m being Parent Trapped.

Sister Trapped.

Whatever.

She visibly swallows, takes a swig of water, and frowns at me. “Can we please not talk about this? You look like a feral raccoon who hasn’t slept in four years and just had your stash of pizza leftovers stolen by the garbage truck, and I really don’t want either of us to regret anything we’re about to say, because I actually like you these days, and I don’t want that to change.”

“Don’t be nice to me,” I whisper, but it’s too late.

The tears are coming again.

I don’t want to be this version of me.

I don’t want to hurt.

But she likes me. She likes me.

And the truth is, I like her. And I think I like her even more for eating cheeseburgers and playing with sugar-laden chocolate.

“Tell me what to do.” She pauses a split second, and then my sister does something she’s never done before.

She hugs me.

She hugs me, and it’s everything I need, and it only makes everything hurt more, but also less, and I don’t know how to do this.

“I don’t know how to hurt,” I whisper against her shoulder. “I don’t know how to cope with all of the pain.”

“Did he do this to you?”

Instead of answering, I hug my sister back.

“I am so serious right now, Phoebe. I will end him if he did this to you.”

I could tell her.

I could tell her who he is. How he reacted to me finding out. That I probably handled it wrong, too, but oh my Oprah, I hurt.

And on some level, I still want to protect him. “Is that good chocolate?”

Her body tenses against mine. “It’s all vegan and sugar-free.”

“No.” A sob escapes me, followed by a hiccup.

I can’t help it.

“Okay! Okay! It’s good chocolate! Just—just stop crying. Please. Please stop crying.” She wrenches herself away, grabs one of the plastic mold things, pops out a chocolate, and shoves it in my mouth.

And oh. My. Oprah.

My mouth has found meaning in life.

The rest of me is still broken, but my mouth—my mouth knows where it belongs, and it’s right here, in this dingy little kitchen, with my lying sister and her mouthgasmic truffle.

I don’t know what spice that is, or if it’s a spice or an herb or a drug, but I know that the chocolate is melting on my tongue in a soothing concoction of flavors and I will never be the same.

Fucking damn you, Tickled Pink.

Once again, I can’t go back.

“What—” I start.

She lifts the mold thing over her head. “No questions. We’re talking about you. You ask questions, I throw it away. Understood?”

“Who are you?” I ask around a mouthful of chocolate medicine.