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June 18 - June 24, 2025
“What happened,” Oren replied, glancing back into the distance, “is that someone saw the two of you out here, decided you were easy targets, and pulled their trigger. Twice.”
He’s taking us to Wayback Cottage. Not Hawthorne House.
But somehow, my body relaxed into the person behind me. “It’s okay, Heiress,” Jameson murmured. “I’ve got you.” I hadn’t heard Jameson come in. I wasn’t entirely sure how long I’d been standing there, frozen.
Was being a sensation seeker so bad? Was wanting to feel something other than awful really so wrong?
I need this. His deep green eyes met mine. He needs it, too. “Yes?” I asked him hoarsely. “Yes, Heiress.”
bringing his lips painfully close to mine. “That’s the thing, Heiress. If Emily taught me anything, it’s that everything is a game. Even this. Especially this.”
“But she wasn’t nearly as good to those boys.” Boys, plural. “What did she do?”
“Em didn’t like to choose.”
“She wanted everything more than I wanted anything. And the one time I wanted something…”
“She dated both of them?” I tried to get a handle on that. “Did they know?”
“What happened when Grayson and Jameson found out she was dating both of them?”
“Jameson and Grayson. Both have alibis—but both were looking at rifles.” “Hawthorne House has an armory?” That was all I could manage to say.
Not both boys!!!!
Jameson’s middle name was Winchester.
Whoo i wasabouttosay!!!
There’s murder afoot, sleep tight!
“Wrong,” Max said after a moment. “The correct answer is that I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, because I caught Jaxon on my phone, trying to send himself screenshots of your texts to me. A reporter offered to pay him for them.”
“But I’m especially sorry that I ever let him take pictures of me. Personal pictures. Because when I broke up with him, he sent those pictures to my parents.”
Bitch sue the shit out of him you have N entire law firm on retainer!!!
“Oh, I will, will I?” I gave him a look. “Please.” Grayson seemed to find the word painful or distasteful—or both.
Nan harrumphed. “I did when I was young. Got a bit too much attention for it, and my husband broke my fingers, put an end to that.”
“That was my uncle’s wing. The old man had it walled off when Toby died.”
His use of Jameson’s nickname for me felt like it meant something, but I wasn’t sure what.
whipped my head toward Oren, who was driving—and noticed that the guard in the passenger seat had his hand on his gun, vigilant, ready.
“If something happens to you—even without a will—your sister and your father are your heirs.”
thing to think about. Like the current billion-dollar question: If Drake had shot at me, and Libby hadn’t let him onto the estate—who had?
“That necklace. That dress…” “What?” I said. The only word he managed in reply was a name.
Yo!!! Yoh dressed her up like emily?! How fucking cruel can you be??
“I don’t care,” he repeated, “because I don’t care about Emily.” He let out a ragged breath. “I broke up with her that night. I got tired of her little games. I told her I was done, and a few hours later, she died.”
His eyes were closed, every muscle in his body taut. “Did Jameson tell you that I killed her?”
“Thea and Rebecca?” I said. “Deeply in love,”
“And then some.” Xander paused. “Em found out about them that night. She saw it as a betrayal.” That night—the night she died.
“Where you go,” Xander told me, “they’ll follow.” They, as in his brothers. “I thought you wanted to win,” I said to Xander. He swallowed. Hard. “I do.”
Why? What had I done? “Emily died,” Grayson told me, his voice tight, “on October eighteenth, a year ago.” “That sick son of a bitch,”
“If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have jumped.”
“She wanted you,” I said. “And Jameson, and she didn’t want to choose.” “She turned it into a game.” Grayson shook his head. “And God help us, we played. I want to say that it was because we loved her—that it was because of her, but I don’t even know how much of that was true.
Jameson had broken up with her. She’d called Grayson, and she hadn’t been in the mood to wait.
Tobias Hawthorne X. X. VIII
10.18
Poor Jameson. He’d gone to all that effort to keep me close, then ditched me before I could play my part. The glass ballerina. The knife. The girl with the face that unlocks the wall that reveals the door that…
She was… angry. As soon as she got me alone, she told me that what Thea and I had wasn’t love, that if Thea really loved me, she never would have pretended to be with Xander.
“I had a voice recording,” she said softly, “of Emily talking. She used to tell me everything the boys did with her and for her and to her. She liked to keep score.”
Emily sounds like a sociopath!
“It’s not that I have anything against you. But it’s what Emily would have wanted.”
“Emily would have hated you for stealing their money. She would have hated the way they look at you.”
Bitch i didn't steal their money!!!! You aren't Emily! You crazy bitch!
“One of the boys?” I asked, feeling like the ground was crumbling beneath me. “No,” Rebecca said quietly. “Their mother.”
“My mother,” Grayson said, “is a complicated woman. But she’s family.” And he would choose family over me, every time.
Grayson let out a ragged breath, and then I felt him gently turning my face back toward his. “Avery.” He almost never used my given name. He gently traced the line of my jaw. “I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. You have my word.”
Please!!!!!
I thought she was pretending.” He’d thought she was manipulating him. “I just stood there,” Jameson said dully. “I didn’t do a damn thing to help her.” I watched Emily Laughlin die.
I stared at Xander—the youngest, tallest, and arguably most brilliant Hawthorne.
He’d brought me here for them. I folded
But this… us…” He swallowed. “It can’t happen, Avery. I’ve seen the way Jameson looks at you.” He didn’t say that he wouldn’t let another girl come between them. He didn’t have to.
“I used to play chess with him in the park,” I said. “Every morning.” Harry.
OOP I wasn't expecting that!
He would have been alone with Rebecca.
“Xander?” Rebecca said again, and her voice nearly undid him.
