He had wanted—so badly—for them to be perfect. He’d agonized over focus and content, metaphors and wording. A drop of water. The rain. The wind. A petal. A leaf. Love. Anger. Sorrow. But reading over the final product now, all he could think was that what he’d written hadn’t been perfect.
He hadn’t been—and this was the cost.
Everywhere Grayson looked, he saw Emily. Emily’s amber hair blowing in the wind. Emily’s wild, larger-than-life smile. Emily lying on the shore.
“Dead.” Grayson made himself say it out loud. It didn’t hurt the way it should have. Nothing hurt enough.
He read the damn haiku again, his grip on it viselike, the metal biting into his fingers. When words are real enough, he remembered telling Jameson, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.
Grayson had wanted Emily to love him. He’d wanted her to choose him. Being with her had made him feel like perfect didn’t matter. Like he could afford, every once in a while, to lose control.
This was his fault. He’d taken her to the cliffs, when Jameson wouldn’t. Some people can make mistakes, Grayson. But you are not one of those people.
A sound like a fist beating flesh broke the silence in the tree house. Brutal. Repetitive. Merciless. And the more Grayson listened to it—without moving, without blinking, barely even breathing—the more he realized that the vicious, ruthless thwack, thwack, thwack he was hearing wasn’t the work of a fist.
Splintering wood. A crash. Another. More.
Grayson managed to stand. He walked over to the tree house window and looked down. Jameson was on one of the bridges below. There was an ax in his hand and other blades at his feet. A longsword. A hatchet. A machete.
The bridge was barely holding on, but Jameson didn’t stop. He never stopped. He attacked the only thing holding him up like he couldn’t wait to fall.
Down below, Nash ran toward the tree house. “What the hell are you doing, Jamie?” In a flash, he was climbing to Jameson, who swung the ax harder, faster.
“I would think the answer’s apparent,” Jamie replied, in a tone that made Grayson think that he was enjoying this, destroying a thing they both had loved.
He blames me. He should blame me. It’s my fault she’s gone.
“Damn it, Jameson!” Nash tried to lunge forward, but the ax came down right next to his foot. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
He wants to hurt me. Grayson thought about Emily’s body, her hair wet, her eyes vacant. “Let him.” Grayson was surprised at the sound of his own voice. The words felt guttural, but they sounded almost robotic.
Jameson flung the ax down and picked up the machete.
Nash eased forward. “Em’s gone,” he said. “It’s not right. It’s not fair. You want to set something on fire—either of you—I’ll help. But not this. Not like this, Jamie.”
The bridge was decimated now, hanging by threads. Jameson stepped back onto a large platform, then swung. Nash barely had time to jump to the other side.
“Exactly like this,” Jameson said, as the bridge came crashing down. The remaining blades fell roughly to the dirt.
“You’re hurting.” Nash made his way down the tree and over to the other side—to Jameson.
All Grayson could do was watch.
“Hurting? Me?” Jameson replied, going at the tree house walls with the machete. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. “Nothing hurts unless you let it. Nothing matters unless you let it.”
Grayson didn’t realize he’d moved, but suddenly, he was on the ground, right next to the longsword.
“Don’t come any closer, Gray,” Nash warned him.
Grayson swallowed. “Don’t tell me what to do.” His throat felt swollen and rough.
Jameson looked directly at him. “So says the heir apparent.”
If you’re so perfect, Grayson imagined his brother saying, why is she dead?
“It’s my fault.” The words felt like they stuck in Grayson’s throat, but Jameson heard them all the same.
“Nothing’s ever your fault, Grayson.”
Nash moved in, and when Jameson went to raise the machete again, Nash caught his wrist. “Jamie. Enough.”
Grayson heard the machete clatter to the floor of the platform on which his brothers stood. My fault, he thought. I killed Emily.
That sentence rang in his mind: five syllables, so real and true they hurt. Grayson dropped his long-ago haiku to the ground. And then he bent, picked up the longsword, turned back to the tree house, and started swinging.
CHAPTER 82
JAMESON
Now that Ms. Grambs has been removed from both the premises and the Game, there is the matter of her key.” The Factotum said the word removed in a way that made Jameson want to go for his throat. Rohan hadn’t laid a hand on Avery—not in Jameson’s sight, at least—but now she was gone, and the rest of them were back in the room where this had all started.
“I’m the one who was attacked,” Zella said with an aristocratic tilt of her chin. “That makes the attacker’s key mine, does it not?”
“Where’s Avery?” Jameson demanded. “What did you do with her?”
Branford placed a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, nephew.”
“Soft touch,” Katharine scoffed. “You always have been, Simon.”
“Enough.” Rohan held up a hand, silencing all four remaining players. Then he turned to Zella. “Do you really expect me to just hand this over to you?” He brandished the final key.
“No.” Zella’s smile looked almost serene, but to Jameson, it didn’t feel like a smile. “Truthfully, Rohan, I make it a rule to have no expectations at all where you are concerned.”
Rohan openly studied the duchess for a moment, like she was a puzzle he hadn’t quite solved—and didn’t particularly enjoy solving. “As to your question, Mr. Hawthorne,” the Factotum said, his gaze still locked on Zella, “Avery Grambs has been returned to her rather overzealous bodyguard—a touching reunion, I assure you.” With a flourish, Rohan held the key up once more. He hopped onto the stone windowsill “The Game will begin anew,” he announced, “with the striking of the bell.”
The Factotum smiled. Jameson did not trust that smile.
“I sincerely hope,” Rohan continued, jumping down and making his way to the door, “that none of you are afraid of heights.”
Time slowed to a crawl. Jameson turned his attention first to what Rohan had said, then to searching the room from top to bottom again, and finally to the silver chest in his hands. Elaborate, raised swirls marked the top and sides of the box, fine metal fashioned to look like twisting, twirling ropes.
“You may as well set that down, young man,” Katharine told Jameson. She walked toward him and stopped at the table, placing her palms flat on its surface. “You have no use for it as of yet.”
Nice try, Katharine. Jameson gave the older woman a look. “You didn’t know my grandfather, did you?”
Brilliant, mercenary Tobias Hawthorne had raised no fools. Jameson might have lost the key, he might have lost his partner in the Game, but he had the chest, and as long as he held on to it, no one was winning but him.
“This,” Jameson said, his voice low and intense, “is mine.”
“You earned it.” Katharine let her hands fall away from the table. “That’s what you’re telling yourself, is it not?” She let the question hang in the air.
I did earn it, Jameson thought.
“But really…” Katharine’s shrewd eyes locked on to his face. Jameson almost felt like he was back in the old man’s office, his every effort judged. “When have you, Jameson Hawthorne, ever earned anything? Even now, you defend yourself by throwing around your grandfather’s name. What are you without him?” Katharine made a noise like a hmmm, but sharper somehow, more pointed. “Without your heiress?”
Compared to your brothers—Jameson couldn’t shake the memory—your mind is ordinary.
“In my experience,” Katharine continued, “third-born sons are… disappointing. Always have something to prove, never truly manage to prove it.”
“That’s enough, Katharine,” Branford told her sharply.