Her Secret Life

“We can come back later for that.”

“No way, sis,” Jem sat on the bottom corner of her bed. “We aren’t going to risk any permanent physical damage here. No scars to remind you of this night. We wait here. Take care of the wrist. Stop on the way home to get arnica for the bruises. And get you out of this memory and into making the next.”

His words made her start to cry again. And then, with horror, she looked at Lacey. “I’ve got a call Monday morning.”

Lacey nodded. “And you’ll be fine,” she said. “Your face was dirty, but there’s no bruising there. Mostly it’s on your upper arms and torso. Some on your ankles. Wardrobe and makeup can take care of all of that.”

Right. Thank God they’d left her face alone. And... “We’ll need to call Steve as soon as we know about the wrist. The writers will have to take care of it.” They could write something in. A fall. A fight. A car accident. So many ways to fix that one.

Thinking about work was good for her. And Steve, her longtime director, was also a friend. But she didn’t want to talk to him yet.

“Will you call him, too?” she asked her twin.

Lacey was nodding when another voice said, “I think you should call him.”

Michael.

Thank God.

* * *

HE’D BEEN SHOWN to Kacey’s room because a nurse he knew from the Lemonade Stand knew that Kacey had been asking for him. He’d come up in time to hear her turning over control of her life to her sister. And knew...instantly...that she’d regret doing so. She was traumatized. Shaken up. And she was falling back into an old pattern. He didn’t have to think about it. He just knew.

Knew, too, after years of his own counseling and his work at the Lemonade Stand, that in order for victims to reclaim the sense of self that had been violently stripped away, they needed to do as much as possible for themselves. To take control of their lives. He hadn’t intended to speak. He’d just blurted the words.

He stood in the doorway, staring at her beautiful blotchy face, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and he couldn’t speak at all.

Three sets of eyes were staring at him.

He only focused on one.

“Michael?” He wasn’t sure she even spoke aloud. He read her lips. She held out a hand, and he stepped forward, then stopped, remembering the other two people in the room. He took her hand from a spot behind Lacey.

“I thought you were meeting us at the house,” Kacey said. She sounded...okay. Not sick. Or even bereft and lost. She just sounded...like everyone else in his world. There was nothing larger-than-life about her as she lay there.

No light shining through her.

He swallowed. He wasn’t a man who cried, for himself or anyone. But he felt emotion building from deep down inside him. Tightening his throat.

“I just...” His mind spun. “Jem said you mentioned a photo,” he blurted again without giving his words full thought. “If it’s something I need to get on right away, or call the police...”

The idea had just occurred to him, which only proved how rattled he was. If she’d recognized one of her attackers, she’d have already told the police.

Kacey shook her head, still holding his hand. It was okay. She was a toucher.

“Not me. One of them mentioned a photo,” Kacey told him. “He said, ‘Just like the photo.’ It has to be from those recent posts. My agent hasn’t found any new mentions of me in months other than the last couple of weeks. I’m daytime TV. We don’t make headlines all that often.”

He agreed with her assessment. And was disappointed, too.

“Kace, millions of people could have seen those pictures.” He couldn’t possibly search the computers of private citizens to see who’d accessed that photo. Well, actually, he could do just that. But not legally.

“But won’t what happened tonight be enough to get us a warrant to look at the coffee shop security footage?” she asked. “You said if the photo caused harm...” There was a light of question in her eyes.

A light of hope?

It was gone almost immediately, but it had been there. A hint of the light that shone from her so brightly and covered the world around her in warmth.

When they’d talked about it earlier, he’d meant they’d have to prove that the photo had caused direct harm, like a loss of income or fandom, a loss of a job. Maybe if it could be proven that the falsified photo had given her attackers the idea that she was a party animal, and the direct result had been physical harm to her...