“Her husband knew I wasn’t his, but they stayed married. I used to think that if I could be good enough—smart enough, sweet enough, something enough—the man we all pretended was my father would stop blaming me for being born.” She tossed the grappling hook back down. “The worst part was my mom blamed me, too.”
Grayson leaned toward her. I wasn’t even sure he knew he was doing it.
“As I got older,” Eve continued, her voice quiet but raw, “I realized that it didn’t matter how perfect I was. I was never going to be good enough because they didn’t want me to be perfect or extraordinary. They wanted me to be invisible.” Whatever emotions Eve was feeling were buried too deep to see. “And that is the one thing that I will never be.”
Silence.
“What about your siblings?” I asked. Up until now, I’d been so focused on Eve’s resemblance to Emily, on the fact that she was Toby’s daughter, that I hadn’t thought about her other family members—or what they’d done.
“Half-siblings,” Eve said with absolutely no intonation.
Technically, the Hawthorne brothers were half-siblings. Technically, Libby and I were. But there was no mistaking Eve’s tone: It meant something different to her.
“Eli and Mellie came here under false pretenses,” I said. “For you.”
“Eli and Mellie never did a damn thing for me,” Eve replied, her voice hoarse, her head held high. “Christmas morning when I was five, when they had presents under the tree and I didn’t? The family reunions that everyone got to go to but me? Every time I got grounded for existing just a little too loudly? Every time I had to beg a ride home from something because no one bothered to pick me up?” She looked down. “If my siblings came to Hawthorne House, it sure as hell wasn’t for me. I haven’t spoken a word to either of them in two years.” Shining emerald eyes made their way back to mine. “Is that personal enough for you?”
I felt a needle’s stab of icy guilt. I remembered what it was like coming to Hawthorne House as an outsider, and I thought suddenly about my mom and the way she would have welcomed Toby’s daughter with open arms.
About what she would say if she could see me cross-examining her now.
Ballots were passed out. Secrets were ranked. Supplies were chosen.
And then the race was on.
CHAPTER 11
This was what I discovered about Eve during the remainder of Chutes and Ladders: She was competitive, she wasn’t afraid of heights, she had a high tolerance for pain, and she definitely recognized the effect she had on Grayson.
She fit here, at Hawthorne House, with the Hawthornes.
That was the thought at the top of my mind as my fingers latched on to the edge of the roof. A hand reached down and closed around my wrist.
“You’re not first,” Jameson told me in a tone that clearly communicated that he knew how I felt about that. “But you’re not last.”
That honor would eventually go to Xander and Max, who had spent far too long pillow fighting each other. I looked past Jameson to the part of the roof that flattened out.
To Grayson and Eve.
“On a scale from boring to brooding,” Jameson quipped, “how’s he holding up?”
Heaven forbid Jameson Hawthorne get caught openly caring about his brother.
“Honestly?” I bit my lip, catching it between my teeth for a moment too long, then pitched my voice low. “I’m worried. Grayson isn’t okay, Jameson. I don’t think your brother has been okay for a very long time.”
Jameson moved toward the edge of the roof—the very edge—and looked out at the sprawling estate. “Hawthornes aren’t, as a general rule, allowed to be anything else.”