The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Xander, my self-appointed BHFF—Best Hawthorne Friend Forever—considered

he

That memory wanted to loop into another—Grayson, me, the wine cellar—but I wouldn’t let it.

i’m not thinking about this again

“I need an anagram of the word naked.” There was a hum of energy to Jameson’s voice.

he’s so crazy

“If you don’t tell me, I will end you, Hawthorne.” “And I,” Jameson replied, “would very much enjoy being ended.” My traitorous lips threatened a smile.

“The anagram you were looking for? It’s knead.”

god

“I should warn you, Heiress…” Jameson swung himself up onto the edge of the basket, landing in a crouch. “I am dangerously good at birthdays.”

Jameson was asleep beside me.

“As I got older,” Eve continued, her voice quiet but raw,

overshare much?

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

Nash pulled me into his chest, his worn white T-shirt soft against my cheek.

i love he

“What do you mean how the old man played?” Eve asked.

she’s so fucking annoying

“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.”

In Hawthorne House, fondue involved twelve fondue pots accompanied by three full-sized chocolate fountains.

need that

“we’ve got your gruyère-based, your gouda-based, your beer cheddar, your fontina, your chällerhocker—”

NEED THAT

You’re bleeding,” I told Jameson. He showed his teeth in a wicked smile. “I’m also dangerously close to getting mud on… everything.”

“On the contrary, Heiress, bleeding is a devastatingly good look for me.”

“I have a better idea.” Jameson lowered his lips to mine. My neck arched. More mud on my face, my clothes. “I bet,” he countered, “that you can’t wash all this mud off before I…” “Before you what?” I murmured. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne smiled. “Guess.”

GOOODDDDDDDD

Slowly, deliberately, Jameson pushed me up against the wall. He waited, as he always did, for my nod, then obliterated the space between us. His lips crushed mine. My legs wrapped around him as his body pinned mine to the wall.

“I’m with you, Jameson,” I said. “I want to be with you.”

“I know about the wine cellar, Heiress.”

I pictured Grayson on his knees in front of me.

now

“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.”

Are relationships supposed to be fun?” I thought about hot-air balloons and helicopters and dancing barefoot on the beach.

And you!” she said as she turned and walked past Grayson. “Watch where you’re aiming those cheekbones, buddy.”

lmao?

“If you don’t like that, Lib, you ain’t gonna love my thoughts about your safety.”

“Let me do it,” Jameson said. “I can’t protect you from everything, Heiress, but I can protect you from this.”

he

“And in keeping with my general superiority in our sibling relationship,” Jameson added with a sardonic smile that was just a little too sharp, “I am better than fine.”

“I can’t just call him.” Xander gave me a plaintive look. “What if he hates me?” “No one could possibly hate you, Xander,” I told him, my heart twisting.

“I’m here,” I told him softly. “I am right here with you, Jameson Hawthorne.” Stop running.

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

i love them so bad

Libby moved toward Nash and took his phone from his pocket. There was something intimate about the action—the way he let her, the way she knew he would.

i love them

Care. Eee. Oak. Eee. I thought—and then I put it all together. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I told Jameson.

HEHE

Nash, I’ve cued up the Taylor Swift for you.

“A vintage.” His gaze found its way slowly and inexorably to mine. “We need to go down to the wine cellar.”

when do we find out what happened down there? bc obviously i don’t recall

“I’ll stay with you,” Rebecca said quietly. “No,” her mother snapped. “You love Hawthornes so much, Rebecca? Stay with them.”

bitch

“Heiress?” Jameson turned back to me. “I need to speak to you. Alone.”

not this

“Heiress, have you ever known me to shy away from danger?”

“Just this once,” he said, an aching tone in his voice, “let me be the one who protects you, Avery.”

“The only person I trust with all that I am and all that could be, Heiress, is you.” And just like that, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne hung up the phone.

“My phone was on silent. We were blowing off some steam.” Her green eyes slid to Thea’s. “Playing pool.”

good for them

“You’re saying that you wanted me?”

MY BABY i need to put him in my pocket

“And it doesn’t even matter because I’m not putting on a show here, Heiress. I’m not playing at being overprotective or pretending that, for once in my life, I want to do the right thing.”

“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 really, really isn’t,” Jameson replied, blazing by my side.

I was never going to be enough for him. You know what that’s like, Gray. Better than anyone—you know.”

the blatant manipulation is crazy

“This isn’t you, Avery.” “Maybe, Gray,” Jameson countered, “you don’t know her as well as you think.”

“Clearly,” he said, his tone almost regal, “I was wrong about you.”

how do you manage to make me like you less and less

I would jump out of a plane with you, Jameson, snowboard down the side of a volcano with you, bet everything that I have on you—on us, against the world.

With everything you are, Heiress, what other choice would he have had?”

“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.”