The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(105)

Chapter 36


Phoebe


I don’t know where I am.

I know I’m at a lake tucked into rolling hills. There’s a breeze, but I don’t need a coat. I don’t need to shed any layers either. It’s just the perfect temperature. I know the staff at this private hideaway is well trained. I know someone’s been watching me all morning, ready to dash out to satisfy my every whim.

But I don’t know where I am.

And I don’t care.

While my kitten stalks a flock of geese nearby, I’m sitting in an Adirondack chair inside a gazebo overlooking the lake, staring at the water and wondering if anyone’s ever lost a pair of Louboutins in it, or if anyone ever uses it for fishing, or if it knows the answer of who I’m supposed to be.

When I told Tavi I wanted to leave Tickled Pink last night, she packed Elmo and me up in Gigi’s Pilot, drove me to the nearest airport, and booked me a private jet to somewhere.

“You take care of you, and I’ll take care of the details,” she told me.

And she did.

A car met me at the airport when I landed. My room is stocked with clothes in my size. Breakfast arrived fifteen minutes after I woke up, and I couldn’t find fault with a single offering on my tray.

I don’t know if this is Tavi’s way of buying my silence with her secret, or if it’s her way of being a good sister, or some combination of both, and I don’t actually care.

All I can focus on is sitting here, asking the universe if I have the strength to keep being a better me if I have to do it alone, or if I should cut my losses now, go back to New York, drop all the gossip bombs I have on every person who’s said a single bad word about me, ever, and rise to my position as the most powerful Lightly to ever rule Manhattan.

I shake my phone and stare at the water. “Magic Eight Ball app, should I be the better person?”

I flip my phone over and consult the answer. You will burn in hell for wearing white after Labor Day.

“What the hell, Magic Eight Ball app?”

Someone steps into the gazebo behind me, and I slump back in the chair. “I’m not hungry for lunch,” I tell them.

“That’s my girl, but they won’t let you out of eating here merely because you have a broken heart.”

I sit up so fast I bang my elbow on the armrest and almost trip myself as I leap out of the chair. “Mom?”

Am I crying?

Again?

Oh my Oprah. I am. I’m crying. Again.

“Phoebe, darling, not the drama this early in the morning.” She wraps her arms around me and hugs me tight.

Two hugs from my family in two days.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice muffled and raw against the lush fabric of her morning robe. I’d ask why I’m crying again, but I know.

It’s because every emotion I’ve squelched in my entire life has been unlocked by basic levels of affection that should be normal in a family.

“I’m hiding from reality, sweetheart, just like you.”

Oh God.

Tavi sent me to a rehab facility.

She doesn’t trust I’ll keep her secret, so she’s setting me up to look like a liar if I come back saying crazy things when I get out of rehab, and—no.

No, we’re going to believe in the good of humanity.

Aren’t we?

Yes.

Yes, we are.

Tavi sent me to a private retreat to help me find the space I need to think about what I want to do next. She’s a good sister.

And if she’s not, she’ll regret the day she was born.

No, Phoebe, if she’s not, we will still be the bigger person and move on with our lives.

Mom hugs me tighter. “I’m so sorry I left you there,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry I lied to you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”

“Mom—”

“No, I wasn’t. And that—that place. It made me feel things I’ve never felt. It made me want to be honest. And honest hurts. Phoebe, it hurts so much.”

My heart feels like it’s been hit with a shrink ray from that old eighties movie that I had to watch once when I got signed up for the wrong summer camp, and that much shrinkage that fast hurts. “I know, Mom.”

She’s still hugging me.

I don’t think my mother has hugged me in at least seven years.

Maybe ever.

Not like this.

“Are you okay?” she asks me. “What do you need? How can I help? I don’t know how to do this, Phoebe, but I want to be here for you.”

It’s so odd to feel completely broken but to also realize Gigi might’ve actually known what she was doing when she dragged the five of us to Tickled Pink.

Even if we don’t know how to be better, we’re all aware that better exists.

And that maybe, just maybe, we need better.

“Teague lied to me,” I whisper.

“Oh, honey, that’s what men do.”

“But I thought we had something, and it hurts.”

The lie is what hurts. Or maybe his distrust of me is what hurts.

Or maybe it’s knowing that I’m still not good enough to have earned the truth.

Whatever it is, I know that telling my mom what hurts is akin to offering to split my chest open and hand her my heart on a platter. She could destroy it, or she could put a Band-Aid on it, kiss its boo-boos, and help me tuck it back where it belongs, and I don’t know which she’ll do.