The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(111)

“You were right,” he says quietly while the sounds of voices fade. “I wasn’t protecting Bridget and the town as much as I was protecting myself.”

And this is the hard part.

The Phoebe Lightly who was bred to look for advantageous relationships and to climb ladders and to win at any cost would be high-fiving herself for landing an heir in hiding.

The mystery.

The intrigue.

The gossip.

It’s a socialite’s wet dream.

But this Phoebe Lightly?

The me I am today?

“Would you have ever told me?” My voice cracks, and I let it, because that question is the only thing I care about.

“No,” he says quietly.

One little syllable, and it shatters me. “I see.”

“And that’s why I didn’t deserve you.”

“Of course.” He came all this way to put the nail in the coffin. Who does that? “If you’ll excuse me—”

He grips my hand tighter. “Do you know how many times I’ve listened to you talk about doing the hard things in the past several weeks, about facing who you were head-on so that you can learn to be who you want to be, even when you didn’t know who that was? And how many times I sat there thinking, Thank God I’m done with that shit? And how very, very fucking clear it is now that I was lying to myself?”

My breath catches.

“I was seventeen when I walked away. Old enough to have the balls to do it, but not old enough to know how much of what I grew up with that I’d have to live with still for the rest of my life. The broken parts of me. The ugly parts of me. The unlovable parts of me. I know what you’re going through. I was there. I’ve done it. But you—you’ve done so much fucking more in under two months than I’ve done in twenty years, because you’re doing it out in the open, with your heart on your sleeve, taking all of the shit that everyone throws at you because you think you deserve it, because you think you have to, and fuck, Phoebe . . . I don’t deserve you. That’s the honest-to-God truth. I don’t deserve you.”

I stop behind a hedge. My legs are shaky, and I don’t know if he’s here just to tell me he doesn’t deserve me or if he’s here because he wants me to tell him he does. “I would have never hurt your family.”

“I know.” His voice is getting huskier. “I know, Phoebe. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t say that growing up either, did you?”

“No. Never. And we didn’t say I can’t, and we didn’t say it hurts, and we didn’t say it’s okay to fail.”

“Or I forgive you,” I whisper.

“Never that one.”

“Teague—”

“I didn’t take all of my trust fund. Just enough to get somewhere to start over. Used some for good. Tried to undo the stuff my family fucked up. And it wasn’t just the spill. It was—it was how they didn’t even care. It was ‘inconvenient’ that fish live in the ocean. It was ‘all the whiners’ about how that beach was ruined. It was ‘just find another beach.’ They were . . .”

“Awful,” I finish for him.

He can’t stand still. Keeps shifting his weight from foot to foot. “For years, I thought they’d track me down, even after the hoops I jumped through to change my name as secretly as I could. I used to pay cash for prepaid credit cards so I could log on at internet cafés and use private browsers to search my family and see if they were looking for me. Took a while before I realized the paranoia was making me crazy, and then I met Shiloh, and she got pregnant, and I didn’t tell her my whole story either. I didn’t want them to go after her or Bridget. And I didn’t—I didn’t want her to know I was broken. I didn’t want anyone to know I was broken.”

I can’t take this anymore.

My Teague isn’t broken.

He’s beautiful and strong and brave and kind and bullheaded, and I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my arms around him if my life depended on it. “You’re not broken.”

His arms come around me, too, holding me like I’m his lifeline. “I am without you.”

I suck in a wobbly breath.

“You thought you came to Tickled Pink because someone was forcing you to meet some invisible standard for your soul. But it was more, Phoebe. You make my soul better. You make me want to step out of the shadows. You’re what’s missing in my life, and the thought of losing you forever is scarier than the thought of my past catching up with me. I don’t want to live with the fear anymore. I want to live with the light. And you, Phoebe Lightly, are my light. Please come back. Come home. Let me show you I can be better too.”

“I’m coming home,” I tell him. “Oh God, Teague, I miss home. I miss you. I miss me. I miss us.”

“You left, and I was so scared I’d never see you again.”

I shake my head against his suit jacket. “I was always going to come home. I didn’t know if you’d want me, but I know—I know now where I belong. And I finally know who I want to be.”

“And who’s that?”

“I want to be the woman who loves you.”

He buries his nose in my hair while his arms tighten harder around me. “I thought I had everything I wanted in life. But then there was you. And now I can’t imagine another day without you in it. I love you, Phoebe Lightly. I love all of you.”