The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(104)

“Board of directors kicked Pops out too.” He’s quiet. Soft spoken like Mama was. Big difference from the little brother who used to holler and yell at me whenever he couldn’t find his baseball glove. “Didn’t know if you’d care, but—I got the rest of your trust fund unlocked. Yours to do with as you’d like.”

“I don’t want any fucking money.”

He doesn’t smile.

Doesn’t frown.

Just watches me while he nods slowly. “Pops tracked you, you know. Knew when you left the country. Knew about the millions you were dropping for disaster relief and wildlife preservation and on green-energy research. Didn’t know—I didn’t know if you’d want to finish what you started. That’s all.”

I drop my head and close my eyes.

Why is it so damn hard to breathe?

“No, that’s not all,” he says. “I missed you. I was pissed as a gator in a cage when you left, but I knew why you did it, and I might’ve spent some time being mad, but I missed you. That night you told Grandpa off—I knew you weren’t the asshole. You didn’t just talk the talk either. You walked away. You stood up for what you believed in. You could see where we were heading, what he was doing was wrong. But then you were gone. You were gone, and I hated you, but I only hated you because I missed you. Even when we were fighting—we were on the same side. Same side against Grandpa. Against Pops.”

Someone’s going to overhear, and I’ll have to explain this, but I don’t know if I care. I swallow hard and make myself look at my little brother.

I don’t know if he’s shorter or taller than me. I don’t know if he’s married. If he has kids. If he’s ever had his heart broken or if he’s running Greenright Oil. If he lives in Grandpa’s old mansion or if he built himself his own tree house like he always used to say he’d do too.

If he’s really still in Texas or if he just sounds like it.

“Can we start over?” He shifts and reaches a hand across the table. “I’m Jonah Beauregard. Been sitting in as the temporary CEO of Greenright Oil, but only long enough to find the right person for the job so we can live up to what our name’s always implied we should be. She started Monday. Means I’ve got some time off to do what I think my big brother did a long time ago, and that’s to figure out who I am when nobody’s looking.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

I squeeze my eyes shut again.

“Holy shit,” Willie Wayne says somewhere nearby. “Not even Estelle Lightly made him cry, and she’s a lot scarier.”

The booth squeaks across from me. “Or I’ll just leave my card. You want to talk, anytime, I’d like that. But it looks like you’ve got a good life here. Not my place to screw that up. I just—I saw your picture online, playing some kind of baseball game here. Wanted to see for myself if it was really you.”

The Lightlys.

Snowshoe baseball.

It was all over the Tickled Pink Papers that we made the gossip pages around the country.

The one thing I was most afraid of, and instead of getting my grandfather raining fire and brimstone or my father showing up with outraged indignation that a Beauregard would walk away from our duty to family and settle in such a backward place, I have my little brother offering to leave me alone.

“Wait.” I’m talking, but I’m not in control of my mouth. Not in control of opening my eyes to see him angling out of the booth either. I’m not in control of much tonight, it seems. “He’s really dead?”

Jonah nods.

“And Pops—”

“Still yells, but he doesn’t get around much these days. Funny how sleeping with his best friend’s wife and trying to blackmail half the board can backfire on a person.”

I shudder.

I hate that life. “And you?” I ask my brother.

His lips twist like he’s considering smiling. “A wise man I once knew sneaked just enough money into a Swiss bank account to fund his way through college and, by all accounts, find himself. Turns out that might be a good option for me too.”

“Where?”

He shrugs. “Wherever feels right.”

It’s a statement born of privilege, and I think he knows it.

I was there once too.

And what I discovered was that nothing much mattered until there were people around me who could accept me, flaws and all, until I was strong enough to accept them right back.

To know that I was giving as much back as I was getting in my community.

He glances down at the table, where he’s left his card, and he starts to say something, but I cut him off.

“There’s an old fixer-upper for sale on the lake. And this place—turns out it’s really, really good for some people to find themselves. If you want to give it a try.”

His eyes go shiny, and my brother—my brother—smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

This isn’t what I expected.

It’s better.

I don’t think he’s lying to me. I don’t think he’s out to get me.

And even if he were, I have an entire town at my back. I hope.

Along with—fuck.

Not along with someone else just like us who gets it too.

Because I made sure that wasn’t an option.