LaceysGame by Shiloh Walker Page A

my…boyfriend.”
    She could actually call Brogan her boyfriend. How fricking
weird was that?
    “I’m sorry.” The brunette somehow managed to pull off
elegant and cute in the same breath. She toyed with the strap of her purse and
looked around. “I’m trying to find Brogan Grainger.”
    The elevator behind her dinged. Lacey smiled and said,
“Well, you’re in luck.”
    The woman whirled around. “Brogan.”
    He’d been smiling but the smile on his face faded. “Leslie.
What are you doing here?”
    “I need to give you a few things.” Her voice wobbled a
little but firmed as she reached into her bag. “Dad doesn’t want you to have
this stuff, but Sierra gave it to me and I figure that makes these mine to do
with as I choose. And…”
    Sierra? Lacey started to move forward but stopped as
the woman reached into her bag and pulled out a little wooden photo box. Brogan
frowned, eying it as if it were radioactive. “Dad lied to you, Brogan,” Leslie
said, her voice soft. “A lot. Sierra fell in love with you. She’d gone to talk
to Brad that last time to tell him that she wanted to stay with you and she was
going to tell you the truth, come clean and everything. I know, because
she told me the night before.”
    Lacey thought Brogan looked as if he’d been hit across the
head. And Leslie continued to stand there, the little photo box in hand, Lacey
reached out and took it. “I’ll take it for now,” she said softly. “He’ll look
through it when he has time, okay?”
    Leslie paused and then nodded.
    She headed to the elevator, but before she could push the
button, Lacey called out, “Wait… It’s been ten years. Why did you wait so
long?”
    Leslie stood there, staring at her feet for a long, long
moment. Then finally, she turned back around, but she gave her answer to
Brogan, not Lacey. “I blamed you. For a long time. Not like Dad did, but
because she didn’t think you’d be there for her and support her when everything
was falling apart. And then…” She shrugged and looked down. “A few years ago, I
was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dad got sick while I was going through chemo.
Everything fell apart and I didn’t have anybody. My husband started cheating on
me and I got to thinking… You would have been there for Sierra. I don’t know
what was going through her head, but you would have been there. Your mind takes
you on weird trips when you’re sick. I got better, but Dad…well, he never did.
We buried him two months ago. And I decided it was time.” Her eyes flicked to
Lacey. “Time for me to start living again. Time for Brogan to start living…but
I had to let go of some things. I figured maybe he did too.”
     
    Lacey put the box on the mantel and, by the way Brogan was
acting, he’d have been happy to just let it stay there.
    That wasn’t an option, though.
    For their first night together , and she meant really together, she’d ordered pizza and cracked open a bottle of wine. Now she was
going to crack open Brogan.
    With the pie steaming in front of them and two glasses of
wine waiting, she grabbed the photo box and sat down beside him. He saw it and
she watched his face tighten, ever so slightly.
    “You asked me what I wanted from you,” she said, reminding
him of the conversation a few weeks earlier. She put it down in front of him.
“I want this. I want all of you…forever. And it involves you letting her go.
But you can’t, until you see what’s inside.”
    “Lacey…”
    “No. Open it. You hid from me, from yourself, from
everything, long enough.”
     
    The picture on top was from their first anniversary. One of
the happiest times of his life, he’d thought. Just months before things went to
hell. “She started getting depressed a few months after this was taken. We went
to Scotland.” He showed the picture to Lacey, then put it aside. Found a
picture of them in Destin. Another from Gatlinburg. Pictures of the two of
them. Most of them were of the two of them,