The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(90)

“That’s not the compliment you mean it to be.”

She flinches.

Heat floods my face and chest as I realize I’ve actually struck a nerve.

She does care.

Niles wasn’t blowing smoke. She cares. She does think of me as part of her family, regardless of where I came from.

But she doesn’t know how to show it. She doesn’t know how to be anything other than a badass, terrorizing everyone around her to keep herself from feeling— Well, probably everything I’ve felt since we got here to Tickled Pink.

She’s had a few more years of practice having to hide her vulnerabilities than I have.

And honestly?

Feeling sucks sometimes.

I wish I didn’t feel several times a day lately.

“I have a business proposal for you,” I say in the unusual silence that she hasn’t rushed to fill.

“And you wonder if you’re truly my granddaughter,” she says with a subtle sniff. “Nurture over nature. Always.”

Is it wrong that this is what finally snaps me out of this who am I? funk that I’ve been in all week?

But it does.

It completely does.

Because you know what?

I would not have chosen these people. Gigi has her strengths. She has her weaknesses. She’s nurturing in her own way, and it’s helped me become the person that I am, but I don’t want to be all of that person anymore.

Especially the Gigi-est parts.

And I don’t have to. I can choose not to.

I toss the business proposal in the trash. Linen paper and all. There’s no way in hell—and I know hell at this point—that I’m asking for another dime from her.

That’s the easy way to get what I want.

Screw easy.

I’m doing this the right way.

“You can’t be a better person if all you’re doing is investing money in a small town to make them worship you,” I tell her.

She chokes on air.

Yep.

I’m making my grandmother choke again.

And yes. Yes, she’s my grandmother. Nurture. She’s right. She’s helped make me who I am, the good parts and the bad parts.

My DNA doesn’t matter.

I am a Lightly. They chose me, regardless of how or why.

It’s time I lived back up to my Lightly heritage. My way.

“This school? The community center?” I continue. “What are you really using them for? And if you’re going to tell me it’s really so that they can put up shrines and plaques to you like you said Tickled Pink should’ve done for Whitney Anastasia in that damn movie that you still miss the point of, then you’re hopeless. You have to do the things you’d do if you didn’t have money. And you’re still using your money, except you’re using it to manipulate people who might not be perfect but who were probably all better off before we set foot in this town. You want to be a better person? Fix the school so it can be a museum about the town and this area, not you. Fix the community center and fund it so that it can be a place where kids go to hang out after school and know they have food and hot water available to them. Donate that five million to the college over in Deer Drop without stipulations. Fund the town’s scholarship without stipulations too. For Oprah’s sake, Gigi, do real good. And claim your boyfriend in public while you’re at it. If he’s willing to be publicly associated with you, that is. And if he’s not, fuck him.”

She’s trying to aim the eyebrow at me, but it’s not working, because I’m about done with the damn eyebrow and it’s lost its effectiveness, but also because her eyes are getting shiny. “I suppose that, considering you’ve completed your assignment here and I no longer have to worry about the state of your soul, I can allow a small amount of grace for your attitude.”

Dammit.

Now my eyes are getting hot. I jab a finger toward her, hitting only air while my kitten brushes his furry body around my ankles. “I get to decide when I’ve become a better person. Because I know my heart and my soul better than anyone. So thank you for the compliment, but I am not done, and you don’t get to decide for me.”

Her lips settle into a satisfied smirk. “I have done such a wonderful job with you, haven’t I?”

“This is all me, Gigi.”

“Does it truly matter in your heart, Phoebe, who gets the credit, or does it matter that you have that satisfaction of knowing you’ve become a better person?”

My eyeball is twitching.

I feel like Teague watching Bridget tell off a group of adults, except I can’t muzzle my grandmother like he can muzzle his daughter.

Or try to, at least. There’s basically only trying.

Where both Gigi and Bridget are concerned.

“I’m leaving,” I tell her. But I don’t mean I’m leaving Tickled Pink.

I like Tickled Pink. I want to stay in Tickled Pink.

Do I have a few things to clear up still in New York? Like dealing with Fletcher and finding some closure with my mom over her secret?

Yes. I should do those things.

But I’ll get there.

Right now, I’m leaving the school. I have homework, if I want to do it, and I will, because I like to finish what I start, even if I don’t take another class.

Plus, there’s a fishing lumberjack I might catch herding some goats in mosquito-infested air, and I need a good partner in crime since I just blew out of the water all my funding plans for my next big goal in life.