The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(37)

A soft sound escapes her lips.

I adjust the rearview mirror, and shit shit shit.

She’s about to cry, and I don’t know which one of us is more horrified by that.

Drive, Teague. Drive. Don’t talk. Eyes on the road.

I clear my throat while I put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. “I’ve gotta drop off this book for Bridget—”

“I don’t have any of my own books!”

It’s not a shriek. More like a sobby gasp, like she’s trying to hold it back but her body won’t cooperate. “Uh . . . you can buy your schoolbooks at the college.”

“My fun books!”

“We’ve got a good county library. And there’s a little bookstore in Deer Drop—”

“And my sheets! My silk pillowcase! I don’t have my silk pillowcase, and my hair can feel it. And my hair. My hair! My roots are showing. I know you don’t care about my roots, but I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since before we got here—except for that one I stole from your house—four of my favorite outfits are ruined, my Louboutins are still at the bottom of the lake, Carter kept us up all night last night wailing away with his guitar, and he was smoking weed in the bathroom, and Gigi cooked us oatmeal for breakfast today! ”

The last bit comes out on a shriek.

But I’m not wincing at the tone.

I’m wincing at the idea of what Estelle Lightly might’ve done to ruin oats.

I clear my throat. “Um . . . that’s very kind that she’s worried about you getting a healthy start to the day.”

“It tasted like glue! And it had the consistency of slime. I’ve had oatmeal for breakfast. I like oatmeal for breakfast. But that was not oatmeal. And my mother’s reading her tarot cards again and told me that I’m doomed to fail my classes and I might as well just go find a job being a farmer in Nebraska or something, and that was after my father nearly walked in on me naked because he wasn’t wearing his glasses and got confused and thought he was walking into the men’s shower room. And it was a cold shower because—because—because . . .”

She doesn’t finish.

Doesn’t have to.

It’s a cold shower because the water heater at the school hasn’t been replaced yet.

I try to ignore the sympathy and outright guilt creeping into my gut, but Phoebe’s sobbing in the back seat, mumbling about spongy bread and drugstore sunscreen and canned spaghetti, and I can’t do it.

I cannot squash the guilt.

I did this.

If I’d told Estelle Lightly to pound sand instead of trying to get the best of a rich old lady by showing her a school building unfit for occupants, she would’ve gotten over herself a different way, and Phoebe would still have her big New York life.

But I wanted to shove it to her.

I’m apparently still seventeen myself for all the maturity and self-improvement I’ve done in the past twenty years.

I slow the car in front of Shiloh’s house, pause at the mailbox, and slip Bridget’s book inside. She pops her head out and gives me the quintessential why is my dad such a weirdo? look.

Later, I mouth to her.

“Oh my God, your kid’s watching me melt down!” Phoebe moans. “And I smell chocolate. Do you smell chocolate? I smell chocolate, and I can’t have chocolate because I can’t stop crying.”

“I have hot water,” I blurt. “Just . . . just . . . take a deep breath, and after school, you can use my shower. Okay?”

“My Oribe Gold Lust,” she sobs.

“I have no idea what that means.”

“My shampoo. I want my shampoo. But it leaked all over my luggage and I can’t get on the internet to order more and there’s no good coffee in a twenty-mile radius without stealing it from you, and we know, because Tavi runs all the damn time and she hasn’t found any drinkable coffee at all, and I haven’t lifted weights or done Pilates in what feels like forever and my arms are starting to flab and I’m thirty and I’m old and I wasn’t named in Forbes’s Thirty under Thirty list, but Tavi was, and now I don’t have a chance again, and Carter was the shoe in Monopoly and he refused to give change in ones.”

I’m sweating.

Bridget’s had her fair share of meltdowns.

Hell, I’ve had my own fair share of meltdowns.

But Phoebe Lightly having a meltdown in my back seat because of something foisted on her that she doesn’t think she has any control over—and why would she?—is different.

I steer us out of Tickled Pink proper and into the Tickled Pink unincorporated area around the lake road, which is dotted with houses that would’ve been much more comfortable for the family.

Aren’t any big enough for sale out here, but Estelle Lightly wouldn’t have let that stop her.

She’s a special kind of beast.

She would’ve knocked on the doors and offered ridiculous sums of money to the people living wherever she wanted to live if she wanted her family comfortable.

“So the water balloon fight didn’t clear the air?” I ask.

I can’t see her in the rearview mirror—not with the way she’s lying in the back seat—but I can hear her ragged breath.

Every little gasp is a knife to my heart.

She doesn’t answer my question.