The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(84)

“It’s the world you live in.”

“There are good people in the world I live in. I’ve chosen to not be one. And I can’t go back home without choosing between who I can be and who I used to be.”

I open my mouth, intending to ask her who she wants to be, to ask her where she wants to be, but before I form the words, a scream rips through the air somewhere nearby.

Phoebe leaps up so fast that even my reflexes are impressed. Her cat scrambles for a corner. I pick myself up off the floor and dive for my jeans while she shrugs into a robe and takes off at a run toward the scream as it echoes a second time.

“Mom?” she cries.

I hit the hallway running while I’m still zipping up my jeans. There’s yelling now, coming from the floor below, echoing through the hallway.

I’m halfway to the right hallway when I realize what’s going on.

“Who the hell are you?” Phoebe’s saying.

Shit.

I freeze, and someone barrels into me, sending both of us tripping down the last few steps.

“What the fuck, man?” Carter shoves me and takes off for his sister and mother.

I follow more slowly.

I know what’s around the corner, and it has my gut twisting in a way I haven’t felt in almost twenty years.

“Headlock him, Phoebe,” Margot Lightly cries. “Tie him up and show him what happens to people who sneak into our home!”

“I’m sorry, you’re who?” Phoebe says.

“Stand back and let me handle this asshole,” Carter growls.

I turn the corner. “Let him—” I start.

No need to finish that sentence.

Phoebe’s releasing her grip on Floyd’s collar and stepping back, arm out to block Carter. Her head turns slowly—so slowly—until she’s glaring at me with enough ice to douse the sun itself.

I swallow once.

Twice.

Contemplate what I should probably start texting to Bridget and Shiloh as the last communication of my life.

“Tell ’em, Teague,” Floyd says as he shirks back toward the janitor’s closet. “Wasn’t to do no harm. And ya told ’em I was here. Ya did tell ’em, didn’t ya?”

“We did,” I agree.

“Phoebe, he’s getting away!” Margot shrieks.

I’m a dead man.

“What the fuck is he talking about?” Carter asks. “Mom—go to bed. You don’t need to see what’s about to go down.”

“No. Violence.” Phoebe points at Tickled Pink Floyd without looking at him. “You will leave this building and never come back, but you will also write me a long letter detailing every last secret passage in this building so that I can use it to haunt my grandmother’s ass every single day for the rest of our time here, and you’ll leave that letter with Jane, and yes, I mean home-brewing Jane, because I trust her, and I also know how to ruin her beer when no one’s looking. And you.” She swings her finger to point to me. “You are operating at a level closer to Upper East Side than backwoods Wisconsin, and we are going to be having a very serious discussion about exactly where you learned to try to smoke us out with a fake-real ghost just as soon as I can get within four feet of you without wanting to rip out your jugular.”

“What in the hell is going on here?” Margot wails.

“That’s our ghost.” Phoebe swings her finger once more to Tickled Pink Floyd, who’s so close to freedom that I can taste it for him. “He’s not a ghost, despite what our friends and neighbors would’ve liked us to believe.”

We didn’t say he was a ghost is definitely the wrong thing to say right now.

Technically, we never lied.

Floyd does like to still hang around the high school. And he did used to have a pet lizard.

“You could hire him to be the janitor again,” I say instead. “He loves it here.”

“Best home I ever had,” Floyd agrees.

“Oh my God, I cannot,” Margot gasps. “Carter. Take me to my room. I’m done. And you—you—where is your shirt? For the love of—oh my God, Phoebe, are you sleeping with the lumberjack? But Elijah Richardson is due back in New York soon, and you two would’ve made such an adorable couple!”

I step aside as Carter leads Margot up the stairs, the older woman muttering and fussing and leaning heavily on him.

He’s glowering at me, but if he thinks he’s scary, he really doesn’t know his sister.

She’s so livid her skin is splotchy. Arms crossed over her robe, her fingers drumming against her opposite biceps. I want to stalk down the hallway and kiss her senseless, but guilt won’t let me.

“Warning, Miller. I wanted warning.”

I swallow.

Hard. “Good one, though, wasn’t it?”

She sucks in a massive breath through her nose.

And that’s when it happens.

The twinkle.

Fuck me, she’s sporting a damn twinkle in her eyes.

And now I wish she truly were going to kill me, because this?

Phoebe Lightly matching my game with more game of her own?

This will be what kills me.

Her wits. Her game.

Her respect.

“That thing you did a little bit ago?” She gestures to her crotch. “There will be more for reparations. Understood?”