The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(103)

“It’s been twenty years,” she replies. “Whoever they’re hoping to find, you’re not it.”

And this is why I’m friends with my ex-wife.

Short of one of us confessing to being a serial killer, we roll with whatever life throws at us.

I owe her the truth, but I know she’ll process it, accept it, and understand.

Unlike Phoebe, who throws it back.

Because it matters to her, idiot. Because she knows you know exactly where she’s at because you’ve been there, and you didn’t let her in, and you never planned on letting her in.

I ignore the guilt, the anger, the guilt—yeah, it’s there twice—and head to the bar.

And what I find inside makes my gut cramp.

Carter Lightly is sitting in a booth with a guy in a cowboy hat.

But they’re not alone.

Willie Wayne’s there too.

So is Dylan.

“Teague!” Willie Wayne waves to me. “We got us another live one wanting to dump money in the town to make him a better person. Isn’t the old Olsen place by the lake still for sale?”

“No.”

Dylan grins. Willie Wayne hoots. Carter smirks at me.

Does he know?

“Don’t mind ol’ Teague,” Willie Wayne says to my brother. Jesus. My brother. “He gets cranky, but he was wrong about the Lightlys, and I bet he’s wrong about you too.”

A pair of dark-brown eyes that look just like my mama’s stares at me from under the brim of that hat. My lungs contract again, my heart hammers, and my fingers twitch.

There’s not enough oxygen or alcohol in the entire state for this.

“If you don’t want to sell him the Olsen place, Deer Drop Floyd probably would,” Dylan muses.

I scowl at him.

Willie Wayne too.

They both snicker.

“C’mon, D,” Willie Wayne says. “Let’s let Mr. Grumpy see what he can dig up on our new friend Jonah here. Lightly. Move your ass before we pass an ordinance outlawing you from opening your mouth unless you make us fried chicken every night.”

They slide out of the booth, and Dylan claps me on the shoulder. “Go easy on him. Had a rough travel day. Not all rich people are inherently assholes, yeah?”

Willie Wayne cackles. “Nah, give ’em all Tickled Pink has to give. Might be nicer than Estelle Lightly, but that doesn’t mean he’s good for us.”

Do they know?

Do they know?

Is that why they’re clearing out?

Carter doesn’t say a word.

Just stares at me like he has cell signal and got a call from his sister.

Fuck.

I never say fuck this much.

Not anymore.

Yet here I am, all the fucks flying all over the place.

I have almost as many fucks tonight as I have gallons of paranoia.

And that’s before I look away from my friends and back to the man sitting in the booth.

He has a full beer in front of him, an untouched basket of onion rings, too, hands tucked under the table, nothing moving but his eyes as they flicker over me, and I don’t know if those are questions or accusations or something else entirely behind the movement of his eyeballs.

Can’t yell without making a scene. Can’t make a scene without everyone asking what the hell I’m yelling for. Can’t get out of explaining to the people who are my family—my real, chosen family—where I came from and why I don’t want to sit down.

So I sit.

I sit with my throat clogging and a hot, thick, wet sense of shame enveloping me like that weighted blanket Bridget sometimes sleeps under.

Jonah was her age—fifteen—when I left.

He was old enough to look like a man but not old enough to be a man.

Hell, at not quite eighteen I was barely old enough to be a man.

Two of us always fought like snakes and honey badgers. Getting out, looking back—I know it wasn’t us.

It was Grandpa Shithead and Pops, the second and third Edward Richard Montgomery Beauregards respectively, threatening to leave the company to one or the other of us if we didn’t shape up and prove ourselves. Pitting us against each other in a war to see who was man enough to head up Greenright Oil. Telling me that Jonah was smarter. Telling Jonah that I had more common sense. He had the looks. I had the fists for fighting.

I don’t know why Jonah’s here.

And I don’t like not knowing.

He breaks the silence first, clearing his throat, and then—“It’s really you.”

His voice is deeper. Twangy, too, like he never left Texas. Flashbacks fly fast and furious through the front of my skull, from rodeos to sunsets on South Padre Island to true Tex-Mex food.

Grandpa hollering about those damn tree huggers. Pops rolling his eyes and saying oil wasn’t going anywhere. Ma sneaking chocolate chip cookies into the tree house.

“Grandpa’s gone,” Jonah says into the silence that I couldn’t fill even if I wanted to. That’s not a cat that has my tongue. It’s a whole damn tiger. “Passed on early last year. Didn’t know if you heard.”

I shake my head once.

Didn’t know.

Don’t know if I care or not. Probably do.

Probably not as much as Phoebe would care if Estelle kicked the bucket, though.

Fuck.