The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(83)

I wasn’t hearing this. He wasn’t saying this. He couldn’t be.

“You’re not a puzzle or a riddle or a clue.” Jameson had laser focus. On me. All on me. “You aren’t a mystery to me, Avery, because deep down, we’re the same. You might not see that.” He gave me a long, searing look. “You might not believe it—yet.” He held up his hands, his fingers curled into a loose fist. “But there’s no one besides the two of us who would have gone back in the wake of that bomb to look for this.”

He uncurled his fingers, and I saw a small metal disk in his palm.

Every muscle in my body tightened. Everything in me wanted to reach out to him. “How did you—”

Jameson shrugged, and that shrug, like his smile, was devastating. “How could I not?” He stared at me a moment longer, then pressed the disk into my hand. I felt his fingertips on my palm. He left them there for a moment, then trailed them along the inside of my wrist.

I sucked in a breath and looked from Jameson’s face to the disk. Concentric circles ringed the metal on one side. The other was smooth.

He was still trailing his fingers down my arm.

“Have you figured out what it is?” I asked, every nerve in my body alive.

“No.” Jameson smiled, that crooked, devastating Jameson Hawthorne smile. “I was waiting for you.”

Jameson wasn’t patient. He didn’t wait. He lived with his foot on the gas. “You want to figure it out.” I stared at him, feeling his stare on me. “Together.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Jameson stood. I could still feel the ghost of his touch on the inside of my arm. I could see the vein in my wrist and feel my heart pumping. “You don’t have to kiss me now. You don’t have to love me now, Heiress. But when you’re ready…” He brought his hand to the side of my face. I leaned into it. His breath went ragged, and then he pulled his hand back and nodded to the disk in my hand. “When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, if it’s going to be me—just flip that disk. Heads, I kiss you.” His voice broke slightly. “Tails, you kiss me. And either way, it means something.”

I stared at the disk in my hand. It was the size of a coin. Every clue we’d followed, every trail that had been left, led to this.

I swallowed and looked back up at Jameson. “Toby wasn’t my father,” I said, and then I corrected the tense. “He isn’t my father.”

Toby Hawthorne was out there somewhere. He still didn’t want to be found.

Beside me, Jameson cocked his head, eyes sparking. “Well then, Heiress. Game on.”





CHAPTER 81


I made it through that day. That night. The next day. The next night. And on it went. On the morning that I was cleared to go back to school, I heard a sound on the other side of my fireplace.

Jameson. I made my way to the mantel and closed my hand around the candlestick. With a breath, I pulled it forward.

Jameson wasn’t the one standing on the other side.

“Thea?” I said. I was confused. I had no idea what she was doing at Hawthorne House or why she’d come through the passage. My gaze darted toward my door. Oren was in the hall. Even now, with Skye and Ricky in prison, he was staying close.

“Don’t say anything,” Thea implored me, her voice low. “I need you to come with me. It’s Grayson.”

“Grayson?” I repeated. He’d been like a ghost in the House since I’d woken up. He either didn’t want to see me or couldn’t face me. I’d watched him swimming laps every night.

“He’s in trouble, Avery.” Thea looked like she’d been crying, and that scared me, because Thea Calligaris wasn’t a person who cried. She didn’t do vulnerable.

She didn’t do scared.

“What’s going on? Thea.”

She disappeared back into the passageway. I followed her, and an instant later, hands gripped me from behind. Someone slammed a damp cloth down over my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t scream.

The smell of the cloth was sickly sweet. Everything started going dark around me, and the last thing I heard was Thea.

“I had to, Avery. They have Rebecca.”





CHAPTER 82


I woke up tied to an antique chair. The room around me was packed tight with boxes and knickknacks. The entire place smelled like it had been soaked in gasoline.

Two people stood across from me: Mellie, who looked like she might throw up any second. And Sheffield Grayson.

“Where am I?” I asked, and then the memory of what had happened in the passageway came flooding back. “Where’s Thea? And Rebecca?”

“I assure you, your friends are fine.” Sheffield Grayson was wearing a suit. He had me tied to a chair in what appeared to be some kind of storage unit, and he was wearing a suit.

He has Grayson’s eyes.

“I am sorry about all of this,” Grayson’s father said, flicking a speck off the cuff of his shirt. “The chloroform. The restraints.” He paused. “The bomb.”

“The bomb?” I repeated. The police had arrested Ricky and Skye weeks ago. They had motive, and there was evidence—there had to be, for an arrest. “I don’t understand.”