A jagged breath caught in my throat. I walked forward, toward the double doors that separated the office from its balcony. I burst through them, and they ricocheted back.
“Toby Hawthorne signed my birth certificate.” My voice was rough in my throat, but I had to say the words out loud. I had to hear them to believe them. I gulped in air and tried to take what I’d just said to its logical conclusion, but I couldn’t.
I physically couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t even think them.
Down below, I saw movement in the pool. Grayson. His arms cut through the water in a brutal, punishing breaststroke. Even from a distance, I could see the way his muscles pulled against his skin. No matter how long I watched him, his pace never changed.
I wondered if he was swimming to get away from something. To silence the thoughts in his mind. I wondered how it was possible that watching him made breathing easier and harder at the same time.
Finally, he pulled himself out of the pool. As if guided by some kind of sixth sense, his head angled up. Toward me.
I stared at him—through the night, through the space between us. He looked away first.
I was used to people walking away. I was good at not expecting anything from anyone.
But as I retreated back inside the office, I found myself staring at my birth certificate again.
I couldn’t make this not matter. I couldn’t make Toby—Harry—not matter. Even though he’d lied to me. Even though he’d let me live in my car and buy him breakfast, when he came from one of the richest families in the world.
He’s my father. The words came. Finally. Brutally. I couldn’t unthink them. Every sign pointed to the same conclusion. I forced myself to say it out loud. “Toby Hawthorne is my father.”
Why didn’t he tell me? Where is he now?
I wanted answers. This wasn’t just a mystery that needed solving or another layer to a puzzle. It wasn’t a game—not to me.
Not anymore.
CHAPTER 15
We need to talk.” Jameson found me hidden away in the archive (prep school for library) the next day. Until now, he’d kept his distance within the walls of Heights Country Day.
Not that anyone but Eli was around to see us.
“I have to finish my calculus homework.” I avoided looking directly at him. I needed space. I needed to think.
“It’s E-day.” Jameson pulled up a seat next to mine. “You have plenty of free time.”
The modular scheduling system at Heights Country Day was complicated enough that I hadn’t even memorized my own schedule. But Jameson apparently had.
“I’m busy,” I insisted, annoyed at the way I always felt his presence. The way he wanted me to.
Jameson leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs, then let the front legs drop down and leaned to whisper directly into my ear. “Toby Hawthorne is your father.”
I followed Jameson. Eli, who couldn’t possibly have heard Jameson’s whisper, followed me—out of the main building, across the quad, down a stone path to the Art Center. Inside, Jameson strode past studio after studio, until we ended up in what a sign informed me was the Black Box Theater: an enormous square room with black walls, a black floor, and stage lights built into a black ceiling. Jameson flipped a series of switches, and the overhead lights turned on. Eli took up a position by the door, and I followed Jameson to the far side of the room.
“What I said in the archive,” Jameson murmured. “It was just a theory.” The room was built for acoustics, built for voices to carry. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I glanced back at Eli and chose my words carefully in response. “I found a hidden compartment in your grandfather’s desk. There was a copy of my birth certificate.”
I didn’t say Toby’s name. I wouldn’t, not with an audience.
“And?” Jameson prompted.
“The name was my father’s.” I lowered my voice so much that Jameson had to step closer to hear it. “The signature wasn’t.”
“I knew it.” Jameson started pacing, but he turned back toward me before he got too far away. “Do you realize what this means, Heiress?” he asked, his green eyes alight.
I did. I’d said it out loud once. It made sense—more sense than anything else had made since I arrived for the reading of the will. “There could be other explanations,” I said hoarsely, even though I didn’t really believe that. I have a secret. My mom hadn’t invented that game out of nowhere. My whole life, she’d been telling me there was something I didn’t know.
Something big.
Something about me.
“It makes perfect sense—Hawthorne sense.” Jameson couldn’t contain himself. If I would have let him, he probably would have picked me up and twirled me around. “Twelve birds, one stone, Heiress. Whatever happened twenty years ago, the old man intended to use you to pull his prodigal son back onto the board now.”
“Doesn’t seem like it worked,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue. I was the biggest news story in the world. I had no idea where Toby was, but the same couldn’t be said in reverse.
If he is my father, then where is he? Why isn’t he here?
As if that thought had beckoned him toward me, Jameson came closer. “Let’s call off the bet,” he said softly.
I whipped my head up to look at him. I searched for a tell on his face, something to let me know what angle he was playing.
“This is big, Heiress.” If he’d been anyone else, his voice might have sounded gentle—but the Jameson Hawthorne I knew wasn’t gentle. “Big enough that neither of us needs extra motivation now. Neither of us is going to solve this alone.”
There was something undeniable about the way he said the word us, but I resisted the pull of it. “I’m at the center of this.” It would have been so easy to let myself get sucked back in. To let myself feel like we really were a team. “You need me.”
That was what this was about. The gentle voice. Us.
“And you don’t need anyone?” Jameson stepped forward. Despite every warning screeching in the back of my brain, when he reached out to touch me, I didn’t pull back.
The past twelve hours had turned my entire world upside down. I needed… something. It didn’t have to mean anything. There didn’t have to be feelings involved. “Fine,” I said, my voice rough in my throat. “Let’s call off the bet.”
I expected him to kiss me then—to take advantage of my moment of weakness, to push me back against the wall and wait for my head to angle up toward his, wait for a yes. He looked like he wanted to. I wanted it.
But instead, Jameson took a step back and cocked his head to the side. “How would you feel about getting some air?”
Two minutes later, Jameson Hawthorne and I were on top of the Art Center. This time, Eli didn’t get a chance to position himself in the doorway before Jameson locked him out.
My bodyguard knocked on the door to the roof, then pounded.
“I’m fine,” I yelled back, watching as Jameson walked over to stand at the very edge of the roof. The toes of his dress shoes hung over the edge. The wind picked up. “Be careful,” I said, even though he didn’t know the meaning of the word.