Glorious Rivals(75)

He knew—from their conversation in the tree, he knew how she felt about being kept in the dark, about that kind of protection. And here he was, doing to her exactly what her parents had, lying to her and not-lying to her, deciding what risks she would and would not take.

On some level, Grayson knew that he had no right, but he also knew that he would not survive anything happening to her—not after everything else he’d lost, not when she might be his Libby, not when the reality of Lyra Kane was more than he could have dreamed when he’d thought, day after day, about a girl who’d called him on the phone.

Grayson moved down onto Lyra’s step and then down again, taking the lead, and Lyra let him. No calamity struck, but Grayson walked the rest of the way down the stone staircase with his body in front of hers, shielding her as best he could.

Emily, dead on the beach. Avery, bleeding on the pavement.

“Grayson?” Lyra’s voice had always been so uniquely hers: layered, honey-rich, and forever tiptoeing the line to one side of husky or the other—raw and real and strong.

Grayson swallowed and forced himself to speak. “About the clue—”

“You sure as hell aren’t thinking about the clue.” Lyra’s tone made it clear: She wouldn’t let him shrug her off.

Grayson stepped onto the rocky beach and stared out at the ocean. If he turned left, he and Lyra would ultimately end up at the boathouse. He turned right instead, onto a thin slice of shore that wrapped around the island. Following this path, they’d eventually end up below the ruins of the old house.

Once the tide rolled in, there was a good chance that this path would no longer exist at all.

“My thoughts are dark, Lyra.” He walked the thin path—just wide enough that she could fall in beside him. “My mind is rather gifted at imagining in detail any potential failures on my part at protecting those who matter to me.”

The stone step. The snake. If he’d been a second later…

“Because you’ve failed before,” Lyra said quietly, far too perceptive for her own good—or his.

Grayson angled his eyes toward hers. “It’s always straight to the heart of things with you.”

Her hand worked its way stubbornly into his as they walked on. “Who did you fail? You aren’t just thinking about Savannah.”

No. I’m not. Grayson was loath to admit that out loud. He had moved past this. He had worked to move past it, to accept that he’d had no control over Emily—wild, carefree, desperate-to-feel Emily, who had never truly loved him back, who had been his first in so many things.

“There was a girl.” Grayson wasn’t sure why he was telling Lyra this, why he needed to tell her this. “I knew her my entire life. We were not particularly well suited, personality-wise, but it always felt a bit like Emily was in my blood.” He exhaled. “She certainly excelled at getting under our skin.” His and Jamie’s. Grayson’s voice hardened as he continued, “She died. Cliff-jumping. I was the one who took her out there.”

“Emily,” Lyra said. Grayson could practically see her reaching for the memory cued by that name.

“You read the article.” Grayson did not specify which article. Alisa had done a good job shutting down the story, but even the best fixer could only contain so much.

“I can’t picture her,” Lyra said, her expression intent. “But…”

“She looked very much like Eve.” Grayson was usually better at being circumspect than this. “There is some relation there.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Lyra asked.

“I am philosophically and morally opposed to talking or thinking about Eve.” Grayson set his jaw.

Lyra was silent for a long moment. “Are you going to be okay?”

In his lifetime, Grayson had been asked that question so infrequently, if at all. He’d cultivated an image of invulnerability. Okay was not a thing to which Hawthornes aspired—especially him.

He swallowed. “I’m fine.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Lyra replied.

He was the one who’d told her that she didn’t have to be fine. He’d told her that the cost of being fine when you weren’t was too high.

“Maybe some of us,” Lyra told him, “need to break to be whole.”

Some of us. Grayson let himself look at her—not just a glance this time. He drank in the lines of her face, the steadiness of her amber eyes, golden in the sun. “You understand,” he said quietly, “why I am forever pulling you back from cliffs.”

Grayson knew, though she did not, that he was not just speaking of cliffs. Alice. The lily. Omega and three. The snake on the stone staircase was not the only one in her path. And he could not tell her.

Physically—he could not.

“I understand,” Lyra said.

You would not, if you knew. Grayson pulled his eyes away from hers as they came around a bend, and the universe gifted him with a perfect distraction—for himself and for her. At the base of the cliff upon which the first mansion on Hawthorne Island had been built, there was an opening. A tangle of vines hung down from the surrounding rocks, nearly obscuring it, but Grayson’s gaze locked in on that opening with laser-like precision.

A cavern. He drew his hand slowly back from Lyra’s until only the tips of their fingers were touching. Her fingers curved reflexively inward, catching his as Grayson led her onward to that vine-covered opening. He stepped through the vines. The cavern beyond was small—less than a foot taller than his own head, no deeper than eight or twelve feet. Strings of delicate lights hung just beyond vines. And beyond that…