Grace was a coward. She darted a glance around the van, petrified of getting caught.
Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. All eyes are on Sophia, anyway.
Grace pulled her sister’s phone out of her bag. What she was about to do was for Sophia’s own good. When the lock screen lit up, she tapped in the four-digit access code.
It was rejected.
The code was supposed to be the year Grace had been born. Although it surprised the few people who learned of it, Grace was actually the baby sister, only twenty-five to Sophia’s twenty-nine. Her big sister loved her. Her big sister used baby Grace’s birth year as her code. Only it didn’t work now.
How old was Deezee? Grace typed in his birth year. It worked.
The stab to her heart was starting to feel too familiar. With jaw clenched, Grace began deleting photos, horrible shots of her sister’s bare breasts covered by Deezee’s hands, shots that would never, ever end up on Instagram, not when she could prevent it.
Delete, delete, delete.
The van doors opened with a sudden rush of air. Grace dropped her sister’s phone like a hot potato.
A woman about her own age poked her head in. “Hi. You’re with Sophia Jackson, right?”
“Yes.” She blinked in what she hoped was an innocent way.
“There’s been an accident.”
For one horrible moment, the world stopped.
An accident. Careers and reputations and idiot boyfriends evaporated before the image of a hurt Sophia.
“Oh, my God.” The words were a whisper, but inside her head she was screaming. My sister, my sister! Their parents had been killed in a car accident. A stranger, a woman like this one, had come just this kindly to tell them there had been an accident. Grace had been fifteen. Sophia had been nineteen.
“It’s nothing life threatening, I promise. We have so many Texas Rescue doctors and paramedics and firefighters here, she’s being well taken care of, but they do think she should go to the hospital to have things checked out.”
The only reason Grace had survived the loss of her parents was because Sophia had been by her side, taking on the role of parent, loving her with all she had. But now Sophia had been in an accident, hurt badly enough that she needed to go to the emergency room. My sister, my sister!
“Would you like to ride in the ambulance with her?”
Grace clutched her tote bag as she scrambled out of the van. The fans behind the barricade were silent, wide-eyed. The yellow ribbon had been cut. Its ends flapped in the light breeze as the ceremonial scissors leaned against the building, standing on their points, forgotten. All the men and women in suits and uniforms were now by the open doors to an ambulance. The kind woman escorted Grace right through the little cluster. A paramedic offered her a hand up, and there Sophia lay, looking miserable on a gurney. Miserable, but very much alive.
Grace threw herself onto her big sister for a hug. “Are you okay?”
Sophia put her hand on her shoulder—and gave her a shove. “Don’t bump my leg. I’m going to sue somebody if this makes me miss Deezee’s party. Give me my phone. I need to call him. He’s going to freak when he sees this on Instagram.”
Deezee was going to be worried? What about me?
While Sophia lapsed into another coughing fit, Grace sat on the metal bench that ran the length of the ambulance’s interior. She slid her tote bag closer, slowly, buying herself time to get her emotions under control. For all of her life, she’d been the one whom Sophia had worried about. After their parents had died, they’d been afraid to be apart, afraid of the future—afraid they’d lose each other in a split second, the way they’d lost their parents. Sophia had let Grace crawl into her bed when she was afraid of the dark.
“You know, when they said you were in an accident just now, all I could think of was Mom and Dad...” The words hurt her throat.
Sophia went still and looked at her, really looked at her for the first time in ages. “Aw, Gracie.” And then, also for the first time in ages, it was her sister who reached out to fix her hair, smoothing Grace’s plain brown hair over her shoulder. It had once been blond like Sophia’s but had darkened in adulthood.
A paramedic jumped into the bay with them, a man who could get work as a body double for Thor. Grace said hello; Sophia ignored him. Doors slammed shut, and the ambulance began moving.
The cell phone in her tote bag rang. Her sister practically jackknifed into a sitting position on the gurney, which immediately made her yelp in pain and freeze in place. Still, she could give an order through clenched teeth. “Answer it. Hurry.”
“It’s mine.” Grace dug in her bag and silenced the ring.
“Hand me mine. Maybe Deezee called.”
Deezee never called. Sophia was to do the work. Sophia was to come and see him, at his convenience, without any notice. If Deezee saw a photo on Twitter or Instagram of Sophia being loaded into the back of an ambulance, he’d expect Sophia to call him and tell him the latest. Didn’t she realize that?
Sophia held out her hand and made a little grabby motion. “He’ll get pissed if I don’t tell him what’s going on. He’ll want to know what hospital I’m at.”
Or maybe Sophia did realize how little effort Deezee made, and she just didn’t know that wasn’t normal. Maybe she’d forgotten how Dad had treated Mom, once upon a time.
At any rate, Grace didn’t have Sophia’s phone. She’d tossed it aside in her haste to make sure Sophia wasn’t dying. She couldn’t say that, though. The phone should have been in her tote bag, not in her hand.
“It must have fallen out of my bag in the van.”
“You lost my phone?”
The paramedic chose that moment to interrupt by wrapping the black Velcro of a blood pressure cuff around Sophia’s upper arm. “Let’s get your blood pressure.”
Grace tried to reassure her sister. “I’m pretty sure I remember seeing it lying on the seat with your lipstick, actually.”
Sophia laid back with a huff, her life so inconvenienced by a handsome paramedic who was taking care of her. She glared at Grace, looking pretty fearsome for someone who was hurt badly enough to be in the back of an ambulance at the moment.
“It’ll be okay. We know it’s in the van, and I’m sure the Texas Rescue people will find it and bring it back to the hospital.”
“They’ll look at my personal stuff. You’re the one who is always so worried about what will get out on social media. You think those Texas Rescue people aren’t going to pass around Sophia Jackson’s personal phone for kicks and giggles?”
The paramedic didn’t like that, Grace could tell from the way he clenched his jaw. Neither did she. She wouldn’t lose her temper, though. Confronting Sophia never worked.
“They can’t see what’s in your phone.” She spoke as sweetly as possible, but she knew it sounded fake. It was her sister who was the actress, after all. “You have your phone locked. Our special secret sister code is still protecting it, right?”
Sophia opened her mouth, then shut it again, and looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Of course.”
The wall between them seemed just a little higher. Just a little harder to breach. It was a wall in the shape of a man. A stupid, worthless type of man, who was systematically pushing Grace out of her sister’s life.
Grace couldn’t imagine being so blind in love. If she were to fall in love, one thing was for certain: she would never, ever love a man who didn’t also love her sister.
* * *
Alex Gregory