The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(38)

And now I feel like an even bigger asshole for my part in this.

It was one thing when they were random rich people invading my town and potentially drawing attention to my family and making my friends’ lives hell and subjecting us to shit we don’t want in our little slice of heaven.

But whatever my first impression of Phoebe Lightly might’ve been, she’s human.

And she works hard.

I have no idea if she’s earned her position in her family’s company or if her heritage is giving her a boost.

But I do know what it’s like to face the hard questions and have to decide where your path lies when everything you’ve taken for granted implodes around you.

“Thank you for driving me,” she says, sniffling.

If you need me, I’ll be dead. Five little words from a woman who most likely wasn’t raised to use them, and she’s sliced my heart wide open.

“Welcome,” I mutter.

She sits back up and meets my gaze in the rearview mirror.

Her skin is blotchy and her eyes are red, but whatever she’s using for mascara held up to the waterworks.

It’s her lips that are the real problem, though.

Plump and still trembling.

I’m not a hero. I’m not a hero. I’m not a hero.

Nope.

Not working.

My biggest problem with Phoebe Lightly?

She’s not what I expected.

I don’t know if she’s even what she expected.

But I know one thing.

Whoever she is, she’s more today than she was when she fell in the lake trying to make it bend to her will last week.

And I don’t think she’s done.





Chapter 12


Phoebe


Teague Miller is my knight in flannel armor.

Not that he’s in flannel today. He’s in a deep-green performance T-shirt that hugs his chest and lumberjack biceps, shorts hanging off his hips, and he’s leaning against Gigi’s Honda Pilot when I exit the community college building that is not falling down and which does not smell vaguely like rotten fish the same way Tickled Pink does, except for those few minutes this morning when it smelled like chocolate.

Make no mistake: I won’t be writing all my friends in Manhattan about the college building’s architecture—it’s a big metal-and-glass rectangle, as if the architect said, What’s the most boring building we can make? And . . . go!—but it’s functional and smells faintly like Lola Minelli’s mother when she tries to be a rose herself at the Minelli family’s garden party in the Hamptons every summer, and the restroom sinks have actual hot water.

Were I not a Lightly, there’s a high probability I would’ve stripped and bathed in it.

Yes, the tiny sink in the restroom.

I would’ve made myself fit.

Swear I would’ve.

But Teague told me I could use his shower.

I don’t know if it was a ploy to get me to stop crying—and yes, I’m mortified at letting him see me upset—or if he meant it, but if he takes away the offer, I might cry again.

He nods to me when I reach the car. “How was class?”

“Boring. Especially the part where my nineteen-year-old classmates kept whispering and pointing their phones my way. I’m considering sleeping with my teacher to get a good grade and then paying him to not tell Gigi.”

His beard moves like he just clenched his jaw hard enough to bite through a macadamia nut shell.

I smile. “Kidding. Though it was still horrifically boring. And unnecessary. I have to do forty pages of algebra homework on a computer that I can’t connect to the internet so that I can turn it in. Thank you for waiting for me. You didn’t have to do that. I could’ve hitchhiked home.”

His beard twitches again.

Why do I get the feeling I’m the butt of a—

A ringing cell phone from somewhere behind me cuts off my train of thought, and I drop my backpack.

I actually drop it.

It’s a three-year-old Margot Lightly original design, not Louis Vuitton or anything, so I don’t feel too bad, but it’s still out of character for me to do something so drastic. “I could get a cell signal here.”

Teague’s brows lift.

So do the corners of his mouth.

I glare at him. “Oh my God. If I’d remembered to bring my phone, I could’ve gotten cell signal here.”

“Good chance. BarriTel put in a server farm—”

“BarriTel services this area?”

Dammit.

Dammit.

I’m shrieking again.

“You prefer AT&T?”

BarriTel.

BarriTel.

Fletcher Barrington’s family’s empire.

If I want cell service here, I’ll have to pay him. If I’d brought my phone with me today—which I didn’t, because it’s more or less a brick good for nothing more than dwelling on my old life, and I didn’t think about the fact that I was leaving the black hole of cell service—I’d be connecting to his network, rented by other companies.

Dammit.

I grab my backpack, march to the SUV’s back door, glare imperiously at Teague, remember I’m being a better person and that I need to open my own door, and chip a nail trying to grab the handle.