Games Untold: An Inheritance Games Collection

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I willed the hidden door to open. I willed Jameson to be standing on the other side of it. And finally—finally—just before my hour was up, it did, and he was. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne. The first thing I saw, as he crossed into the light, was the blood.

I was the teenage billionaire heiress philanthropist. She put out the fires. And Jameson Hawthorne blazed.

“Are they calling him Don’t Stop?” I asked Alisa seriously. Her perfectly sculpted brows pulled together. “Sorry,” I said in a completely deadpan. “I forgot. That’s what I call him.”

Alisa was wrong. I would never get used to this. This was everything—and so was Jameson Hawthorne.

Welcome to the City of a Hundred Spires, Heiress. Feel like a game of Hide and Seek?

This was us. Jameson. Me. Our language. Our game. Head or tails? “You planted that.” I nodded toward the coin. I had a collection of them, at least one from every place we’d visited. And every single one of those coins had a memory attached.

Heads I kiss you, he’d told me once, tails you kiss me, and either way, it means something.

“And, Heiress?” Jameson’s lips moved down to my jaw, then my neck. “For the record…” I felt him everywhere. My fingernails dug lightly into the skin of his neck. “I would never,” he whispered roughly, “confuse you for a saint.”

“Jameson.” I’d never in my life said a word that urgently. “I know, Heiress.” His voice was low and hoarse, but he managed a rakish smile. “Bleeding is a good look for me.” Jameson was Jameson, always.

Those sentence were all palindromes—the same backward as forward. Jameson. Freaking. Hawthorne. I of all people should have seen it. I looked up, certain that somewhere in the crowd, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne was watching. And there he was, lifting some kind of cylindrical pastry to his mouth, a very self-satisfied grin on his face. The moment Jameson’s eyes met mine across the crowd, he knew. Just from looking at me, he knew that I’d cracked it. Jameson raised his pastry in salute.

okay I kind of love Jameson and Avery now

He went to brush past me, and I stopped him with a single word. “Jameson.” He turned his head toward me, like he couldn’t help it, like I was his north. “Avery.” Something about the sound of my given name on Jameson’s lips, combined with everything else, almost undid me. He said Avery like a plea and a curse and prayer.

I saw the rise and fall of his chest as Jameson considered his next words. “You could make me tell you,” he said quietly. No smirks, no smiles, just truth. I knew exactly what Jameson was saying. One little word—Tahiti—and I could make him tell me anything. But… “But I am asking you,” Jameson continued in that same low tone, “not to.”

that in our lifetimes, this probably wouldn’t be the only ring that Jameson gave me.

Like the sun and the moon I loved her. Saint Avery. Until death and beyond.

“This is not a proposal,” Jameson said quietly. “But it is a promise.” “I’m eighteen,” I told him. “You’re nineteen.” “You’re practical,” Jameson replied. “I’m not.”

“I’m not done, Heiress,” Jameson said intently. “I’m not the person I’m going to be. I know that. But someday, I will be.” He took my hand in his. “I’ll be that person, and you’ll be you, and this is what we’re going to have.” He looked down at the ring on my right ring finger. “Infinity,” I said. Until death and beyond. Someday.

“If you don’t agree to give me until noon, I’ll have to work all night to get my game ready. I won’t be going back to the hotel with you.” “Straight for the jugular,” Jameson said. “I approve.”

Jameson uncapped the pen and lifted his eyes to mine. “A pen with your name on it?” A Very Risky Gamble, rearranged, was Avery Kylie Grambs. “Give me your hand, Heiress.”

“You’re happy.” Jameson sat back on the picnic blanket and stretched his long legs out. “A little smug.” He let his gaze travel over my poker face once more. “A lot smug.” I shrugged. “I’m smug,” I told him,

Jackson left the shack without a word, and just like that, I was alone with an unconscious Toby Hawthorne. H-A-N-N-A-H. I could hear him spelling out my name in my memory. If you’re a Hanna without the h on the end, I don’t want to know.

“You have a name, liar?” Even with smoke-damaged vocal cords, he had a way of making questions sound like silky demands. I didn’t reply. “Better yet,” he continued, addressing the words to the ceiling, his eyes closing, “what’s mine?” “Your what?” I bit out. “My name.”

“She’s Hannah.” “Hannah,” the burned boy repeated, his voice smoky and hoarse. “Spelled the same backward as forward—assuming there’s an H on the end?”

“Tell me, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward:

Nice

“You work at a hospital.” “Brilliant deduction,” I replied. “You wound me, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” “Don’t call me that.”

“But, Hannah?” I stood and met my father’s eyes. “If you want out…” His voice went down an octave. “Don’t come back here again. I can only hold her off for so long.”

“Do you know what I’ve discovered about myself with all that spare time? I’m hungry, Hannah.” For once he used my name. Only my name “My brain drinks in every last detail of its surroundings. Of you.”

“You’re an ugly crier,” he told me softly, “for what it’s worth.” I shook my head at the sheer audacity of him—always.

“Sometimes, when I look at you,” Harry said, his voice rougher now, as it echoed through the night, “I feel you, like a hum in my bones, whispering that we are the same.”

He was right there. And I didn’t want to be alone. The bane of my existence stared at me through the darkness like it wasn’t dark at all. “I don’t know how to quit this,” he told me. “Quit you.” What’s there to quit? I thought,

“But I’m a selfish bastard, aren’t I? I probably wouldn’t quit you even if I could.” I placed my hand on the crumbling stone, next to his. “You are a selfish bastard,” I breathed. “And there’s nothing to quit.” “Liar,” he murmured,

when he brought his hands to my face, when he buried his fingers in my hair, I didn’t fight it. But not fighting wasn’t enough for him. He brought his lips to just almost touch mine. Almost. And then, damn him to hell and back, he waited. For me. Forgive me, Kaylie. I closed the gap. The moment my lips touched his, he shifted his body and mine, and suddenly, my back was up against the lighthouse and nothing else in the world existed except this.

“This is a mistake,” I gasped, barely pulling back. “You’re…” “Horrible,” he filled in, and then his lips crashed down on mine. Horrible. “Yes,” I said. “I have no redeeming qualities,” he murmured, as I turned and pressed him back against the lighthouse. “None,” I said. His hands still in my hair, he tilted my head back, trailing kisses along my jaw and down my neck. “You hate me.”

She looked like my Kaylie. “I am nothing but regrets,” I said. “I am Kaylie Rooney,” my sister replied, putting her hands on her hips, “and I do not approve that message.” She was so very… Kaylie. “You’re my sister, bitch. No regrets.” Her smile was infectious now, an on top of a pool table, on top of the world kind of smile. “Dance with me, Hannah.”

hadn’t, the night before she died. She’d wanted me to dance, but I hadn’t. I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

“Less crying,” Kaylie ordered imperiously. “More wild abandon.”

“No regrets, Hannah. Not about me. Not about him. Not about finally letting go. I need you to say it.” My throat closed in around the words. “I can’t.” “Don’t stop dancing, okay?” I didn’t want to stop. What if I stopped, and she disappeared? “I’m not going to stop.” “I’m going to hold you to that, you glorious thing, you—and not just about the dancing.”

“Don’t stop,” Kaylie told me fiercely. “Living. Loving. Dancing. Don’t you dare stop for me.”

“No regrets,” Kaylie told me, her voice rising over the wind. “And, for the record, I like him.” Him. Harry. “You would,” I scoffed. “He sees you.” My sister had absolutely no mercy. “He makes you feel.”

“And don’t miss me too much, okay?” This felt like good-bye. No. “Absolutely no naming your children after me,” Kaylie continued, twirling, her arms held wide. “I mean, I guess a middle name would be okay—an homage, not Kaylie exactly.”

“I take back what I said before about you being an ugly crier,” he murmured. My body, traitor that it was, listed toward his. “You’re a hideous crier.” His lips slanted upward on one side. “A blight on my tender eyes.” “Nothing about you is tender,” I said. “Liar.”

The first time a person made a mistake, it could be just that: a mistake, a one-off, a blip. The second time, it was a pattern. It was intentional. It was devastating in the best possible way.

I turned, then sidestepped. “Found you.” My fingers made their way to the side of his face, then to the back of his head as my eyes opened. “Cheater,” he murmured. I hadn’t cheated. “You are a horrible loser.” He shrugged, then began lowering his lips toward mine. “I’ve never claimed to know how to lose.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward, you’re the storm.”

“You look like a fairy tale,” he murmured. He stared at me then, like he was preparing to draw me again or committing this moment to memory, the way I was. “Come with me, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” He paused. “When I leave, come with me.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I told him. He didn’t have to speak for me to hear his response. Don’t you know, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward? I would do anything for you.

“Did he threaten you?” Harry clipped the words, and the lines of his face hardened. “Touch you? I’ll kill him.” “No.” That was the last thing we needed. “You won’t. We’re running.” “We,” Harry repeated, and just like that, with one word, my decision was made. “We’ll start over,” I whispered, “far, far away.”

I’d hated him until I’d loved him, and now, I would love him until the end.

“Once upon a time…” I whispered, trailing kisses down his jaw, his neck, along his collarbone, and down to his scars. “There was a girl…” “And a boy…” he murmured into my skin. “And pain and wonder and darkness and light and this.” Once upon a time, I thought, there was us.

“You told me I didn’t get to die.” “You don’t.” I caught his head in my hands and forced his eyes to mine. “Not now, not ever until you’re old and gray. Do you hear me, Toby Hawthorne?” I said his full name like he’d been Toby to me this whole time, because suddenly, it didn’t matter—Harry. Toby. He was the same. He was mine.

“You don’t get die on me,” I said, my voice low and fierce. “You don’t get to make me love you and then destroy yourself.”