His First Choice

Her tone had changed. Completely. He was holding her hand and still felt as though he’d been cut adrift.

Not because she was against him. But she’d become...impartial. He didn’t like it.

So he was going to set her straight right then and there. She and Kacey might have had the perfect family, but most weren’t. No matter how great your parents were, or how close you were to them and your siblings. No matter how many grandparents were in and out all day long, or how many cousins and aunts and uncles filled church pews with you.

“You’re wrong.” He’d tried to soften the blow, but there were some things that ju

st were...what they were.

“Tressa is a walk in the park compared to my sister, JoAnne.”

She stopped in her tracks, only inches from him as she stared up at him in the growing dusk. They really should turn around, even though there were enough homes, restaurants and resorts lighting up the beach that they’d be fine even when it was fully dark out.

“Your sister talked that way to you, too?” she asked softly, studying him. He allowed it because she was back with him. Friend more than professional. The softness in her gaze was completely personal.

“My sister was the devil herself when I was growing up.”

Every family had one. You just did everything you could to make certain it wasn’t you.

Unless you were JoAnne. She’d had no reason. Not like Tressa...

“How so?”

She was his sister, his only sibling. Family. He wished he’d been a little more circumspect in his word choice.

He looked for a way to explain without coming off like a complete jerk.

“JoAnne was five when I was born,” he said. He’d probably gone back a little too far. “Up until I arrived, she was it. My folks’ whole lives revolved around her. They’d had a tough time getting pregnant and she was like a gift from heaven to them.”

And then he’d come along. A son.

“After I was born...my folks probably weren’t as sensitive to her needs as they could have been,” he said, thinking back, aiming for fairness. “She had some jealousy issues.”

That went unattended. Forever.

“And she took it out on you?”

She’d locked him in a closet once when their mother was making cookies, so that he didn’t get to lick the bowl. He was five. He’d turned on a light and looked at the pictures in the books that were stored on a shelf next to him.

“My folks had this thing,” he said. “If we were bad, we weren’t spanked or put in time-out. We had perks taken away from us. If I back-talked my mother, I’d lose the fishing trip my father had promised me for the weekend.”

Lacey’s silence left him far too much room to say more than he wanted to.

“So JoAnne had this game. When we were in the car, she’d pinch me. Over and over. If I told, we’d both get in trouble, which meant that we’d both lose a perk. Her contention was that she’d lost all perks she’d cared about when I was born.”

“Did she?”

“I have nothing upon which to base an opinion. I don’t know what life was like for her before I was born. My parents were great to me. I don’t remember them being bad to her. But I was five years younger than she was. I have no clue what went on after I went to bed at night.”

He turned them around and headed back up the beach the way they’d come. Wondering if Kacey was a good cook. And wishing, completely selfishly, that Lacey had had time to make their dinner.

Not because she was a better cook. As far as he’d been able to tell, both of the sisters were well schooled in the kitchen. He just wanted to eat Lacey’s cooking.

Which probably made him a sick puppy. Or just weird, at the very least, a weird dude.

“She used to tell me that I wasn’t wanted. That I was a mistake. That I was ugly and everyone laughed at my sorry ass. She’d pull my hair just to see if she could make me cry. And then mock me if I did. And if I told our parents, she’d make life twice as miserable.”

He’d learned how to stay out of her way. And later, how to placate her. Because life wasn’t perfect and wasn’t meant to be easy.