The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(66)

Grayson had spent a lifetime practicing rigid control over his own emotions. Other people could afford to make mistakes. He couldn’t. Assess the situation and proceed accordingly.

“Why does my dad have a safe-deposit box full of pictures of you, Grayson?” Gigi pressed. “A box that isn’t even in his real name. It doesn’t make sense.”

It wouldn’t make sense to her—until it did. She would get there on her own eventually.

Grayson steeled himself. “Davenport is my middle name,” he told Gigi evenly. “My grandfather’s name was—”

“Tobias Hawthorne,” Gigi finished. “And the box was under the name Tobias Davenport. I don’t understand.”

Grayson’s heart twisted.

“Gigi, honey…” Acacia started to say, but Savannah didn’t let her get any further.

“Dad had an affair.” The older, taller, and more self-contained of the twins kept her voice as even as Grayson’s. “Before we were born. Right after Colin died. With Skye Hawthorne.”

Gigi went very still. Grayson had stopped noticing her tendency toward constant motion until suddenly, there was none. He saw the exact moment Gigi realized what Savannah was saying, the exact moment that every last piece fell into place for her.

“That’s a pretty name,” his normally bright-eyed sister said hoarsely. “Skye.”

Grayson swallowed. “Gigi…”

She whirled on him, stepping back from the table, back from the safe-deposit box. “You lied to me.” She shook her head, sending her curls flying. “Or maybe you didn’t, maybe you just avoided the truth like avoidance is your middle name—or your second middle name, I guess? Grayson Davenport Avoidance Hawthorne. It has a ring to it.”

“Breathe, Geeg,” Savannah said quietly.

Gigi took another step back, gave another shake of her head. She pushed her hair roughly out of her face with the heels of her hands. “You knew,” she told Savannah, and then she looked to Grayson, to Acacia. “You all knew. Everyone but me, and—oh dear lord, your name is Grayson.” She was talking far too fast for anyone to make a real attempt at interrupting her now. “Grayson Hawthorne.” She looked from him to Savannah. “And the two of you… No wonder you freaked out when I pretended we were hooking up! Ewwww. And I thought maybe you two…” She gestured between them. “Also ew.”

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Acacia told her daughter quietly.

Gigi held up a hand. “I just threw up a little. Right there in my mouth. Did Dad, like, have a secret family this whole time? Like, when we thought he was on business trips was he with his son?” Gigi scrunched her face. “And does anyone have a mint?”

Grayson bent his head down, capturing her gaze. “No,” he told her, his voice just as quiet as Acacia’s had been a moment before.

“No mint?” Gigi said.

“Your father didn’t have a secret family,” Grayson said. Your father, Gigi, not mine. “He and I met exactly once. I was nineteen, and he made it very clear that I was not his son.”

So. Very. Clear.

“Not clear enough, apparently,” Savannah tossed out.

“Savannah,” Acacia said sharply.

Gigi ignored both her mother and her twin. Her beseeching, teary eyes focused only on Grayson. “Then why did my dad have all these pictures?”

That was the question, the unavoidable black hole of a question threatening to suck him in when the answer didn’t even matter. Couldn’t matter.

“Why are you even here, Grayson? Why are you helping me look for him?” Gigi’s breath hitched. “You must hate him. And us.”

“No.” Grayson spoke with the full force of the authority he’d been raised to assume in every interaction. The authority that had never worked on her. “Juliet, no.”

I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Grayson remembered too late that Gigi had said their father was the only one who ever used her full first name.

“Why?” Gigi repeated brokenly.

“I’m here,” Grayson said, “because he isn’t. My grandfather had a saying: family first.”

“We are not family,” Savannah replied, her voice low and almost guttural. For the first time, Grayson registered that she hadn’t looked away from the photographs. Not once.

“He’s our brother,” Gigi replied.

The word brother meant something to Grayson. It had always meant something to him, always been a foundational part of who he was.

“No.” Savannah finally ripped her gaze away from the box. “He’s not. Dad didn’t want him to be.”

He didn’t want me. He despised me. Grayson should have been able to cut the thought off there. He should have had the discipline to leave it there. But the pictures. My whole life, he…

“I thought he was a good dad.” Gigi looked up at the ceiling, then squeezed her eyes closed. “Not perfect, but…” She trailed off and pressed her lips together. “I thought he was a good husband.” Her voice was gaining steam again. “That’s why I’ve been looking for him! Because I didn’t believe he would cheat on Mom and abandon us, but I guess the whole cheating and abandoning thing is just par for the course for him.”