The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“My mind is more like a roller coaster inside a labyrinth buried in an M. C. Escher painting that is riding on another roller coaster.” Xander shrugged. “But my mouth is a steel trap. Just ask me about all the secrets I’m keeping.” “What secrets are you keeping?” Max asked obligingly. “I can’t tell you!”

“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’s very you,” I told her. “It’s perfect!” Libby said, outraged. “Face it, Lib,” I told her. “You’re a couple.” “We’re not a couple,” Libby insisted.

“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.”

“I learned how to be bad in the most strategic ways. But now? With you?” He shook his head. “I want to be better than that. I do. I don’t ever want for you—for us, for this—to become a game.”

“Do you know what Xander did when I had my first college test?” Max was rambling now. “Before things even got romantic? He sent me a book bouquet.” “What’s a book bouquet?” Libby replied. “Exactly!” Max said. “Mother-faxing exactly.” “You like him,” I translated. “A lot.” “Let’s just say I am definitely reconsidering my favorite tropes.”

“Watch where you’re aiming those cheekbones, buddy.”

Xander turned to look at me. Then, as if coming to a very serious decision, he lifted his hand and pressed one finger to the end of my nose. “Boop.”

Libby reached out to stroke the puppy’s ear. “Nash found her in an alley. Some drunk assholes were poking at her with a stick.” Knowing Nash as I did, I doubted that had turned out well for the drunk assholes. “He saved her,” Libby continued, letting her hand drop. “That’s what he does.”

Jameson Winchester Hawthorne in protective mode was a thing to behold.

“Where are the other seven doughnuts?” I asked him, taking his cue and not pushing this too much too soon. Xander shook his head. “I have so many regrets.” “You literally just picked up another doughnut,” I pointed out. “I couldn’t possibly regret this doughnut,” Xander stated emphatically.

“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.”

“Is it so awful,” he continued, “that I want to be a better man for you?”

Grayson just looked at me, his light eyes shadowed. “Sometimes, you have an idea of a person—about who they are, about what you’d be like together. But sometimes that’s all it is: an idea. And for so long, I have been afraid that I loved the idea of Emily more than I will ever be capable of loving anyone real.” That was a confession and self-condemnation and a curse. “That’s not true, Grayson.” He looked at me like the act of doing so was painful and sweet. “It was never just the idea of you, Avery.” I tried not to feel like the ground was suddenly moving underneath my feet. “You hated the idea of me.” “But not you.” The words were just as sweet, just as painful. “Never you.”

He looked at me one last time. “There are so many things that I will never say.”

Vincent Blake was a dangerous man, a wealthy man, a formidable opponent—and he had underestimated me. “You can keep the chess set,” I told him.

“That’s my woman! In a completely not possessive and absolutely unpatriarchal kind of way!”