The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games #1)(53)

There were a lot of firsts I’d never gotten around to after my mother’s death. First dates. First kisses. First times. But this particular first—being dangled off a bridge by a boy who’d just confessed to watching his last girlfriend die—wasn’t exactly on the to-do list.

If she was with you, why did you say that Grayson happened to her?

“Don’t drop your phone,” Jameson told me. “And I won’t drop you.”

His hands were braced against my hips. I was facedown, my legs between the balusters, my torso hanging off the bridge’s edge. If he let go, I was in trouble.

The Dangling Game, I could almost hear my mom declaring.

Jameson adjusted his weight, serving as an anchor for mine. His knee is touching mine. His hands are on me. I felt more aware of my own body, my own skin, than I could ever remember feeling.

Don’t feel. Just look. I flashed my light at the underside of the bridge. Jameson didn’t let go.

“Do you see anything?”

“Shadows,” I replied. “Some algae.” I twisted, arching my back slightly. The blood was rushing to my head. “The boards on the bottom aren’t the same boards we can see up top,” I noted. “There’s at least two layers of wood.” I counted the boards. Twenty-one. I took another few seconds to examine the way the boards met up with the shore, and then I called back, “There’s nothing here, Jameson. Pull me up.”





There were twenty-one boards beneath the bridge and, based on the count I’d just completed, twenty-one on the surface. Everything added up. Nothing was amiss. Jameson paced, but I thought better standing still.

Or I would have thought better standing still if I hadn’t been watching him pace. He had a way of moving—unspeakable energy, uncanny grace. “It’s getting late,” I said, averting my gaze.

“It was always late,” Jameson told me. “If you were going to turn into a pumpkin, it would have happened by now, Cinderella.”

Another day, another nickname. I didn’t want to read into that—I wasn’t even sure what to read into that. “We have school tomorrow,” I reminded him.

“Maybe we do.” Jameson hit the end of the bridge, turned, and walked back. “Maybe we don’t. You can play by the rules—or you can make them. I know which I prefer, Heiress.”

Which Emily preferred. I couldn’t keep myself from going there. I tried to focus on the moment, the puzzle at hand. The bridge creaked. Jameson kept pacing. I cleared my mind. And the bridge creaked again.

“Wait.” I cocked my head to the side. “Stop.” Shockingly, Jameson did as I’d commanded. “Back up. Slowly.” I waited, and I listened—and then I heard the creak again.

“It’s the same board.” Jameson arrived at that conclusion at the same time I did. “Every time.” He squatted down to get a better look at it. I knelt, too. The board didn’t look different from any of the others. I ran my fingers over it, feeling for something—I wasn’t sure what.

Beside me, Jameson was doing the same. He brushed against me. I tried not to feel anything and expected him to pull back, but instead, his fingers slid between mine, weaving our hands together, flat on the board.

He pressed down.

I did the same.

The board creaked. I leaned into it, and Jameson began rotating our hands, slowly, from one side of the board to the other.

“It moves.” My eyes darted up toward him. “Just a little.”

“A little isn’t enough.” He pulled his fingers slowly back from mine, feather-light and warm. “We’re looking for a latch—something keeping the board from rotating all the way around.”

Eventually, we found it, small knots in the wood where the board met up with the balusters. Jameson took the one on the left. I took the one on the right. Moving in synchrony, we pressed. There was a popping sound. When we met back in the middle and tested the board once more, it moved more freely. Together, we rotated it until the bottom of the board faced upward.

I shined my flashlight on the wood. Jameson did the same with his. Carved into the surface of the wood was a symbol.

“Infinity,” Jameson said, tracing his thumb over the carving.

I tilted my head to the side and took a more pragmatic view. “Or eight.”





CHAPTER 48


Morning came way too early. Somehow, I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed. I debated if I could get away with skipping hair and makeup but remembered what Xander had said about telling the story so no one else tells it for you.

After what I’d pulled with the press the day before, I couldn’t afford to show weakness.

As I finished donning what I mentally called my battle face, there was a knock at my door. I answered it and saw the maid who Alisa had told me was “one of Nash’s.” She was carrying a breakfast tray. Mrs. Laughlin hadn’t sent one up since my first morning at Hawthorne House.

I wondered what I’d done to deserve this one.

“Our crew deep-cleans the house from top to bottom on Tuesdays,” the maid informed me, once she’d set up the tray. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll start in your bathroom.”

“Just let me hang up my towel,” I said, and the woman stared at me like I’d announced an intention to do naked yoga right there in front of her.