Eve walked toward me. When she got within three feet, Oren shifted. “That’s close enough.”
Without a word to him, or to anyone, Eve opened her locket. Inside, there was a picture of a little girl. Eve, I realized. Her hair was cut short and uneven, her little cheeks gaunt. “No one ever cherished her. No one ever would have put her picture in a locket.” Eve met my gaze, and though she looked vulnerable, I thought I saw something else underneath that vulnerability. “So I wear this as a reminder: Even if no one else loves you, you can. Even if no one else ever puts you first, you can.”
She was standing there admitting that she was going to put herself first, but it was like Grayson couldn’t see that. “Enough,” he ordered. “This isn’t you, Avery.”
“Maybe, Gray,” Jameson countered, “you don’t know her as well as you think.”
“Out!” Mrs. Laughlin boomed. “All of you, out!”
Not one of us moved, and the older woman’s eyes narrowed.
“This is my house. Mr. Hawthorne’s will granted us lifelong, rent-free tenancy.” Mrs. Laughlin looked at her daughter, then at Eve, and finally she turned back to me. “You can fire me, but you can’t evict me, and you will leave my home.”
“Lottie,” Oren said quietly.
“Don’t you Lottie me, John Oren.” Mrs. Laughlin glared at him. “You take your girl, you take the boys—and you get out.”
CHAPTER 64
What is wrong with you?” Grayson exploded as soon as we were outside.
“Did you hear a word I said in there?” I asked, my heart breaking like cracking glass, bit by jagged bit. “Did you hear what she said? She’s going to put herself first, Grayson. She hates your grandfather. We aren’t her family. Blake is.”
Grayson stopped walking toward the SUV. He went stiff, attending to the cuffs of his dress shirt and brushing an imaginary speck off the lapel of his suit. “Clearly,” he said, his tone almost regal, “I was wrong about you.”
I felt like he’d just thrown ice-cold water in my face. Like he’d hit me.
And then I watched Grayson Hawthorne walk away.
A guy who thinks he knows everything, I could hear myself saying what felt like a lifetime ago.
A girl with a razor-sharp tongue.
I could hear Grayson telling me that I had an expressive face, telling Jameson that I was one of them, in Latin, so I wouldn’t understand it. I could feel Grayson correcting my grip on a longsword, see him catching my Hawthorne pin before it could hit the ground. I saw him sliding a hand-bound journal across the dining room table to me.
“Oren can post men to watch the cottage.” Jameson spoke beside me. He knew how much I was hurting but did me the courtesy of pretending he didn’t. “If Eve is a threat, we can keep her contained.”
I turned to look at him. “You know that this isn’t about Grayson and me,” I said, forcing the image of Grayson walking away out of my mind. “Tell me you know that, Jameson.”
“I know,” he replied, “that I love you, and despite all odds, you love me.” Jameson’s smile was smaller but no less crooked than usual. “I also know that Gray’s the better man. He always has been. The better son, the better grandson, the better Hawthorne. I think that’s why I wanted so badly for Emily to choose me. For once, I wanted to be the one. But it was always him, Heiress. I was a game to her. She loved him.”
“No.” I shook my head. “She didn’t. You don’t treat people you love like that.”
“You don’t,” Jameson replied. “You’re honorable, Avery Kylie Grambs. Once you were with me, you were with me. You love me, scars and all. I know that, Heiress. I do.” Jameson said those words, and he meant them. He believed them. “Is it so awful,” he continued, “that I want to be a better man for you?”
I thought about our fight. “Better is being my friend and my partner and realizing that you don’t get to make decisions for me. Better is the way you make me see myself as a person who’s capable of anything. I would jump out of a plane with you, Jameson, snowboard down the side of a volcano with you, bet everything that I have on you—on us, against the world. You don’t get to run off and take risks and expect me to stay behind in a gilded cage of your making. That isn’t who you are, and it’s not what I want.” I didn’t know how to say this so that he would really hear me. “You,” I told him, taking a step closer, “have always made me bold. You’re the one who pushes me out of my comfort zone. You don’t get to box me back in now.”
Jameson looked at me like he was trying to memorize every detail of my face. “I moved on from Emily,” he said. “Gray didn’t. And I know in my soul that if he had, he could have loved you. He would have. With everything you are, Heiress, what other choice would he have had?”
“It was always going to be you,” I told Jameson. He needed to hear it. I needed to say it, even though always painted over so much.
In response, Jameson gave me another crooked smile. “It’s times like this, Heiress, that I wish I’d fallen in love with a girl who wasn’t quite so good at bluffing.”
Jameson left, the way Grayson had.
“Let’s get you back up to the House,” Oren said. He didn’t offer any commentary on what had just happened.
I didn’t let myself think about Jameson or Grayson. I thought about the rest of it instead, about Vincent Blake’s missing son and vengeance and the games that Blake was never going to stop playing with me. The stories in the tabloids, the paparazzi, financial assaults from every side, trying to chip away at my security team, and the entire time, taunting me that he had Toby.
Clue after clue.
Riddle after riddle.
I was sick of it. When I got back to the House, I went to get the phone Blake had sent me. I called the only number I had for him, and when he didn’t answer, I started placing other calls from my real phone—to every person who had received a coveted invitation to the owner’s suite of my NFL team, to every player in Texas society who had tried to cozy up to me at a charity gala, every person who’d wanted my buy-in for a financial opportunity.
Money attracted money. Power attracted power. And I was done waiting for the next clue.
It took some time, but I found someone who had Vincent Blake’s cell phone number and was willing to give it to me, no questions asked. My heart beat with the force of punch after punch in my chest as I dialed the number.
When Blake answered, I didn’t bother with pretense. “I know about Eve. I know about your son.”
“Do you?”
Questions and riddles and games. No more. “What do you want?” I asked. I wondered if he could hear my anger—and every ounce of emotion buried underneath.
I wondered if that made him think he was winning.
“What do I want, Avery Kylie Grambs?” Vincent Blake sounded amused. “Guess.”
“I’m done guessing.”