Glorious Rivals (The Grandest Game, #2) (40)

He wants it all.

Grinding his teeth, Rohan locked his hand around the purple tuxedo. He wasn’t about to shy away from the color—or the memory.

“Where were you just now?” Savannah appeared behind him, too perceptive for her own good and apparently all too willing to let herself into his room.

“Plotting,” Rohan answered lightly, as he lifted the tuxedo off the rack. “Your demise, mostly, with a side of… other things.” He turned and let his gaze trail along the arm on which she’d written the notes from the music box, and then he let himself take in her gown.

It was as pale a blue as her silvery eyes—paler, even, so much so that at first glance, a less discerning individual might have confused it for white. It hit just below her calf. Thousands of tiny, pinprick jewels adorned its surface, catching the light from overhead, the pattern of the stitching and beadwork calling to mind snowflakes with edges as sharp and severe as blades.

The fit of that gown hid nothing and ensured that the only memory that threatened to pull Rohan back into the labyrinth of his mind now was his memory of the night before.

“I don’t believe you.” She arched her brow, a clear challenge.

“Best not to,” Rohan agreed. “Ever, really.”

Savannah studied him, intensity palpable in her gaze, and then she made her next move. “I suppose you’ve already deduced that my sister knows what happened to our father.”

Rohan definitely hadn’t been expecting that from her. “I suppose that I have.”

“Grayson told her—or she figured it out. It hardly matters. Gigi found out the truth, and she let me go on thinking that he was missing.” Savannah’s chin tilted upward, the tension in her neck and jaw as dazzling to Rohan as her gown. “That he left.”

Rohan recognized her strategy for what it was: This was Savannah Grayson showing him her truth as a demand for the same from him, a risky move on her part, to be sure, but she had his attention.

All of it.

“I’m not surprised that Grayson’s loyalty lays elsewhere. But Gigi?” Savannah locked her eyes on to Rohan’s. “She was my person.”

Given the differences between the sisters, it was easy to forget that they were twins. Open-hearted Gigi had very likely always been Savannah’s person.

“And now she’s not,” Rohan said.

“I spent a lifetime trying to be good enough for my father.” Savannah’s voice was like ice sharpened to a killing point. “He wanted me to dominate on the court and off it, and I did. But as I got older, I managed to find new ways to disappoint him. He wanted me to be feminine, likable, beautiful. Strong but never too strong.”

Rohan thought of Savannah’s long, long hair, before he’d shorn it. He thought of the way it had felt to pick up a knife and cut it off, thought of the look on her face as he’d done it.

“I was supposed to be perfect,” Savannah said, “and I was supposed to be liked, and my father never even considered that it might be impossible for a woman or even a little girl to be both of those things.” Savannah made her way farther into the room and took the tuxedo hanger from Rohan’s hand, like she was stripping away a protective barrier between them. “Gigi was enough for our father, just the way she was—but not me. Never me. So if he left, well… It was clear enough that the person he was really leaving, the person who wasn’t worth staying for, was me.”

“Only your father didn’t leave.” Rohan said it so that she didn’t have to. “And your twin sister let you continue to believe that he did.”

“Gigi was my person,” Savannah said, her voice breaking—just once. “And now she’s not.” She tossed the purple tuxedo onto the bed and took another step toward him. “Where were you just now, Rohan?”

He’d seen that question coming. He’d recognized Savannah’s tactic for exactly what it was from the moment she’d started talking. And still, Rohan found himself wanting to answer, wanting to give Savannah Grayson just a fraction of what she’d given him. “The day I came to the Mercy.”

What are distractions, Rohan? That lesson had come later, but until now, it had always, always stuck.

“Children generally aren’t taken in by the Devil’s Mercy for good reasons,” Rohan said.

“Deep water.” Savannah met his eyes. “Pitch black. You didn’t know how to swim, and it wasn’t the first time.”

Keep your friends close, Rohan thought, and your enemies closer. In the end, they’d be enemies, he and Savannah Grayson.

“The last time,” Rohan told her, “they tied stones to my ankles.” Or they’d tried to. Rohan pulled off his shirt, resolved to tell her nothing else. “I have a tuxedo to put on, love, and you were just leaving.”

Savannah’s gaze traveled down to his abs.

“Unless…,” Rohan said, letting his hands come to rest on the waistband of his pants. “You’d care to assist me?”





Chapter 36





GIGI


The windows, as it turned out, were stormproof. “Seriously,” Gigi huffed, “who puts modern-day stormproof windows in an abandoned lighthouse?” It was madness! Thankfully, Gigi was no stranger to madness.