“I don’t know. Are we going in?”
Tully’s already three steps away when she throws back over her shoulder. “Fuck yeah. I’m getting to the bottom of this shit. Are you coming?”
Well, shit. I wouldn’t want to miss a throw down. Hell, this might just be what my poor little soul needs. Lacey better be careful because I have a feeling it won’t take much for me and Tully to go straight back to our roots and whoop a bitch’s ass.
Tully storms through the front door, suddenly not giving a shit about nosy neighbors. I come in behind her and am just in time to watch Lacey spin around in shock. “What the hell are you doing here?” Tully demands as I slam the door closed behind me.
Lacey looks on in shock for all of three seconds before pulling herself together. “Excuse me?” she demands. “I have all the right in the world to be here. Though, I can’t say the same for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Rivers is my guy. He’s our pack and you’re just…how the hell do you even know him?”
“He’s my cousin,” she shoots back.
My brows practically fly up to my hairline. “What?” I gasp as I look over the girl in a way I’ve never looked at her before while trying to decipher any kind of resemblance to Rivers. “What do you mean he’s your cousin?”
“I mean exactly what I said,” she says, looking at me in confusion, probably wondering why she has to explain herself to me. “My dad is his dad’s brother.”
“What?” I gasp again.
“What’s the big deal?” she questions, letting out a huff and leaning back against the kitchen counter. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you haven’t explained why you two are here.”
Tully stands a little taller. “We’re here because we saw some random girl snooping around our friend’s home while he’s not here to defend it.”
“I wasn’t snooping,” Lacey throws back.
“Oh yeah? It certainly looked like it to me. What are you looking for?”
“It’s none of your business why I’m here.”
“Bullshit,” Tully says. “And you know what else? It’s certainly funny that you managed to ‘forget’ to mention that you know Rivers.”
“What? I told you that my cousin went to your school, remember? I told you that he would tell me to leave you and Noah alone.”
I step between the two girls and hold a hand up at each of them before someone says something they’ll regret, especially after that last comment was thrown out there. I mean, I don’t even want to begin to understand why Rivers would purposefully try to keep Lacey away from the twins when she knows so much about their little sister. “Can we just rewind?” I say, hoping they can manage to reel in their anger. “Go back to the whole ‘cousins’ thing. What do you mean?”
Lacey raises an unimpressed brow at me. “Are you serious? I literally just explained this.”
“Yeah, but…you realize Rivers is my brother, right? And for him to be my brother, that would make us…”
“Cousins.”
“Yeah…”
Well…shit. I have a cousin. “Are there…any more cousins?”
Lacey bites her lips and slowly shakes her head as she starts looking over me in the same way I had when she first mentioned it. Though ‘surprise’ doesn’t even begin to cover the look on her face. Shocked seems a little more appropriate. “How…how are you Samuel’s sister? I never knew he had a sister. He didn’t mention it.”
“Believe me, I was just as surprised as you are,” I tell her before indicating to the dining table with the chairs flipped upside, sitting on top. “Come on, we better sit. I guess there’s a lot you need to know.”
Lacey slowly nods while Tully continues watching through narrowed eyes. I sit down with Lacey and half an hour later, have basically told her everything there is to know while she’s covered her side of the family.
“So, what does this mean from now on?” Lacey questions.
“It means that it’s time you tell us what you’re doing here.”
Lacey looks up at her and it’s clear that over the past thirty minutes here, Lacey has decided that she doesn’t like Tully much which is a huge leap from the way they were looking as close as family the last time they met.
Lacey lets out a sigh, clearly seeing that Tully isn’t about to give in. “He asked me to look after his place while he was gone. You know, collect the mail, cut the grass every now and then, and make sure no one burns it to the ground.”
I look back at Tully and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that her heart is breaking. Rivers trusted his cousin with this instead of her. Not to mention, he was willing to share it with Lacey while keeping Tully in the dark. “Why didn’t he ask me to do that?”