This time permanently.
* * *
AFTER SHE LEFT the Stand, Kacey stopped by Lacey and Jem’s, ostensibly to drop off her bag, but mostly to brush her teeth, fix her hair and freshen her makeup. Then, before she could chicken out and head back to Beverly Hills, she drove to her sister’s office.
She didn’t call first. Lacey would hear distress in her voice and muck things up before she’d had a chance to begin.
She was going to have a fight on her hands. She knew it. She also knew she had to push through and win this one.
Lacey was on the phone when she got there, but because it was lunchtime, she was free right after that.
“You want to go to Mario’s?” she asked, standing at her desk when Kacey walked into her office. In a skirt that should have been slim line but wasn’t, and a jacket that was at least one size too large, her twin looked...radiant. Even though her pregnancy wasn’t anywhere near showing yet, it showed on Lacey’s face.
In the smile on her lips.
The joy in her eyes.
Kacey didn’t want to dim that joy. Not even a notch. But some things were out of her control.
“I don’t want lunch,” she said, having so recently lost the contents of her stomach. “I know who attacked me on the beach.”
Practically flying over the desk, Lacey took her hands, pulled her down to sit with her in the two wooden chairs facing her desk. Their knees touched. Her sister’s fingers were on her face—and she found some good.
The good that would always be there. Her identical twin.
Maybe that was why she’d come. To remember that.
“Who? Did the police call you? Do they have them in custody?” She also heard the question Lacey didn’t ask. Was it anyone I might know?
She wanted to cry. Needed to cry. But couldn’t.
“No, the police didn’t call me. But they’ve been called. I’m fairly certain that if two of them aren’t already in custody, they probably soon will be.”
“Two of them? What about the third?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Lacey’s brow furrowed and Kacey knew her sister was tuning in. “What’s going on, Kace?” She sounded frightened.
“I know the third kid. Well...I’d never actually met him until today, but I know of him.”
“Who is he?”
“Michael’s little brother.”
“Mike Valentine? He knew all along? He couldn’t have known. Is he the one who told you—”
She broke off as Kacey blinked back the tears that she refused to give in to.
“He didn’t know. And there’s something you don’t know, either.”
When had life become so hard? When they were growing up it had all seemed like such an easy ride.
Because it had been.
For her.
Not for people like Michael. And Willie. And, in a way, Lacey, too.