I smiled. I’d already found all three.
“There are slides built into the walls of your mansion?” Max snorted.
“Mother-foxing rich people.”
Xander did not take offense. “Some chutes are more advantageous than others. If another player beats you to a chute, that chute is frozen for three minutes, so everyone will need one of these.” Xander picked one up a pillow and gave it a gentle, but somehow menacing, swing. “Battles must be waged.”
“Hawthorne Chutes and Ladders involves pillow fights?” Max asked in a tone that made me think she was picturing all four Hawthorne brothers swinging pillows at one another. Possibly shirtless.
“Pillow wars,” Xander corrected. “Once you successfully claim your chute and make it to the ground floor, you exit the House, and it’s a race to climb to the roof from the outside.”
I surveyed the climbing supplies spread out at our feet. “We get to choose a ladder?”
“One does not,” Xander corrected me austerely, “simply choose a ladder.”
Grayson broke the silence he’d adopted the moment Eve had stepped into the hall. “Our grandfather liked to say that every choice worth anything came with a cost.”
Eve assessed him. “And the cost for climbing supplies is…”
Grayson answered her assessing look with one of his own. “A secret.”
Xander elaborated. “Each player confesses a secret. The person with the best secret gets to pick their climbing supplies first, and so on and so forth.
The person with the least impressive secret goes last.” I was starting to see why Xander had chosen this game. “Now,” he continued, rubbing his hands together. “Which brave soul wants to go first?”
I eyed Eve, but Grayson intervened. “I’ll go.” He fixed his silvery eyes straight ahead. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it definitely wasn’t him saying, with absolutely no intonation, “I kissed a girl at Harvard.”
He… No, I wasn’t going to finish that thought. What Grayson Hawthorne did with his lips was none of my business.
“I got a tattoo.” Max offered up her own secret with a grin. “It’s very nerdy and in a location I will not disclose. My parents can never find out.”
“Tell me more,” Xander said, “about this nerdy tattoo.”
Grayson arched a brow at his brother, and I tried to think of something that would make Eve feel like she had to open up. “Sometimes,” I said quietly, “I feel like Tobias Hawthorne made a mistake.” Maybe that wasn’t a secret. Maybe it was obvious. But the next part was harder to say. “Like he should have chosen someone else.”
Eve stared at me.
“The old man didn’t make mistakes,” Grayson said in one of those tones that dared you to argue—and strongly advised against it.
“My turn.” Xander raised his hand. “I figured out who my father is.”
“You what?” Grayson whipped his head toward his brother. Skye Hawthorne had four sons, each with a different father, none of whom she’d identified. Nash and Grayson had discovered their fathers within the last year. I’d known that Xander was looking for his.
“I don’t know if he knows about me.” Xander rushed the words. “I haven’t made contact. I’m not sure I’m going to, and by the sacred rules of Chutes and Ladders, none of you can ever mention this again unless I bring it up first. Eve?”
With the rest of us still focused on Xander, Eve bent and picked up a grappling hook. As I turned to look at her, she trailed her finger along its edge. “Almost twenty-one years ago, my mom got drunk and cheated on her husband, and I was the result.” She didn’t meet a single person’s eyes.