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August 10 - August 24, 2025
The trick to being abandoned was to never let yourself long for anyone who left.
“Hates is a strong word,” Xander hedged. “Thea just loves us in a somewhat negative and occasionally vitriolic way.”
“Except I don’t want to fax anyone.” “Only in your mind and only with your eyes,”
Grayson appeared in the doorway behind Alisa. “I’ll teach you.” Jameson stared at him. So did I.
ceiling and flashed back to the ski lift. “We’re friends.” “No,” Max corrected. “You and I are friends. Grayson is the physical manifestation of your avoidant attachment style. He won’t let himself want you. You don’t want to want to be wanted. Everybody stays at arm’s length. Nobody gets hurt, and nobody gets any.”
before Zara had gone from quiet and bookish to the cold, hypercontrolled force she was now.
“Tell me what you need.” Jameson wasn’t flirting. He wasn’t being cryptic. He wasn’t using me, in any way that I could tell. I let out a long, effortful breath. “I need to take this damn wall down.” Jameson nodded. He looked past me to Oren. “We’re going to need a sledgehammer.”
Xander gave us a look. “Is there something going on here that I should be aware of?” he asked, gesturing between the two of us. Jameson shared a brief look with me. “Nothing of note.” He said nothing like it was something.
“So theoretically,” Max said, “I want to knock over either zero pins or only one—whichever I can manage without putting the ball in the gutter?” When Jameson answered, his green eyes locked on to mine. “Theoretically.”
“Sometimes, it feels like Hawthornes always just know. Like you’re all so sure of everything.” Grayson’s eyes locked on to mine. “Not everything.”
There was something about the way he looked at me when he said those words that made me realize I might be the one person on the planet with the ability to make Grayson Hawthorne question himself and the decisions he’d made. Like the decision to step back from me. To be friends.
Sometimes all a girl really needed was a very bad idea.
Muscles in my shoulders and arms began to ache—but the rest of me ached more. “What are we doing?” I whispered. His eyes closed. His body shuddered. He stepped back and lowered the sword. “Nothing.”
“Close your eyes,” Max advised me, closing her own. “Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping in your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn.” Max opened her eyes. “Who’s there?”
Zara didn’t waffle.
“It’s so easy,” Zara murmured, “for all the wrong people to have children.”
But each time, as the darkness beckoned, I heard a voice: Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.
“When you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, if it’s going to be me—just flip that disk. Heads, I kiss you.” His voice broke slightly. “Tails, you kiss me. And either way, it means something.”
“In my heart,” he said quietly, “you were always mine.” I swallowed. “But biologically, I’m not.” “Biology isn’t everything.”
“You have a daughter now,” I told him, my voice low. He looked at me, his expression never wavering. “I have two.”
“Thank you. For getting blown up.”
thought about bargains struck and promises made and stolen moments and words spoken in Latin.
