“Don’t think about that,” Jameson whispered, cupping my cheeks. “Think about Toby’s name carved into that tree. Infinity carved into the bridge.” His face was close enough to mine that I could still feel his breath. “What if what the puzzle is trying to tell us is that my uncle isn’t dead?”
Wasthatwhat he’d been thinking when someone was shooting at us? In the kitchen, as Oren took a needle to my wound? As he’d brought his lips to mine? Because if the only thing he’d been able to think about was the mystery…
You’re not a player, kid. You’re the glass ballerina—or the knife.
“Will you listen to yourself?” I demanded. My chest was tight—tighter now than it had been in the forest, in the thick of it all. Nothing about Jameson’s reaction should have surprised me, so why did it hurt?
Why was I letting it hurt?
“Oren just pulled a chunk of wood out of my chest,” I said, my voice low, “and if things had worked out a little differently, he could have been pulling out a bullet.” I gave Jameson a second to reply—just one.Nothing.“What happens to the money if I die while the will is in probate?” I asked flatly. Alisa had told me the Hawthorne family didn’t stand to benefit, but didtheyknow that? “What happens if whoever fired that gun scares me off, and I leave before the year is up?” Did they know that if I left, it all went to charity? “Not everything is a game, Jameson.”
I saw something flicker in his eyes. He closed them, just for an instant, then opened them and leaned in, bringing his lips painfully close to mine. “That’s the thing, Heiress. If Emily taught me anything, it’s that everythingisa game. Even this.Especiallythis.”
CHAPTER 55
Jameson left, and I didn’t follow him.
Thea’s right, Grayson whispered in the recesses of my mind.This family—we destroy everything we touch.I choked back tears. I’d been shot at, I’d been injured, and I’d been kissed—but I sure as hell wasn’t destroyed.
“I’m stronger than that.” I angled my face toward the mirror and looked myself in the eye. If it came down to a choice between being scared, being hurt, and being pissed, I knew which one I preferred.
I tried calling Max one more time, then texted her:Someone tried to kill me, and I made out with Jameson Hawthorne.
If that didn’t garner a response, nothing would.
I made my way back into the bedroom. Even though I’d calmed down a little, I still scanned for threats, and I saw one: Rebecca Laughlin, standing in the doorway. Her face looked even paler than usual, her hair as red as blood. She looked shell-shocked.
Because she overheard Jameson and me? Because her grandparents told her about the shooting?I wasn’t sure. She was wearing thick hiking boots and cargo pants, both of them spattered with mud. Staring at her, all I could think was that if Emily had been even half as beautiful as her sister was, it was no wonder Jameson could look at me and think only about his grandfather’s game.
Everythingisa game. Even this.Especiallythis.
“My grandmother sent me to check on you.” Rebecca’s voice was soft and hesitant.
“I’m okay,” I said, and I almost meant it. Ihadto be okay.
“Gran said you were shot.” Rebecca stayed in the doorway, like she was afraid to come any closer.
“Shot at,” I clarified.
“I’m glad,” Rebecca said, and then she looked mortified. “I mean, that you weren’t shot. It’s good, right, getting shot at instead of shot?” Her gaze darted nervously from me toward the twin beds, the quilts. “Emily would have told you to simplify and say that you were shot.” Rebecca sounded more sure of herself telling me what Emily would have said than trying to summon an appropriate response herself. “There was a bullet. You were wounded. Emily would have said you were entitled to a little melodrama.”
I was entitled to look at everyone like they were a suspect. I was entitled to an adrenaline-fueled lapse in judgment. And maybe I was entitled, just this once, to push for answers.
“You and Emily shared this room?” I said. That was obvious now, when I looked at the twin beds.When Rebecca and Emily came to visit their grandparents, they stayed here.“Was purple your favorite color as a kid or hers?”
“Hers,” Rebecca said. She gave me a very small shrug. “She used to tell me that my favorite color was purple, too.”
In the picture I’d seen of the two of them, Emily had been looking directly at the camera, dead center; Rebecca had been on the fringes, looking away.
“I feel like I should warn you.” Rebecca wasn’t even facing me anymore. She walked over to one of the beds.
“Warn me about what?” I asked, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered the mud on her boots—and the fact that she’d been on the premises, but not with her grandparents, when I’d been shot at.
Just because she doesn’t feel like a threat doesn’t mean she isn’t one.
But when Rebecca started talking again, it wasn’t about the shooting. “I’m supposed to say that my sister was wonderful.” She acted like that wasn’t a change of subject, like Emilywaswhat she was warning me about. “And she was, when she wanted to be. Her smile was contagious. Her laugh was worse, and when she said something was a good idea, people believed her. She was good to me, almost all the time.” Rebecca met my gaze, head-on. “But she wasn’t nearly as good to those boys.”
Boys, plural. “What did she do?” I asked. I should have been more focused on who shot me, but part of me couldn’t shake the way Jameson had invoked Emily, right before walking away from me.
