Money. Power. Status. My path and Vincent Blake’s would probably cross again—and so would mine and Toby’s. Mine and Eve’s.
“Here.” Toby placed a small wooden cube in my hand as he started up the truck. “I made you something, horrible girl.”
The endearment nearly undid me. “What is it?”
“Blake didn’t give me much to entertain myself with—just wood and a knife.”
“And you didn’t use the knife?” Grayson asked beside me. His tone made it very clear the kind of uses he would have approved of.
“Would you have,” Toby countered, “if you thought your captor could get to Avery?”
Toby had protected me. He’d made something for me.
You have a daughter.
I have two.
I looked down at the wooden cube in my hand, thinking about my mom, about this man, about the decades and tragedies and small moments that had led all of us to right now.
“Watch out for her,” Toby told Grayson when the border of Blake’s property came into sight. “Take care of each other.” The press had been cleared out, but Oren and his men were still there waiting—and so was Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.
Grayson saw his brother standing there, and he answered on behalf of both of them. “We will.”
CHAPTER 85
The knight returns with the damsel in distress,” Jameson declared as I made my way toward him. He glanced toward Grayson. “You’re the damsel.”
“I figured,” Grayson deadpanned.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Jameson, but the truth was, I didn’t care why he’d come—only that he was here. I’d won—after everything, I had won—and Jameson was the only person on the planet capable of fully understanding exactly how it had felt the moment I’d realized that my plan was going to work.
The rush. The thrill. The adrenaline-soaked awe.
The moment victory had been within my grasp had been like standing at the edge of the world’s most powerful waterfall, the roar of the moment blocking out everything else.
It was like jumping off a cliff and finding out you could fly.
It was like Jameson and me and Jameson-and-me, and I wanted to live it all over again with him.
“I thought you could use a ride home,” Jameson told me. I looked past him, expecting to see the McLaren or one of the Bugattis or the Aston Martin Valkyrie, but instead, my gaze landed on a helicopter—smaller than the one Oren had flown here.
“Pretty sure you aren’t allowed to land a helicopter there,” Grayson told his brother.
“You know what they say about permission and forgiveness,” Jameson replied, then he focused back on me with a familiar look—equal parts I dare you and I’ll never let you go. “Want to learn to fly?”
That night, I turned the cube Toby had given me over in my hands. My
finger caught on an edge, and I realized that it was made of interlocking pieces. Working slowly, I solved the puzzle, disassembling the cube and laying the pieces out in front of me.
On each one, he’d carved a word.
I
See
So
Much
Of
Your
Mother
In
You
And that, even more than the moment I’d defeated Blake, was when I knew.