Surely not, she thought as she stood up, taking her laptop and phone with her. Karson and JT were so engrossed in their game they didn’t notice as she went to her room. Shutting the door, she laid her laptop on the bed and cursed the mess in the room. While they were gone looking at houses and then going to the bank, the movers had come. She hated the storage unit their room had been turned into. Ignoring it though, she dialed Rachel’s number.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, are you at the office?”

“Yeah, about to leave,” she said in a way that made Lacey’s skin crawl. It had always been easy to talk to her best friend, but not anymore.

“Do me a quick favor. Check the donation files and see if you have info on a ten thousand dollar monthly donation that has been coming in since the beginning of the foundation.”

“If you were here, you could do it,” she snapped.

“You’re right, but I’m not. Are you going to do it, or do I need to wait?”

“I’m looking, hold on.”

“How nice of you,” Lacey said sarcastically as she shook her head. Never in the six years since opening Lacey’s Lace had she thought about firing Rachel, but she was thinking that at that moment.

And it honestly brought her to tears.

“I don’t have any info on them. It has been an anonymous donation since the beginning. Don’t you remember when it first happened?”

She stopped for a second. She did remember. She’d cried for hours and couldn’t believe that someone wanted to help her foundation. People were donating thousands, but no one had donated ten thousand until her anonymous donor came along. They always joked that it was an angel her mom sent. And they were right.

It was Karson.

“What?” Rachel said, and Lacey didn’t realize she had said that out loud.

“Karson is the anonymous donor.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I was looking through his bank account, and it was him. He’s been donating ten thousand dollars a month since I started. Can you believe it?”

“No, that’s crazy,” Rachel gasped. “I’m impressed.”

“He’s been helping my foundation for years, and I didn’t know.”

“None of us did. That’s amazing and awesome. Kinda lessens my hate for him.”

“You have no reason to hate him.”

“He took you away, so of course I do,” Rachel said, her voice rich with emotion. Lacey had suspected that was the reason, and that pissed her off. Karson was a good man and he loved her. He had made that loud and clear in so many ways, regardless of what her family thought of him. She just wished they wouldn’t have spent so much time apart. If only their pride and their fears could have been ignored. Their lives would have been so much different if they hadn’t. “Why were you in his bank account though?”

Wiping her face free of the tears she hadn’t even realized were falling, she took a deep breath as she said, “I was paying off my debt. He doesn’t like debt and wanted to go into our new house debt free.”

“He paid your debt?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“He loves me,” she said simply.

“Yeah, sure, but you guys bought a house?” she asked, her snippy voice back.

“Yeah, it’s gorgeous. I hope you’ll come to see it.”

Rachel paused and Lacey’s heart stopped. “I don’t know. We will see,” she said, and Lacey was just glad she didn’t say no outright. Anyone else she would have said fuck off too, but it was different with Rachel. She was basically her sister, and Lacey missed her more than anything.

“I’d really like to have my best friend back,” Lacey admitted. “You’ve been hurting me lately.”

“Yeah, well, you broke my heart when you left without even a backward glance at me or who you were leaving behind.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Rachel. I just want to be happy.”

“And it hurts even more that we weren’t enough to make you happy.”

“You guys do make me happy, but I love my husband and had to come to where he was,” she pleaded, but she didn’t think Rachel cared.

When the door opened and Karson came in, his brows shot up as he mouthed, ‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head as Rachel said, “It’s whatever, Lacey. I don’t know. I’m still so mad at you. I think this is all a mistake, and yeah, he is glitzing you with a house and paying off your debt. But what’s gonna happen when he throws you away like he did before? Am I supposed to pick up the pieces again?”

“A true best friend would,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t matter because he only did that because of my dad.”

Karson rolled his eyes as he fell onto the bed beside her. “Why are we still talking about this?” he asked and Lacey shook her head again to shut him up.

“Or maybe that is just his excuse.”

“No, Daddy admitted it.”

“I don’t believe that one bit. Your dad is good to you,” she snapped, and Lacey’s tears started to fall in earnest. How did she not believe her?

Clearing her throat, she said, “Ask Grady, Rachel. He’ll tell you.”

“Whatever, I got to go get the boys from day care,” Rachel said, slamming something, and Lacey’s heart just ached.