The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Remind me again,” Nash told me, bending to capture my gaze with his. “What’s our rule about fightin’ dirty?” He wasn’t nearly as subtle as he thought he was when it came to Alisa Ortega, but I still answered the question. “There’s no such thing as fighting dirty,” I told Nash, “if you win.”

“I definitely, one hundred percent, entirely… would have told Rebecca,” Xander admitted. “In retrospect, good on you for not telling me. Excellent call, shows solid judgment.”

“It also wouldn’t be the worst time to tell me that you aren’t jealous of Eve standing that close to Grayson.”

“If you had a baby…,” I said. “When I have a baby,” came the deep, heart-shattering reply, “she’ll be my whole world.” “She?” I repeated. Nash settled back into his seat. “I can picture Lib with a little girl.”

“I don’t do vulnerable,” Thea retorted. “It clashes with my bitch aesthetic.”

“Because I’m terrible at hurting, Heiress. And if what we have now—if everything we have now—starts to feel like another competition between Grayson and me, like a game? I don’t trust myself not to play.”

“But mostly, I can’t hate him, Avery Kylie Grambs, because he brought me you.”

“The only person I trust with all that I am and all that could be, Heiress, is you.”

“I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery—some things are too precious to gamble.”

“It was always going to be you,” I told Jameson. He needed to hear it. I needed to say it, even though always painted over so much. In response, Jameson gave me another crooked smile. “It’s times like this, Heiress, that I wish I’d fallen in love with a girl who wasn’t quite so good at bluffing.”