The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(101)

It’s not a cure for heartbreak, but it’s closer than I thought it would be.

She takes two steps toward the garbage can.

“I take it back!” I shriek, dribbling chocolate drool down my chin as tears spill out of my eyeballs again. “I take it back! I didn’t ask!”

She frowns a Gigi frown at me. “Good. Because I might’ve liked you these past few weeks, but I will absolutely destroy you if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone. As far as you’re concerned, this is the weirdest nightmare you’ve ever had, understood?”

I nod.

She hands me one more truffle. “Now. Tell me what happened and what you want me to do about it.”

I study my sister. She has Dad’s eyes. Gigi’s eyes. She’s a Lightly, through and through. Pushing ahead, forging her own path, keeping her own secrets, and probably feeling alone and miserable and like better times will forever be just out of reach.

Maybe I’m projecting.

Maybe I’m not.

I can’t make her accept herself and own being herself the way I’m trying so damn hard to accept and fix myself, and screwing up every step of the way.

I didn’t think Tickled Pink would do this to me.

I didn’t think I would do this to me.

But here I am, eating sugar-and dairy-laden truffles that my vegan fitness-influencer sister made while she gnaws on a cheeseburger like a starving tyrannosaur contemplating that even after all the progress I’ve made since the moment Gigi choked on that piece of Kobe filet, I still don’t know who I am or if I’m doing this for me or if I’m doing it because it made a man like me.

This truffle isn’t as good as the last one.

I think I’m expecting too much of it.

“Tavi?” I whisper.

She lifts her brows, waiting.

“I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who I want to be, and I thought I could figure it out here, but the truth is—I think I need a break from Tickled Pink.”





Chapter 35


Teague


My brother.

It’s the first thing that registers after the fog of fear and anger and hurt lifts when Phoebe leaves, and it’s what has me racing out the door, making my goats bleat and freak out, while I realize the only person who knows where I need to go is the last person who’d be willing to give me the information.

Is this panic?

Or is this regret?

I don’t know.

But I know I need to solve the biggest problem at the moment, which is making sure my brother doesn’t hurt anyone here.

Or me.

Twenty years.

Twenty years of doing what I needed to do to build a life away from the damn cage I escaped from, and now it’s here.

Here.

In my sanctuary. My safe place. My world.

Turning my happiness against me.

One person at a time.

Dammit.

I race to the football field, and there they are.

My family.

Bridget. Shiloh. Ridhi. Laughing over a game of cornhole like the entire world isn’t on the cusp of tumbling over a cliff that we can’t come back from.

So they don’t know.

I can still salvage this.

I just have to find him.

Find him and make him leave before he takes more from me, and then make the whole damn Lightly clan leave too.

Ridhi glances up and makes eye contact. “Thought you had a hot date,” she calls.

Bridget makes a face like she wants to puke.

And Shiloh—let’s just say my ex-wife has a knack for knowing when I’m being a massive fuckup.

Jesus.

She’ll hate me when I tell her what I have to tell her.

Is this the last time we’ll have normal? Ever?

“Teague?” she says.

“You should all head in before the mosquitoes eat you alive.”

And before my brother realizes who they are.

It’s been twenty years.

I don’t know if he’s just like our grandfather or if he left home, too, or if he’s his own brand of fucked up, but I know I want my family safe until I find out.

“Where’s Phoebe?” Shiloh asks.

The question stings like a bear-size bee would. My joy, my hope, my friend—I’ve lost her, because I can’t trust her.

Not with this.

And I don’t know if it’s because she’s untrustworthy or if it’s because I have trust issues.

Probably both.

Upper East Side Phoebe is a threat, not to my town, not to my daughter, not to my friends who I call family, but to me.

To the person I’ve lied and told myself that I’ve grown to be.

And it’s easier to tell myself that she can’t really change who she is inside than it is to face the fact that this might be my fault.

That she might have a right to be angry with me.

That I do need to face my past and come clean to see if there’s any chance that the people I love can accept me with all my faults and forgive me for all my lies.

Later.

That’s for later.

Right now, I need my family safe.

I need them—I need them to know that no matter my name, I love them, and I want to protect them.

Fuck.

I scan the football field, looking for any shadows that don’t belong, while Shiloh tosses her beanbag to Bridget and crosses the short distance to me. I should be moving. Searching. Hunting. Protecting.