Kai looks up at him, eyes wide, but the tears are dry, so I count that as progress.
“So which is it?” I ask. “Good, bad, or ugly?”
“Not ugly,” Kai says in a small voice.
“So good and bad?” Lane asks.
Kai looks up at us with red-rimmed eyes and decides to trust us. Barely above a whisper, he says, “Her name is Mya and … she’s my twin sister.”
The words hit like a lightning bolt.
Lane goes completely still. “Twin sister,” he repeats carefully.
“Mya said that her dad told her that Desiree split us up when we were babies. She kept me and our father kept her. But Mya knew about me all along and has spent her whole life trying to find me. Then she saw me at the Knights versus Mustangs game on television and she just knew. She ran away and came here. She’s been living at the bakery. I thought it would be okay. I’ve been sneaking her supplies.”
My lips part with a soft gasp. “And that’s where the piece of Bundt cake went earlier.”
“Why I think I’ve been seeing double,” Lane says.
“And explains why the bakery has been—” I start.
“I found the spare key,” Kai admits, voice small. “It’s been really cold outside. We didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Lane runs a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because!” Kai’s voice rises desperately again. “Because adults always mess things up! She’ll be sent away and I’ll never see her again!”
“That’s not—” Lane starts, but he’s interrupted by a soft sound from the back of the bakery.
We all freeze.
“Mya?” Kai calls out hopefully.
A small figure emerges from the shadows near the storage room—a girl who looks exactly like Kai, down to the stubborn set of her jaw and the wariness in her green eyes.
“Hi,” she says quietly, looking between Lane and me with a mixture of fear and defiance. “I’m Mya.”
I say, “Nice to meet you, Mya. I’ll admit that this is an unusual situation, and I’m sorry you kids felt like you couldn’t trust us enough to come forward with the truth right away, but I imagine someone is worried sick about you.”
Mya’s shrug in response worries me.
“What about your father or?—?”
She doesn’t answer.
“How’d you get here?” Lane asks.
She bites her lip. “My dad makes sure my nanny has cash in case of emergencies. After I saw myself at the hockey game on the big screen?—”
Kai interrupts, “She means me.”
“You do look remarkably alike.”
“You stole the money?” Lane asks.
With a frown, Kai grumbles. “See? I knew it. I knew you’d get mad and—” Words fail him.
Lane swipes his hand across his forehead as if struggling to remain calm and patient when this situation went from complicated but manageable to something else entirely.
