The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(108)

Her eyes are as wide as the Great Lakes as she nods.

“I need to do some apologizing. To a lot of people. Are your mom and Ridhi home?”

I come clean to my daughter, my ex-wife, and her wife over a few pots of coffee in their kitchen. After the initial surprise, Ridhi says what I hope the other two are thinking. “Asshole move, thinking you couldn’t trust us with that, but I guess you make up for it in other ways.”

“How long had you been Teague Miller when we met?” Shiloh asks.

“Not long in the grand scheme of things.”

“No wonder you knew how to change my name,” Bridget says. “You weren’t really born who you were supposed to be either.”

I blink at her as my eyes get hot again. “Suppose I wasn’t.”

“So I have an uncle, and he’s an okay person?”

I nod.

“And he’s rich?”

“Bridget.”

She looks at Shiloh, who’s glaring. “What? Do you know how many kids at school talk about finding a rich uncle to buy them a car for their sixteenth birthday? This is like—it’s like all of my birthdays and holidays rolled into one. Is he moving here? Is he staying in the tree house? Or—oh. Does Estelle need to monitor his soul for a while?”

That would be funny any other day.

But Shiloh’s ignoring her to ask the next inevitable question. “And Phoebe knows?”

I wince.

Don’t realize I’m rubbing my chest, too, until all three ladies in the room pointedly stare at my hand.

“Phoebe met Jonah and put two and two together, and . . . I didn’t handle it well when she confronted me about my past,” I finally say into the silence.

“How not well?”

“She left,” Bridget whispers.

Heat flushes through my whole body.

Heat, shame, and regret.

I should’ve told her.

I should’ve just told her the truth, and I didn’t, and now I don’t know where she is or what I’m going to do about it.

“And how do you feel about that?” Shiloh asks me when I nod confirmation of Bridget’s statement.

That’s exactly what a therapist would ask, and considering we’ve had family therapy, I’d know.

I try to spear Shiloh with a glare, but it falls flat.

The three of them heave identical sighs.

“Out with it.” Ridhi holds out a hand and makes the give it to me gesture. “What other deep dark secrets do you have hiding in your closet that you need to work out if you’re ever going to be willing to open yourself up to being vulnerable in love?”

Hello, knife. That was a jagged rip to my heart. “I’m plenty open to love. I love all three of you.”

“Romantic love, Dad.” Bridget rolls her eyes. “Like, soul mate love. Like, I would die for you love. Like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Highly dysfunctional and overly dramatic,” Ridhi says. “Don’t be like Romeo and Juliet. Find a happy ending.”

“Not everyone is meant to have forever romantic soul mate love,” Shiloh says. “Maybe your dad’s happier alone. With just his fish and his goats. And his tree house. Away from everyone else. Where no one can hurt him because they can’t get close enough.”

Bridget’s face crinkles. “That’s seriously depressing.”

“If that’s the life he wants to live, it’s his choice. He’s been perfectly happy being a grumpy loner this long. How could a high-maintenance, big-city princess possibly make him happy?”

“Do not call her that.” I know Shiloh’s baiting me, and I’m still growling.

She smiles back. “Spoiled socialite?”

“Mom, seriously, the man’s hurting enough,” Bridget says. “I’m hurting. I miss Phoebe. She was really funny when she’d do impressions of all the people back in New York. And sometimes when she didn’t realize she was doing impressions of herself too. And sometimes when she’d sit on the muffins I’d sneak onto her seat just to watch her eyes twitch when she thought about how she didn’t trust the dry cleaner in Deer Drop but had blueberry crumbs all over her butt now.”

“Bridget.”

“Kidding. I mean, mostly. I only did it once, and only right after she got here. She’s not gone gone, is she?” She swings her attention back to me. “You’re going to apologize and get her back, aren’t you?”

I swallow hard.

Pretty sure it won’t be that simple.

I told her I didn’t trust her.

I told her I’d protect other people before I’d protect her.

I more or less told her we were nothing, when the truth is, she’s so much something that I’m terrified I’ll fuck it up, and this time, when a relationship that matters ends, it won’t come with learning to be friends and coparent a really awesome kid who grows into a really awesome teenager while I get to keep the parts of me that I’m most ashamed of hidden.

This time, if I want to have a real relationship with someone who understands me in ways I wish no one ever needed to understand me, I have to trust that who she’s becoming is bigger than who she’s been.

I have to trust that she won’t hurt me if I let her see all of me, and that she won’t use my weaknesses against me the way she was raised to do.