The muscles in my chest tightened.
“That must have been a really illuminating game of Chutes and Ladders,” Jameson said.
Grayson looked out the window, away from both of us. “I couldn’t sleep last night. Neither could Eve.” His voice was controlled, his body still. “I found her wandering the halls.”
I thought about Grayson kissing a girl at Harvard. Grayson seeing a ghost.
“I asked her if the bruise on her temple was paining her,” Grayson continued, the muscles in his jaw visible and hard. “And she told me that some boys would want her to say yes. That some people want to think that girls like her are weak.” He went silent for a second or two. “But Eve isn’t weak. She hasn’t lied to us. She hasn’t asked for a damn thing except help finding the one person in this world who sees her for who she is.”
I thought of Eve talking about how hard she’d tried as a child to be perfect. And then I thought about Grayson. About the impossible standards he held himself to.
“Maybe I’m not the one who needs a reminder that this girl is her own person,” Grayson said, his voice taking on a knifelike edge. “But go ahead, Jamie, tell me I’m compromised, tell me that my judgment can’t be trusted, that I’m so easily manipulated and fragile.”
“Don’t,” Nash warned Jameson from the front seat.
“I’ll be happy to discuss all of your personal shortcomings,” Jameson told Grayson. “Alphabetically and in great detail. Let’s just get through this first.”
This took us to a neighborhood full of McMansions. Once, the sheer size of the lots and the houses that sat on them would have astounded me, but compared to Hawthorne House, these enormous homes seemed absolutely ordinary.
Oren parked on the street, and as he began rattling off our security protocol, all I could think was How did Skye Hawthorne end up here?
I hadn’t kept track of what happened to her after the DA had dropped the murder and attempted murder charges, but on some level, I had expected to find her in either dire straits or the utter lap of luxury—not suburbia.
We rang the doorbell, and Skye answered the door wearing a loose aquamarine dress and sunglasses. “Well, this is a surprise.” She looked at the boys over her sunglasses. “Then again, I drew a change card this morning. The Wheel of Fortune, followed by the Eight of Cups, inverted.”
She sighed. “And my horoscope did say something about forgiveness.”
The muscles in Grayson’s jaw tensed. “We’re not here to forgive you.”
“Forgive me? Gray, darling, why would I need anyone’s forgiveness?”
This, from the woman whose charges had been dropped only because they had arrested her for the wrong attempt on my life. “After all,” Skye continued, retreating into the house and graciously allowing us to follow, “I didn’t throw you out onto the streets, now did I?”
Grayson had forced Skye to leave Hawthorne House—for me. “I made sure you had a place to go,” he said stiffly.
“I didn’t let you rot away in prison,” Skye continued dramatically. “I didn’t force you to grovel to friends for decent legal counsel. Really! Don’t you boys talk to me about forgiveness. I’m not the one who abandoned you.”
Nash raised an eyebrow. “Debatable, don’t you think?”
“Nash.” Skye made a tsk ing sound. “Aren’t you a bit old to be holding on to childish grudges? You of all people should understand: I wasn’t made to be stationary. A woman like me can absolutely die of inertness. Is it really so hard to understand that your mother is also a person?”
She could shred them without even trying. Even Nash, who’d had years to get over Skye’s lack of motherly impulses, wasn’t immune.