Her truffles are fucking awesome. She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for. And she doesn’t want to live here for the rest of her life.
Of course she’s not sitting around waiting for Estelle to give her back her trust fund.
She’s out there trying to find another way to save her farm.
“What about Pebbles?” I ask. “What happens to Pebbles if she doesn’t come back?”
“She’ll appreciate your concern,” Not-Tavi says, “but you don’t have to worry.”
She’s wrong.
I do have to worry.
I have to worryvery much.
Chapter 35
Tavi
I woke up from a short nap this afternoon feeling like the goddess of chocolate, but now I’m a hollow chocolate bunny.
“Octavia, open the door,” my mother calls from outside our little rental house. “I told you. I’ll give you all the money you need so that you can get away from your grandmother’s ridiculous scheme. If you’ve found what makes you happy, then I want to help you be happy.”
“She really canceled our meeting with him,” Naomi whispers.
Her face is lit only by the glow of her laptop as we sit together on the double bed in her bedroom, and I’m pretty sure she’d only look even more grim if the lights were on.
You’d think it would be the opposite, but right now, I can convince myself she’s telling a terrible ghost story rather than the truth.
“I can’t do it, Naomi,” I whisper. “I can’t take her money. And I don’t know where that leaves us.”
She stares at me over the laptop, her cheekbones lit up but her eyes shadowed. “We’ll tell him there was a mix-up.”
“He might be new to having the money in his bank account, but he knows better than to do business with people who flake on him. It’s Rich People 101, and he was raised by rich people.”
“But he was so nice—”
“That might work for us if he were a woman,” I mutter darkly.
She grimaces. “Okay. Okay. New plan. We still have our next-tier investor list to reach out to. You can go back to Tickled Pink while—”
“Naomi,Dylan knows. He won’t tell Gigi, but he knows, and he hasn’t texted me since before—”
I stop talking, because I cannot contemplate the rest of that sentence.Since before he probably figured out I lied to him.
“I can’t go back to Tickled Pink,” I whisper. “I can’t do it. I amnotthe person I want to be when I’m around my father and Carter and Gigi, andI can’t do it.”
“And I don’t want you to.” She squeezes my hand. “It’s so hard seeing you miserable. And it’s so complicated when you’ve also been so happy at the same time.”
“But what are we going todo?”
“Tavi, my love?” Mom knocks on the bedroom window. “Sweetheart, I’m here tofix things. I know I was a terrible mother. I didn’t know what I was doing, and your grandmother has judged me forone little indiscretionmy entire life, and I let it get in my head when I should’ve ignored it and paid better attention to you and your brother and sister. I know I can’t change the past, but I want to make it up to you. I want to be in your life the way youwantme in your life, not the way I think I should be in your life.”
My heart feels hollow and full at the same time, and I don’t know what to do with that. I march to the window and fling it open.“You canceled the meeting that would’ve saved my life.”
Her eyes go wide, and her mouth forms a perfect O.
My temper spikes through the roof. “You’re standing there, saying you want to help me live my life my way,but you keep putting yourself first.”
