Oren escorted me back to my wing. I thought about knocking on Libby’s door, but it was late—too late—and it wasn’t like I could just pop in and say, There’s murder afoot, sleep tight!
Oren did a sweep of my quarters and then took up position outside my door, feet spread shoulder-width apart, hands dangling by his side. He had to sleep sometime, but as the door closed between us, I knew it wouldn’t be tonight.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and stared at it. Nothing from Max. She was a night owl and two hours behind me time zone–wise. There was no way she was asleep. I DM-ed the same message I’d texted her earlier to every social media account she had.
Please respond, I thought desperately. Please, Max.
“Nothing.” I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Trying not to feel utterly alone, I made my way to the bathroom, laid my phone on the counter, and slipped off my clothes. Naked, I looked in the mirror. Except for my face and the bandage over my stitches, my skin looked untouched. I peeled the bandage back. The wound was angry and red, the stitches even and small. I stared at it.
Someone—almost certainly someone in the Hawthorne family—wanted me dead. I could be dead right now. I pictured their faces, one by one. Jameson had been there with me when the shots rang out. Nash had claimed from the beginning that he didn’t want the money. Xander had been nothing but welcoming. But Grayson…
If you were smart, you’d stay away from Jameson. From the game. From me. He’d warned me. He’d told me that their family destroyed everything they touched. When I’d asked Rebecca how Emily had died, it hadn’t been Jameson’s name she’d mentioned.
Grayson told me that it was her heart.
I flipped the shower on as hot as it would go and stepped in, turning my chest from the stream and letting the hot water beat against my back. It hurt, but all I wanted was to scrub this entire night off me. What had happened in the Black Wood. What had happened with Jameson. All of it.
I broke down. Crying in the shower didn’t count.
After a minute or two, I got ahold of myself and turned the water off, just in time to hear my phone ringing. Wet and dripping, I lunged for it.
“Hello?”
“You had better not be lying about the assassination attempt. Or the making out.”
My body sagged in relief. “Max.”
She must have heard in my tone that I wasn’t lying. “What the elf, Avery? What the everlasting mothing-foxing elf is going on there?”
I told her—all of it, every detail, every moment, everything I’d been trying not to feel.
“You have to get out of there.” For once, Max was deadly serious.
“What?” I said. I shivered and finally managed to grab a towel.
“Someone tried to kill you,” Max said with exaggerated patience, “so you need to get out of Murderland. Like, now.”
“I can’t leave,” I said. “I have to live here for a year, or I lose everything.”
“So your life goes back to the way it was a week ago. Is that so bad?”
“Yes,” I said incredulously. “I was living in my car, Max, with no guarantee of a future.”
“Key word: living.”
I pulled the towel tighter around me. “Are you saying you would give up billions?”
“Well, my other suggestion involves preemptively whacking the entire Hawthorne family, and I was afraid you’d take that as a euphemism.”
“Max!”
“Hey, I’m not the one who made out with Jameson Hawthorne.”
I wanted to explain to her exactly how I’d let that happen, but all that came out of my mouth was “Where were you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I called you, right after it happened, before the thing with Jameson. I needed you, Max.”
There was a long, pregnant silence on the other end of the phone line. “I’m doing just fine,” she said. “Everything here is just peachy. Thanks for asking.”
“Asking about what?”
“Exactly.” Max lowered her voice. “Did you even notice that I’m not calling from my phone? This is my brother’s. I’m on lockdown. Total lockdown—because of you.”
I’d known the last time we’d talked that something wasn’t right. “What do you mean, because of me?”
“Do you really want to know?”
What kind of question was that? “Of course I do.”
“Because you haven’t asked about me at all since any of this happened.” She blew out a long breath. “Let’s be honest, Ave, you barely asked about me before.”
My stomach tightened. “That’s not true.”
“Your mom died, and you needed me. And with everything with Libby and that bob-forsaken shipstain, you really needed me. And then you inherited billions and billions of dollars, so of course, you needed me! And I was happy to be there, Avery, but do you even know my boyfriend’s name?”
I racked my mind, trying to remember. “Jared?”
“Wrong,” Max said after a moment. “The correct answer is that I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, because I caught Jaxon on my phone, trying to send himself screenshots of your texts to me. A reporter offered to pay him for them.” Her pause was painful this time. “Do you want to know how much?”
My heart sank. “I’m so sorry, Max.”
“Me too,” Max said bitterly. “But I’m especially sorry that I ever let him take pictures of me. Personal pictures. Because when I broke up with him, he sent those pictures to my parents.” Max was like me. She only cried in the shower. But her voice was hitching now. “I’m not even allowed to date, Avery. How well do you think that went down?”
I couldn’t even imagine. “What do you need?” I asked her.
“I need my life back.” She went quiet, just for a minute. “You know what the worst part is? I can’t even be mad at you, because someone tried to shoot you.” Her voice got very soft. “And you need me.”
That hurt, because it was true. I needed her. I’d always needed her more than she had needed me, because she was my friend, singular, and I was one of many for her. “I’m sorry, Max.”
She made a dismissive sound. “Yeah, well, the next time someone tries to shoot you, you’re going to have to buy me something really nice to make it up to me. Like Australia.”
“You want me to buy you a trip to Australia?” I asked, thinking that could probably be arranged.
“No.” Her reply was pert. “I want you to buy me Australia. You can afford it.”
I snorted. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”
“Then I guess that you have no choice but to avoid getting shot at.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Whoever tried to kill me isn’t going to get another chance.”
“Good.” Max was quiet for a few seconds. “Ave, I have to go. And I don’t know when I’m going to be able to borrow another phone. Or get online. Or anything.”
My fault. I tried to tell myself this wasn’t good-bye—not forever. “Love you, Max.”
“Love you, too, beach.”
After we hung up, I sat there in my towel, feeling like something inside of me had been carved out. Eventually, I made my way back into my bedroom and threw on some pajamas. I was in bed, thinking about everything Max had said, wondering if I was a fundamentally selfish or needy person, when I heard a sound like scratching in the walls.
I stopped breathing and listened. There it was again. The passageway.
“Jameson?” I called. He was the only one who’d used this passage into my room—or at least the only one I knew of. “Jameson, this isn’t funny.”
There was no response, but when I got up and walked toward the passageway, then stood very still, I could have sworn I heard someone breathing, right on the other side of the wall. I gripped the candlestick, prepared to pull it and face down whoever or whatever stood beyond, but then my common sense—and my promise to Max—caught up to me, and I opened the door to the hallway instead.
“Oren?” I said. “There’s something you should know.”
Oren searched the passageway, then disabled its entrance into my room. He also “suggested” I spend the night in Libby’s room, which didn’t have passageway access.
It wasn’t really a suggestion.
My sister was asleep when I knocked. She roused, but barely. I crawled into bed with her, and she didn’t ask why. After my conversation with Max, I was fairly certain I didn’t want to tell her. Libby’s entire life had already been turned upside down because of me. Twice. First when my mom had died, then all of this. She’d already given me everything. She had her own issues to deal with. She didn’t need mine.
Under the covers, I hugged a pillow tight to my body and rolled toward Libby. I needed to be close to her, even if I couldn’t tell her why. Libby’s eyes fluttered, and she snuggled up next to me. I willed myself not to think about anything else—not the Black Wood, not the Hawthornes, nothing. I let darkness overcome me, and I slept.
I dreamed that I was back at the diner. I was young—five or six—and happy.
I place two sugar packets vertically on the table and bring their ends together, forming a triangle capable of standing on its own. “There,” I say. I do the same with the next pair of packets, then set a fifth across them horizontal, connecting the two triangles I built.
“Avery Kylie Grambs!” My mom appears at the end of the table, smiling. “What have I told you about building castles out of sugar?”
I beam back at her. “It’s only worth it if you can go five stories tall!”
I woke with a start. I turned over, expecting to see Libby, but her side of the bed was empty. Morning light was streaming in through the windows. I made my way to Libby’s bathroom, but she wasn’t there, either. I was getting ready to go back to my room—and my bathroom—when I saw something on the counter: Libby’s phone. She’d missed texts, dozens of them, all from Drake. There were only three—the most recent—that I could read without a password.
I love you.
You know I love you, Libby-mine.
I know that you love me.
