His First Choice

One week was all they had left. She didn’t want to think about that.

“I’m going to need a chance to tell him about talking to Sydney without Levi present,” she said when she’d just been thinking that she didn’t want to saddle Kacey with babysitting during her last week of vacation. “I don’t want to do it over the phone.”

She needed to be able to reach out and take his hand. To see into his eyes. To know that they were going to be okay.

“You made love with him.”

There was no point in denying it. And while the sisters didn’t kiss and tell, they usually let the other know when they were in a physical relationship. Up until a year and a half ago, they’d shared the same house. And it was polite to let your roommate know when a man was going to be at the breakfast table.

“Yeah. Without telling him that I’m going to make his life uncomfortable if he doesn’t do it himself.”

“You went with your heart.” Kacey knew her well.

“You think I should have told him first?”

“I’m not saying that. You know your stuff, Lace. You’ve always known when to let others figure things out for themselves. And when they do, there you are, sitting right beside them. Ready and waiting.”

They weren’t talking about Jem. Or domestic violence.

“We’ve both been kind of cast off at sea, haven’t we?” she said, not regretting a second of what she’d done with Jem that night, but not gloriously happy about it, either. There were hurdles in front of them that couldn’t be ignored.

“I thought it was just you,” Kacey told her, taking Lacey’s hand in both of hers and holding it on her knee. Something she hadn’t done in years but used to do often, Lacey remembered. Usually when they were waiting to go on camera. In their pubescent days Kacey had started to get nervous sometimes before going on air.

“I thought you were running away when you came up here, because you were so convinced you were second best.”

“In some ways I was,” Lacey said. If they were going to clear the air, really clear it, and be as connected as they’d always been—and she hoped they were—then she had to be honest. With Kacey, of course, but also with herself. “In a lot of ways I was,” she said now.

“I know. And sometimes...I liked it that way. It’s like I was the star and you were my sky.”

Kacey’s eyes filled with tears. “Like that old song...you were the wind beneath my wings.”

And if that was all she’d ever be, it would have been enough because Kacey’s wings were lovely. When she spread them, she brought joy to so many. Not just by entertaining them, but with her kindness, too. Her open heart.

“And I focused far too much on not having my own wings,” Lacey told her. “When in reality, I never really wanted them. I didn’t want to come in second, to lose my boyfriend to you, and every solo job offer...” She stopped. They both knew all the ways in which Lacey had been passed over through the years. “But I also didn’t want to be in the spotlight. To have people fawning over me. I’m not good at it.”

“I like that I can shake someone’s hand, or smile at them, and make their day,” Kacey said. And somehow managed to convey heart, not conceit.

“You’re living the life that you were meant to live,” Lacey said. Knowing that as great as it had been sharing a home with Kacey again, they were going to have to separate. Because just as Kace belonged in Beverly Hills, Lacey’s life was in Santa Raquel.

In a very short period of time, even before Jem, the little town had become home to her.

“Not completely.” Kacey shook her head. “But you knew that, too, didn’t you?” She met Lacey’s gaze and Lacey couldn’t look away.

“This is where you shine far brighter than I do, Lacey, and it’s worth far more than shiny lights. You get life. You get the big stuff. The small stuff. The real stuff. You see what most people are too afraid to look at. And you find ways to make it okay. From the time we were little you were always making life okay.”

Kacey had been the acrobat. She’d been the net. It wasn’t a choice either of them had made. It just was.

“I date the wrong type of men,” Kacey said now. “I love my work. I’d go so far as to say I need it. It completes something in me.”

A fact that had been obvious to Lacey since they’d been about eight. “I agree.”

“But I’m not enjoying clubbing. I get bored at the parties. I want...more.”

“You need more.”

“You knew.”

“I suspected.”