The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(102)

But instead, I stand there and wait for my ex-wife and her crossed arms and don’t you dare bullshit me expression to reach me.

Probably should’ve done this years ago.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “You look the exact same way you did when I told you I was pregnant.”

I make a noise that’s not entirely human.

Choke on it, really, while I try to shake my head, a discomfort settling in the pit of my stomach that I don’t want to analyze too hard, because I don’t know if it’s hope or disappointment or outright terror at the idea of Phoebe being pregnant.

Terror.

I choose terror.

Have to.

Any other option is too damn painful right now.

“So?” Shiloh presses.

Jesus.

I look away, and not just because she’s using the damn Estelle Lightly eyebrow to a much greater effect than anyone else in this town who’s been trying it. “You see any strangers tonight?” I ask gruffly.

“Deer Drop strangers, or Estelle Lightly–type strangers?”

My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat. My heart’s pounding furiously—has been, and no, I don’t plan on stopping to consider all the reasons—and if I don’t move, I’m going to bust out of my own skin.

“Spit it out, Teague,” she says quietly.

Fuck. “You remember I told you once I had family I didn’t keep in touch with because they were not good people?” The words keep sticking in my throat, and I catch myself popping my knuckles.

Old habit.

I hate it.

Haven’t done it in twenty fucking years.

“It rings a bell,” Shiloh says evenly.

Of course it does. You have secrets, Teague Miller, and that would be fine if I weren’t your wife.

Those words—the exact phrase she told me when she handed me divorce papers when Bridget was four months old—have never left me.

Probably because I knew she was right.

Just like she was right about the damn goats.

I met Shiloh on a trip through Door County, a little peninsula sticking into Lake Michigan over on the eastern side of Wisconsin, about sixteen years ago when I was looking for a place to settle. Hadn’t found it yet, but then I found Shiloh.

We kept bumping into each other all day long.

She invited me to hang out at her campsite. We had a casual hookup. Good times. Traded numbers. Went our separate ways knowing we wouldn’t use the numbers, but then she texted a few weeks later.

I met her in Tickled Pink because I had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do, and going felt right, and I liked her.

And then she dropped the bombshell news.

Condom must’ve broken. There hasn’t been anyone else.

We got married because she was pregnant and we both thought that was what we needed to do. Got to be good friends, even, and considered ourselves lucky that we could stand each other.

But she was right.

I didn’t let her all the way in.

Not when she told me her own biggest childhood traumas (having her picture splashed in the tabloids when they discovered Ella Denning’s daughter liked kissing boys and girls) or when she told me her biggest fears (that she didn’t know how to be a good mother, because she was nothing like her own) or when she confessed that her biggest dream was to take singing lessons and star in Annie.

I crack my knuckles again. “They . . . might’ve found me.”

She frowns, then instantly looks over her shoulder.

Checking on Bridget.

Probably Ridhi too.

“Can you—can you please take her home?” I hate the fear in my voice, but dammit. I can’t sit with Bridget and Shiloh and also track down my brother.

“Where’s Phoebe?” Shiloh asks.

I swallow and ignore the painful swelling under my breastbone. “No idea.”

“Teague . . .”

I didn’t keep everything from her. I told her I’d been expected to take over the family business, and my grandfather and I had had a big fight when I’d told him I wouldn’t. I told her I never wanted to see them again. That they were what was wrong with so much of the world. I told her I wouldn’t trust them around my kid and that I was working on being a better man than the examples I’d had growing up.

I never told her how big the family business was.

That I’d had a trust fund.

That I’d been born with a different name.

The hoops I’d jumped through to shed it all in those few years between leaving Texas and meeting her. That my birth certificate was fake, because money can buy new names and erase history when it has to.

“Can you please take Bridget home?” I repeat.

When Estelle Lightly uses that eyebrow, it’s amusing.

When Shiloh does it, it’s terrifying. “You owe me.”

Three words she’s never said to me in all the time we’ve known each other.

I swallow and nod.

She doesn’t mean I owe her for the favor.

She means I owe her my whole truth.

She shifts her weight, still glaring at me. “You might check Ladyfingers. Heard Carter was heading that way with a new friend.”

Dammit. “Thank you.” I turn, then look back. “It’s been twenty years. I didn’t think they’d try to find me.”