At nine, we made our way to the bowling alley. At ten, we headed for the pottery—as in, a room with potting wheels and a kiln.
By the time eleven o’clock rolled around and we made our way down the labyrinthine halls of Hawthorne House to the arcade, our gowns and tuxes had been soaked, ripped, and spattered with clay. I was exhausted, sore, and filled with an exhilaration that defied description.
This was it.
This was the night.
This was everything.
This was us.
In the arcade, four private chefs met us, each with a signature dish to present. Slow-braised beef soup served with pork buns so tender they should be illegal. Lobster risotto. The first two courses nearly undid me, and that was before I bit into a sushi roll that looked like a work of art just as the final chef set our dessert on fire.
I looked to Oren. He was the one who’d cleared the private chefs to come here tonight. “You have to try this,” I told him. “All of it.”
I watched as Oren gave in and tasted a pork bun, and then I felt someone else watching me. Grayson was wearing a silver tuxedo with sharp, angular lines, no bow tie, the shirt buttoned all the way up.
I thought he might keep his distance, but he strode over to me, his expression assessing. “You have a plan,” he commented, his voice low and smooth and sure.
My heart rate ticked up. I didn’t just have a plan. I had A Plan. “I wrote it down,” I told Grayson. “And then I rewrote it, again and again.”
He was the Hawthorne I’d thought of the most as I was doing it, the one whose reaction I could least predict.
“I’m glad,” Grayson told me, the words slow and deliberate, “that it was you.” He took a step back, clearing the way for Jameson to slide in next to me.
“Have you decided yet,” Jameson asked me, “what room you’re going to add on to Hawthorne House this year?”
I wondered if he could feel my anticipation, if he had any idea what we were counting down to. “I’ve made a lot of decisions,” I said.
Alisa hadn’t arrived yet, but she would be here soon.
“If you’re planning to build a death-defying obstacle course on the south side of the Black Wood,” Xander said, bouncing up, high off a Skee-Ball victory, “count me in! I have a lead on where we can get a reasonably priced two-story-tall teeter-totter.”
I grinned. “What would you do,” I asked Jameson, “if you were adding on a room?”
Jameson pulled my body back against his. “Indoor skydiving complex, accessible from a secret passage at the base of the climbing wall. Four stories tall, looks just like another turret from the outside.”
“Please.” Thea sauntered over holding a pool cue. She was wearing a long silver dress that left wide strips of bronze skin on display and was slit to the thigh. “The correct answer is obviously ballroom.”
“The foyer is as big as a ballroom,” I pointed out. “Pretty sure it’s been used that way for decades.”
“And yet,” Thea countered, “it remains not a ballroom.” She turned back toward the pool table, where she and Rebecca were facing off against Libby and Nash. Bex leaned over the table, lining up what looked to be an impossible shot, her green velvet tuxedo pulling against her chest, her dark red hair combed to one side and falling into her face
The world had accepted my account of Will Blake’s death. The blame was laid squarely at the feet of Tobias Hawthorne. But once Toby had appeared, miraculously alive, and announced that he was changing his name to Tobias Blake, it hadn’t taken the press long to piece together that he was Will’s son—or to start speculating about who Toby’s biological mother was.
Rebecca had made it clear that she still didn’t regret stepping into the light.
She sank the shot, and Thea strolled back toward her, shooting Nash a gloating look. “Still feeling cocky, cowboy?”
“Always,” Nash drawled.
“That,” Libby said, her eyes catching his, “is an understatement.”
Nash smirked. “Thirsty?” he asked my sister.
Libby poked him in the chest. “There’s a cowboy hat in the refrigerator, isn’t there?”
She looked down at her wrists, then stalked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a pink soda and a black velvet cowboy hat. “I’ll wear this hat,” she told Nash, “if you paint your nails black.”
Nash gave her what could only be described as a cowboy smile. “Fingers or toes?”
A yip behind me had me turning toward the doorway. Alisa stood there holding a very wiggly puppy. “I found her in the gallery,” she informed me dryly. “Barking at a Monet.”
Xander took the puppy and held her up, crooning at her. “No eating Monets,” he baby-talked. “Bad Tiramisu.” He gave her the world’s biggest, goofiest smile. “Bad dog. Just for that… you have to cuddle Grayson.”
Xander dumped the puppy on his brother.
“Are you ready for this?” Alisa asked beside me as Grayson let the puppy lick his nose and challenged his brothers to a round of hold-the-puppy pinball.
“As ready as I’m ever going to be.”
Thirty minutes to go. Twenty. Ten. No amount of winning or losing at pool, air hockey, or foosball, no amount of puppy pinball or trying to beat the high score on a dozen different arcade games could distract me from the way the clock was ticking down.
Three minutes.
“The trick to a good poker face,” Jameson murmured, “isn’t keeping your face blank. It’s thinking about something other than your cards—the same something the whole time.” Jameson Winchester Hawthorne offered me a hand, and for the second time that night, I took it. He pulled me in for a slow dance, the kind that required no music. “You’ve got your poker face on now, Heiress.”
I thought about flying around a racetrack, standing on the edge of the roof, riding on the back of his motorcycle, dancing barefoot on the beach. “Gen H verity,” I said.
Jameson arched a brow. “As in generational truth for people far older than us?”
“It’s your anagram,” I told him, “for everything.”
My phone rang before he could reply, a video call from Max. I answered.
“Am I in time for the countdown?” she asked, yelling over what appeared to be very loud music.
“Do you have your champagne?” I asked.
She brandished a flute. Right on cue, Alisa appeared beside me, holding a tray of the same. I took a glass and met her eyes. It’s almost time.
“Piotr,” Max said darkly, “absolutely refuses to have a glass on duty. He did, however, pick a bodyguard theme song. I threatened him with show tunes.”
“That’s my girl!” Xander bellowed.
“Woman,” Max corrected.
“That’s my woman! In a completely not possessive and absolutely unpatriarchal kind of way!”
Max lifted her glass to toast him. “Elf yeah.”
“It’s time.” Jameson said. I leaned into him as the others crowded around. “Ten… nine… eight…”
Jameson, Grayson, Xander, and Nash.
Libby, Thea, and Rebecca.
Me.
Alisa held a glass of champagne but stood back from the group. She was the only one who knew what was about to happen.
“Three…”
“… two…”