I sink back into the chair and find myself sighing too. “Then we shouldn’t play games. You have a good life here, and my family and I have no right to interrupt it. But before you kick me out—don’t you want to know what could happen? Aren’t you the teensiest bit curious? How long have you been holding yourself back, waiting for someone who’s never going to love you the way you want? You have a choice, Dylan. You can stay in this rut you’ve built for yourself, or you can take a chance and see what else the world might hold for you. I know new can be scary, but is scary wrong? What’s the very worst thing that happens?”
He turns the corner just before the neoclassical high school building that I currently call home, his face telling me there’ssomethinggoing on in his head that he doesn’t want to say out loud. “You didn’t saylikeor use a single exclamation point in that entire little speech there.”
My cheeks flame up. “So?”
“So we’re back to ... exactly who are you, Tavi Lightly?”
“Excuse me, we’re talking aboutyouright now, and I’m the very best thing that could’ve possibly happened to you in this exact moment.”
“Why do you run so much?”
“What?”
“You’re out running like someone’s chasing you every single morning. What are you running from?”
“That’s not really relevant here.”
“If we’re gonna be telling people we’re ‘just friends,’ we’re gonna be the ‘friend’ part. Not the ‘just’ part.”
His warm brown eyes slide my direction for a second before returning to the road. He has one hand at the bottom of the steering wheel, his posture relaxed, his profile as chill as lettuce in a crisper drawer. His rugged jawline is freshly shaved, and there’s a hint of a dimple peeking out of his cheek, like he’s used it so much in his lifetime already that even with his face neutral, it can’t fully tuck itself back in, or possiblylike he’s always on the verge of smiling, even when he’s arguing with someone.
I told Phoebe not long after we got here that I used to wish I’d been born in another family, until I realized I could make my own family while still benefiting from the Lightly money.
But I lied.
I still wish I’d been born in a different family—Naomi’s family, preferably—so that I could talk to a man like Dylan without hiding so many secrets that I should be recruited by the CIA, without the manipulation and guilt and fake connections that leave me feeling empty inside.
If I had to be born rich, I wish I’d been born rich in character instead. Rich in integrity. Rich in love.
Then maybe I’d truly mean it when I say I don’t care that I’m not the smartest or the prettiest or the most personalitied.
What does it say about a person when she peaked before she was three?
To hear my mom talk about my beauty pageant days, that’s what I did. Ever since then, it’s been,Be skinnier, Tavi. Smile bigger, Tavi. No, not that big. You didn’t get the brains, honey, so you have to make your body work for you, though, you poor thing, you’re built like your father, aren’t you?
Honestly?
I have not missed my mother since she left Tickled Pink.
I was almost glad when she hit her limits and spilled the blackmail Gigi had used to keep her here, telling us she’d cheated on Dad about thirty-one years ago and that Phoebe isn’t his. I was hoping she’d follow it withand Tavi, you’re adopted, but she didn’t.
Plus, there’s no denying that I have the Lightly eyes.
And my father’s build.
Sigh.
“I run to stay in shape,” I tell Dylan.
“Don’t have to run a marathon every day to stay in shape.”
“You do when your hips are inclined to spread to the width of a continent if you’re not careful.”
He growls.
Growls.
And damn if that dimple doesn’t disappear. “If youactuallygot hit by a garbage truck tomorrow and had to tell God your biggest regret, would it be that you didn’t run seven more miles every day, or would it be that you never got to experience a bacon cheeseburger in all its glory because you were too tied up in looking like some paragon of impossible perfection?”
