There was something about the way that Gigi said her twin’s name that put Grayson on high alert. “Is Savannah okay?”
Gigi nodded, but she also didn’t quite meet his eyes. “She and Mom had a fight last night after you left. About our trusts.”
The trusts that Zabrowski still hadn’t gotten him the paperwork on. “Everything is going to be okay, Gigi.” Grayson came this close to calling her little sister, the way Nash liked to use little brother. “I promise.”
Grayson didn’t realize that he was going to pull her into a hug until he did it. Gigi hugged back. She fit under his chin, and for a single moment in time, Grayson felt like he was exactly where he belonged.
“Give me your phone,” Gigi told him. Clearly, that was an order.
Grayson gave her his phone. She turned it toward his face, unlocked it, and then leaned in next to him again. “Now smile and say I like my sister!”
Three days ago, Grayson would have resisted every part of that request. “I like my sister.”
“I’m not sure that counts as a smile,” Gigi informed him after she’d snapped a picture. “But kudos for the effort. Now let’s take one posed next to the box. Say we did it!”
“We did it,” Grayson said.
“We are the best!” Gigi was snapping pictures like mad.
“We are the best,” Grayson repeated.
“Code Name Mimosa’s real name is…”
Grayson narrowed his eyes. “Gigi,” he said, putting more than a little warning in his tone.
Gigi was absolutely unabashed. “What a coincidence,” she said seriously. “My name is also Gigi.” She scrolled through the photos she’d taken. “I like this one,” she told him. “You’re actually smiling. I’ll make it your wallpaper.”
Grayson grabbed for his phone, but she dodged.
“Now, I’m sending it to myself… and also to Xander.… And… done.” Gigi stared at Grayson’s phone for a second or two longer, then flicked her gaze back to the puzzle box. “I changed my mind. Let’s not wait for Savannah.” Gigi squatted, locked her fingers around the faux USB, and pulled out the board, the last remaining barrier to the compartment that held the journal.
Not the real one. Grayson buried the guilt, buried it so deep that no amount of discussion or bonding with Gigi now could unearth it.
His sister flipped through the pages of the duplicate journal. “It’s full of numbers,” she said, frowning. “Just strings and strings of numbers.”
“Let me see it,” Grayson said, the way he would have if this was his first time in a room with that book. Gigi handed it to him, and Grayson made his own inspection of it, page by page. “It’s a code, obviously,” he said. “Some kind of substitution cipher, perhaps.”
Not perhaps. Not just any cipher.
“I’m going to need some coffee,” Gigi declared. “Oooh! Look! There’s a coffee maker!”
Grayson held out an arm to stop her. “You do not need any coffee.”
“You like me,” Gigi reminded him, poking him in the chest. “You find me charming.”
The muscles in Grayson’s throat tightened. “I like you,” he said quietly. “And I am still not giving you coffee.”
“Decaf,” Gigi countered. “Final offer!”
Grayson gave a roll of his eyes. “Fine.”
He walked into the kitchen to make her decaf. When he came back, she wasn’t sitting near the puzzle box. She was standing—and staring at his phone.
“This isn’t the picture you sent me.” Gigi’s voice was very quiet. “The passwords. The ones from Mr. Trowbridge’s office. You sent me a picture, but this…” She held up his phone, his photo roll. “These aren’t the passwords you sent me, Grayson.”
He saw, all at once, the mistakes he’d made. Letting his guard down. Letting her in. Giving her his phone. Letting her pull up his photos to scroll through the ones she’d taken of the two of them. Failing to take the phone back before he’d left the room. Was it still unlocked, or did she figure out the passcode?
Did it matter?
“And my key…” Gigi was staring at the photo roll, just staring and staring at it like she expected it to stop being what it was. “You took a picture of my key. I knew that. I didn’t think anything of it. I gave you my key, and then you gave it to Savannah. But my key didn’t work.” She looked up from the phone, stricken. “Why didn’t it work, Grayson?”
Grayson Hawthorne had been raised to take control of every situation, but he didn’t know how to make this stop. He didn’t know how to lie to her—even though he’d done nothing but lie to her so far.
“Where did you get this?” Gigi held up the not-USB. “It wasn’t in the box before, was it? Have you already opened it?” Gigi dropped the USB, and the next thing Grayson knew, she was holding the journal—holding on to it for dear life. “Is this even real?”
It was real, Gigi. In his own mind, Grayson wasn’t focused on the journal.
“This is the part where you tell me that you can explain,” Gigi said, her voice catching. “Go ahead. Explain, Grayson.”
Grayson’s brain formulated a response. He looked her straight in the eyes. “I was trying to protect you.”
“Okay.” Gigi nodded, and it was like once she started nodding, she couldn’t stop. “I believe you. Okay? Because I’m the type of person who believes in people.” She smiled, but it didn’t look like a Gigi smile. “Because what fun is it going through life any other way?”
Grayson felt like she was ripping his heart out. He didn’t have any choice but to keep lying to her. And she would keep believing it, believing in him, because that was who she was.
“Only…” Gigi’s voice shook. “What exactly were you protecting me from?” She held up the journal again. “What’s in here?” She paused. “What’s not?”
Grayson couldn’t answer. Even if he had wanted to, his body wouldn’t let him. Some people can make mistakes, he could hear the old man saying. But you are not one of those people.
He’d known that he was emotionally compromised. He’d known that.
“I trusted you,” Gigi said, like the words had been ripped out of her. “Even after you lied to me. You’re my brother, and you lied to me, and I trusted you anyway. Because that’s what I do.”
“I can explain,” Grayson said, but that was just another lie, because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t ever be able to explain this to her because the secrets he was keeping—they had to stay hidden.
No matter the cost.
“Go ahead,” Gigi told him, tears streaming down her face. “Tell me you haven’t been sabotaging me—sabotaging us—from the beginning.”
Grayson couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t tell her a damn thing.
“That guy outside, the one you claim is so dangerous, he said that you were playing your own game. He warned me. Careful with this one, sunshine.”
Grayson would never forgive himself if she ended up putting herself in danger because of him. “Gigi—” Grayson was not a person who pleaded, but he was pleading now.
“Don’t,” Gigi said, her voice low and guttural. “Just shut your mouth and give me what you really found in this box, because I don’t believe for a damn second that you haven’t already opened it.”
Grayson’s chest hurt. Every single breath he took hurt. It all hurt. “I can’t.”
Gigi swallowed. “Then stay the hell away from me—and my sister.”
She opened the door. Savannah was coming down the hall, but she took one look at her twin and brought her diamond-hard gaze to Grayson’s, and he knew.
He’d lost them both.
TWO YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS AGO
Grayson sat hunched on the floor of the tree house, his knees pulled to his chest. Posture unbefitting of a Hawthorne, he thought dully. The words didn’t hurt the way they should have.
He ran his thumb over the bit of metal in his hand. Grayson remembered being eight years old and writing haiku after haiku, crossing out the words, calmly tearing sheet after sheet out of his notebook. Because when you only got three lines, they had to be perfect.