The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(66)

She’s talking about Nash.

“I am holding this empire together by a thread.” Alisa swiped angrily at her face with the back of her hand, and I realized a single tear had escaped. Her expression made it damn clear that it would be the last. “Avery, I will handle this situation. I will put out this fire. I will do what needs to be done, but the next time you keep a secret from me, the next time you lie to me? I will throw you to the wolves myself.”

I believed her. “There is one more thing.” I gulped—there was no way of sugarcoating this. “Well, two more things. One: Toby was adopted, and his biological mother was the Laughlins’ then-teenage daughter.”

Alisa stared at me for a good three seconds. Then she arched an eyebrow, waiting for the other thing.

“And two,” I continued, thinking back to the moment when Grayson had stopped me from saying this on camera—and how. “I have reason to believe that Toby is, in all likelihood, my father.”





CHAPTER 65


Well,” Max said, flopping down on my bed. “That could have gone better.” She’d seen the interview. The whole world had. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Grayson had warned me, from the very beginning, not to pull at this thread. He warned me against telling anyone about Toby, and how many people had I told?

When we’d arrived back at Hawthorne House, I had tried to talk to him, but my mouth had refused to say a single word.

“Grayson didn’t have to kiss me,” I told Max, the words bursting out of my mouth, like I didn’t have much bigger things to think about. “He could have cut me off.”

“Personally, I find this turn of events delightful,” Max declared. “But you look like a motherfaxing deer caught in motherfaxing headlights.”

I felt like one. “He shouldn’t have kissed me.”

Max grinned. “Did you kiss him back?”

His lips. Mine. “I don’t know!” I bit out.

Max gave me her most innocent look. “Would you like me to pull up the footage?”

I’d kissed him back. Grayson Hawthorne had kissed me, and I’d kissed him back. I thought about the night before in the hedge maze. The way he’d corrected my form. How close we’d been standing.

“What am I doing?” I asked Max, feeling like I was in a maze now. “Jameson and I are…”

“What?” Max probed.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I knew what Jameson and I were supposed to be: adrenaline and attraction and the thrill of the moment. No strings attached. No messy emotions.

So why did I feel like I’d betrayed him?

“Close your eyes,” Max advised me, closing her own. “Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping in your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn.” Max opened her eyes. “Who’s there?”





The problem with Max’s question was that it assumed I was capable of longing, body and soul, for anything. Anyone. When I pictured myself on that cliffside, I pictured myself alone.

Late into the night, long after Max had retired to her room, I pulled up news searches to see what people were saying about that disastrous interview. Most headlines were calling Toby “the lost heir.” Skye was already giving interviews.

Apparently her NDA didn’t cover this.

In the comments section of nearly every article, there was speculation that I’d slept with Grayson to get him on my side. Some people were claiming that he wasn’t the only Hawthorne I’d slept with. It shouldn’t have mattered that strangers were calling me a slut—or worse—but it did.

The first time I’d ever heard that word, another kid in elementary school had used it to describe my mom. I couldn’t ever remember her even dating anyone, but I existed, and she’d never been married, and for some people that was enough.

I walked over to my closet and pulled out the bag with the postcards—the ones my mom had given me. Hawaii. New Zealand. Machu Picchu. Tokyo. Bali. I flipped through them as a reminder of who I was, who she’d been. This was what we’d daydreamed about—not being swept off our feet.

Not some kind of epic seaside love.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting there when I heard a noise. Footfalls. My head whipped up. The last I’d checked, Oren was stationed outside my room. He’d warned me that this news getting out could put me in danger.

A voice spoke, on the other side of the fireplace. “It’s me, Heiress.”

Jameson. That should have been a relief. Knowing it was him, I should have felt safer. But somehow, as I locked my hand around the candlestick on the mantel, the last thing I felt was safe.

I triggered the passage. “I take it you saw the interview?”

Jameson stepped into my room. “Not your best showing.”

I waited for him to say something about that kiss. “Jameson, I didn’t—”

He held a finger up to my lips. He never actually touched me, but my lips burned anyway.

“If yes is no,” he said, his eyes on mine, “and once is never, then how many sides does a triangle have?”

That was a riddle he’d thrown out at me, the first day we’d met. At the time, I’d solved it by converting everything to a number. If you coded yes—or the presence of something—as a one, and no—or the absence of that thing—as a zero, then the first two parts of the riddle were redundant. If one equals zero, how many sides does a triangle have?