Nash rocked casually back on his heels as Grayson approached. “What are you doing here?” Grayson asked flatly.
“I could ask you the same thing, little brother.” Nash liked to perpetually remind Grayson who the older brother was in their relationship—and who was the kid.
“Xander told you where I was and what I’m doing,” Grayson concluded.
Nash neither confirmed nor denied that statement. “You’re playing with fire, Gray.”
“Be that as it may, I do not recall asking for backup.” Grayson gave Nash a hard look. His older brother offered him a knowing one in return. “Where’s your fiancée?” Grayson asked pointedly. Libby needs you, Nash. I don’t.
“Back at Hawthorne House getting ready for Cupcake-a-Palooza,” Nash replied, his tone as casual as his posture. “Where’s your brain at, Grayson?”
Grayson made a mental note to throttle Xander. “I have everything under control.”
Nash cocked a brow at him. “If that was true, you would have noticed me tailing you on the way here.”
Grayson hadn’t noticed a damn thing. “I don’t need your help,” he gritted out.
Nash removed his cowboy hat and took a step toward him. “Then why haven’t you noticed I’m not your only tail?”
 |
Damn you, Nash. Grayson pulled the Spider onto the highway and let his gaze flick to the rearview mirror just in time to see another car do the same. The vehicle was black, nondescript. The driver knew how to hang back. But now that Nash had tipped him off, Grayson recognized that the driver always hung back by exactly two cars.
The black car was two cars behind him on the highway.
When Grayson pulled off, the car pulled off but managed to fall back.
Two cars.
Grayson took three rights in a row, and by the time the car had taken the third after him, Grayson had already pulled the Ferrari onto the shoulder of the road. There was sufficient light here, a gas station ahead. Grayson told himself that confronting and identifying his tail was a strategy, but on some level, he knew that he was spoiling for a fight—the fight he hadn’t gotten from Nash, the fight he’d very nearly picked with the boy who’d dared to tell Savannah to be nice.
The black car drove past. Grayson got a picture of its plates just before the car turned right again. A moment later, Nash pulled into the gas station down the road, but Grayson refused to let himself be distracted by backup he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. Instead, he focused on his quarry. Let’s see if you come back.
Three minutes later, the black car did. This time, it pulled onto the shoulder of the road next to him. Down the street at the gas station, Nash got out of his car. Grayson noticed but ignored him.
I have everything under control, he’d told his brother. I don’t need your help.
The driver’s-side door of the black car opened. A lone figure stepped out, clothed in shadow. The other three car doors remained closed. Just one threat to contend with, Grayson thought. Good. There was a certain satisfaction in taking care of threats.
His pursuer—now his target—advanced from the shadows into light, pace unhurried, steps silent. Grayson took stock of what the light showed: a male, at least six foot two, long and lean with dark blond hair that hung over one eye all the way down to his cheekbone. He wore a threadbare gray T-shirt that did nothing to mask the sinewy muscles underneath, and Grayson knew, just from the way his opponent moved, that he was armed.
“And who might you be?” Grayson asked.
Stillness, sudden and absolute. “Who I am is less important than who I work for.”
Young. Utterly unafraid. That was Grayson’s immediate impression.
Probably fast.
“Trowbridge?” Grayson said, looking to his opponent’s face, to eyes like midnight beneath thick, angled brows, one of them slashed through with a small white scar.
“Not Trowbridge.” The guy took a series of slow steps, circling Grayson. Young. Unafraid. Probably fast. Grayson added two more descriptors: Dangerous. Hard. Dark eyes glittered as the guy came to a sudden stop. “Guess again.”
Grayson bared his teeth in a smile full of warning. “I don’t guess.” Power and control. It always came down to power and control—who had them, who didn’t, who would lose them first.
“She wasn’t kidding,” his opponent replied, the words cutting through the night air like a butcher knife, “when she said you were arrogant.”
Grayson took a single step forward. “She?”
The guy smiled and began to circle him once more. “I work for Eve.”
NINE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS
AGO
Jameson stood at the base of the tree house and looked up. Scowling at the cast on his arm, he moved toward the closest staircase.
“Taking the easy way up?”
That wasn’t Xander or Grayson, who were supposed to be meeting him here. It was the old man. Jameson fought the urge to whip his head toward his grandfather and kept his gaze locked on the staircase instead.
“It’s the smart thing to do,” Jameson said. The sound of footsteps alerted him to his grandfather’s approach.
“And are you?” the old man asked, the question pointed. “Smart?”
Jameson swallowed. This was a conversation he’d been avoiding for days. His eyes darted upward, searching the tree house for his brothers.
“I’m not who you expected to find here.” Tobias Hawthorne wasn’t a tall man, and at ten, Jameson was already past his chin. But it felt like the old man towered over him anyway. “I’m afraid that your brothers are otherwise occupied.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Jameson heard it in the distance: the telltale sound of a violin, the notes caressed and carried by the wind.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the old man said. “But that’s to be expected.
Perfection without artistry is worth very little.”
From the tone in his voice, Jameson knew that his grandfather had said those exact words to Grayson before sending him away. He wanted me alone.
Jameson glowered at the cast on his arm, then raised his eyes—and his chin—defiantly. “I fell.”
Sometimes, it was better to just rip off the bandage.
“That you did.” How was it that Tobias Hawthorne’s words could sound so nonchalant and cut so deeply? “Tell me, Jameson, what did you find yourself thinking, midair, when your motorbike went in one direction and you the other?”
It had been during a competition, his third this year. He’d won the first two. “Nothing.” Jameson spoke the word into the dirt.
Hawthornes weren’t supposed to lose.
“And that,” Tobias Hawthorne said, his voice low and silky, “is the problem.”
Jameson lifted his gaze without being told. It would be worse if he didn’t.
“There are moments in life,” his grandfather the billionaire continued, “when we are gifted with the opportunity to go outside ourselves. To see the world anew. To see what other people miss.”
The emphasis in those words made Jameson draw in a breath. “I didn’t see anything when I crashed.”
“You didn’t look.” The old man let that hang in the air, and then he reached to knock lightly on Jameson’s cast. “Tell me, does your arm hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Is it supposed to?”
The question caught Jameson off guard, but he tried not to show it. “I guess.”
“In this family, we do not guess.” The old man’s tone wasn’t harsh, but it was sure, like the words he’d just spoken were as certain as the rise and fall of the sun. “You’re old enough now for me to be honest, Jamie. I see a great deal of myself in you.”
Jameson hadn’t expected that, not at all, and it let him focus on his grandfather fully, completely.
“But you must know there are certain… weaknesses.” Now that Tobias Hawthorne had Jameson’s full attention, he clearly had no intention of letting it go. “Compared to your brothers,” he said, “your mind is ordinary.” Ordinary. Jameson felt like the old man had reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. The fingers on his good hand curled into a fist. “You’re saying I’m not as smart as they are.” The words came out angry and fierce
—but deep down, Jameson knew it was true. He’d always known it. “Grayson. Xander.” He swallowed. “Nash?” That one was less clear.
“Why are you asking about Nash?” the old man said sharply. “The truth, Jameson, is that you are indeed intelligent.”
“But they’re smarter.” Jameson wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t. He hadn’t cried when his arm had snapped, and he wasn’t going to now.
“Grayson’s mind is more efficient than yours and far less prone to error.” The old man placed no special emphasis on that statement, but he did nothing to gentle it, either. “And Xander—well, he’s the brightest of all of you and certainly the most capable of thinking outside the box.”
Grayson was perfect. Xander was one of a kind. And Jameson just… was.
“Their gifts are not yours.” The old man placed a hand on Jameson’s chin, preventing him from looking away. “But, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne, a person can train their mind to see the world, to really see it.” Tobias Hawthorne gave his grandson a frank, assessing look. “I have to wonder, though, once you see that web of possibilities laid out in front of you, unencumbered by fear of pain or failure, by thoughts telling you what can and cannot, should and should not be done…” The intensity in the old man’s words built. “What will you do with what you see?”
I don’t have to be ordinary. That was what Jameson heard. I won’t be.
I’m not. “Whatever I have to.”
That was his answer—the only possible answer.
Tobias Hawthorne bestowed upon him a slight nod and an even slighter smile. “When you have certain weaknesses,” he said softly, rapping once on Jameson’s cast, “you have to want it more.”
Jameson didn’t wince. “Want what more?”
“Everything.” Without another word, the old man started climbing the stairs. Three steps in, he looked back. “I’ll see you at the top.”
Jameson didn’t take the stairs. Or the ladder. Or the slide—or anything that could even remotely be considered the easy way up. Forget your arm. Ignore the pain. He tuned out the sound of perfect Grayson’s beautiful music.
If he was going to be the best, he had to want it. He began to climb.
