The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(98)

“I thought you were my hero. I thought you could see something in me that no one else could. I thought you were truly the bigger person stooping to my level to give me a hand up. But that’s not it at all, is it? You didn’t see what I could be. You saw your own old life, and you got off on watching me struggle in all the ways you don’t have to anymore. In all the ways you never had to, because you got to do it in secret, without the added bonus of the public humiliation. Fuck off, Teague. Just fuck off.”

She brushes past me, not touching me, but I feel like she slammed a bulldozer into my shoulder anyway, and when the door slams behind her, the noise is more than just a door slamming.

It’s the sound of my carefully crafted life imploding.





Chapter 34


Phoebe


He lied.

On the surface, I’m not entitled to be mad about that.

How much have I lied about in my life? If I left New York, if I started over like he did, would I want to go somewhere that everyone knew who I was and what was wrong with me?

Not at all.

But of everyone in his life, he should’ve known I would’ve understood. Hasn’t the past month meant anything?

And that’s what has me stifling sobs and swerving through the streets of Tickled Pink in the dark, aimlessly wandering while I try to find a safe space to completely lose my shit, terrified someone will see me like this, utterly broken that I couldn’t keep myself together enough to not look like a threat to Teague, and equally angry that he lied to me.

And not about the little stuff.

The man I thought I was falling in love with isn’t the man I thought he was at all, and it turns out he doesn’t truly believe I can change.

That I’m worthy of his trust. That I’ll ever be good enough for him to let me all the way in.

He would rather cut me out than trust that I could be the person who stands beside him while his past comes back to haunt him.

But the worst part?

If Teague Miller, the gruff and grumpy single dad with a heart of gold, the man who’s been my damn hero, the man who’s been my model of everything I want to be, isn’t actually who he says he is, then can I ever be who I want to be?

I thought he was a small-town single dad adored by his friends and family for the little things, but it turns out, underneath it all, he’s just like me.

The old me.

What am I supposed to do with that?

I’ve been angry before when relationships fizzled and died. Furious. Pissed off. Determined to get revenge.

But right now, there’s no rage.

There’s simply emptiness.

I’m a hollow shell. I can’t fit back in the socialite box, and I can’t stay here, where I thought I was home, because my anchor is actually a trap.

I want my cat, but I don’t want to go back to the school. I want to hug someone, but I don’t want to see anyone.

I want a time machine. I want to go back in time to dinner with Gigi, when I thought Tavi was calling me, and I want to dunk my phone in my soup and take whatever it was Gigi had been planning to dish out, and then I want to have gone back to work the next day as the soulless snob that I was and never, ever know what I was missing in life.

I want to not feel. I want to not know why there was always an underlying hum of disappointment, of discontentment, sitting somewhere between that spot behind my ear and that place between my lungs always making me wish that I could go somewhere and scream until it went away. I want to go back to believing it was normal and that everyone felt it and you just had to live with it. Or that it was because I wasn’t climbing the corporate ladder fast enough. That it was because I was never quite good enough for Gigi, who had ridiculous standards anyway. That it was because the men in my circles were such a general disappointment.

I clap my hand over my mouth as another sob wells up.

The men are such a general disappointment.

Not Teague, I would’ve said just a few short hours ago. He’s proof that goodness exists in the world. That nothing is what it seems. That grumpy exteriors hide the kindest, softest underbellies. That I, too, can find happiness.

That I, too, can be worthy of the kind of love, family, and community that Whitney Anastasia found in Pink Gold.

If this is happiness, I don’t want it. If this is a soul, I’d like to return it, please.

Why does it have to hurt so much?

Because you grew a heart, Phoebe, Teague’s voice whispers in the back of my head.

And that’s what ultimately breaks me.

An old, closed-up church looms in front of me, and I sprint for it as unwelcome tears start gushing out of my eyeballs.

I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

I want to be alone.

Alone with my own misery. Alone to put my shields back on. Alone to figure out how I’ll deal with the fact that the sun will have the utter gall to rise again tomorrow morning, like my entire life isn’t broken beyond repair.

But when I tuck myself into the corner of the covered doorway, I realize there’s light peeking through in the slim opening between the double doors.

It’s a church.

It’s not used anymore, but it’s open, and it has light.

I hurl myself inside, suck in a gaspy sob, and taste chocolate.

Chocolate.

Oh my God.

Is this church the gate to heaven?