Their Vicious Games(63)

“Good shot,” he whispers.

“I have a good teacher,” I say, and then I deliberately take a step to the side, attempting to escape his gravity. And yet it still feels too intimate. I look back at the target, paper shredded in a tight circle.

In a person, that bullet would explode, ricochet off bone and muscle, turning them into mincemeat from the inside out. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, staving off the light-headedness. This is what they all want. What they all expect from me. Except one.

“How are you the un-favorite?” I blurt out, but sober quickly when I realize what I’ve asked.

“It’s fine,” Graham insists, shaking his head. He runs a hand through his short black curls. “I taught myself to be good at these things. The riding and the shooting and the biting wit. I taught myself because I have always been the un-favorite.”

I can’t imagine a time where Graham might want Third to look at him like Third looks at Pierce—the heavy weight of legacy in the pinprick pupil of his eye.

Graham grabs at the table edge, anchoring him there. “My father very purposefully didn’t give me his name, because from the moment I was born, he decided that I wasn’t Remington enough for it. It was how my mother reacted to my birth. She was distant. I know now that it was postpartum depression, but what kid understands that?” Graham asks softly, and he’s sinking. I can see it happening, watching him vanish into memory. “I don’t remember it. But the body keeps the score, right? Even now, when my parents touch me, it feels… unfamiliar.”

“Graham,” I call quietly, and he is not back with me, not exactly, but he seems a little more awake.

“And then Pierce was born,” he says sharply, and the light in his eye grows. “I can’t remember my life without him. There’s a picture of me holding him soon after he was born. I’m, almost two, maybe? It was like my mother had gone to a board meeting at Edgewater, and she came back with something for me. That’s the first picture I have with my mother, too. She came alive again. We all came alive. So, it makes sense that he got the name. And that I would make sure he only got the right things. The happiness that he brought back to our family.

“So, I became good at the things that a Remington was meant to, because I needed to teach him to be good at them,” Graham says fiercely. “I taught him to be better so that my father would never regret giving him that name. And he hasn’t. Pierce needed to have an eye for business, so I pretended I didn’t. Pierce needed to charm at parties, so I would be disinterested. He had to seem sophisticated, so I was unrefined. For Pierce to seem simply confident, I had to be arrogant.”

And with each word, his voice shakes more and more and he is shaking apart, and it is terrifying to watch.

“I didn’t go to Harvard because he has to go to Harvard,” Graham says, and he grabs my gunpowdered hands, trying to make me understand. “For my father and now for Pierce, tradition is everything. It’s what makes someone special. And Pierce is the special one.”

“Tradition” is such a heavy word.

“Traditions… like the Finish?” I ask.

Graham’s gaze hardens. “That was the one tradition I tried to get him to break from, to follow in my footsteps. I draw the line at… at the Finish.”

“You didn’t have one? A Finish like this one?” I press.

“Yeah, I locked myself away in London and went on a bender and refused to come home. Refusing to do it kinda solidified me being… you know. The un-favorite.”

“Did Pierce know why you didn’t?” I ask. “Did he know what—”

“He knew what it was supposed to be,” Graham admits. “But he wanted to make it different. I didn’t think it was possible, but he wants to create new traditions from the old. That whole thing about evening the playing field. He really believes it. He wants to do good. That’s why he invited girls from outside our circle. Girls like… you.”

There are no girls like me. There is only me.

Pierce might’ve wanted to change things, but how hard did he try? I remember his glossing over my objections, the ways in which he thinks he has tried to help me, in his not-helpful way. He knew all along how this could go; he weighed out the gains and losses accordingly, and let tradition win.

Graham is still insisting that he can imagine what I’m thinking. “I know how it sounds, but my mom went through this type of Finish too, and it seems like it… kinda broke something in her. She got better after Pierce was born, but she was lost in her own head sometimes, especially when the Finish was held. The old Finish… there was no preparation. No rest. It was just one week of the most vicious things you could imagine. I think Pierce wanted to make something new especially for her.”

I hesitate again. “Your… mom? Is she…?” I trail off.

Graham stares at me with narrowed eyes, confusion tightening the line of his mouth. And then: “Oh, no, she’s not dead. She’s at a health spa in Aspen.”

“Oh, I… does she do that often?” I ask.

“Yeah, I mean, when she’s stressed. The Finish stresses her out,” Graham explains.

“It stresses me out,” I press, and all those warm feelings from before are starting to dissipate. My hand clenches tighter around the gun. “This is not ‘something new’ because we’re training and getting a few days’ rest. This is still barbaric. I’m learning how to shoot people?”