Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Avery’s fortune, life, and loves are on the line in the game that everyone will be talking about. To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets, and they know her. But as the clock ticks down to the moment when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help—and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything. It soon becomes clear that there is one last puzzle to solve, and Avery and the Hawthorne brothers are drawn into a dangerous game against an unknown and powerful player. Secrets upon secrets. Riddles upon riddles. In this game, there are hearts and lives at stake—and there is nothing more Hawthorne than winning.

The Inheritance Games #3

The Final Gambit

Rayane Rabaa

"The world is the board, Heiress. We just have to keep rolling the dice."

hayley

I just know she still likes him. I just wish she ended up with him </3

Keira 💫

Weeks passed in a blur of charity galas and prep school exams, nights talking to Jameson and too much time spent wondering whether Grayson would ever pick up a damn phone.

“Jameson Winchester Hawthorne. I ran like the ball gown wasn’t weighing me down, like I didn’t have a knife strapped to my thigh.

Jameson caught me, our bodies colliding. “Happy birthday, Heiress.”

Some kisses were soft and gentle—and some were like fire.

Eventually, the realization that we had an audience managed to penetrate my brain. Oren was discreet. He wasn’t looking at us, but my head of security clearly wasn’t about to let Jameson Hawthorne fly off with me alone.

Reluctantly, I pulled back. “A hot-air balloon?” I asked Jameson dryly. “Really?”

“I should warn you, Heiress…” Jameson swung himself up onto the edge of the basket, landing in a crouch. “I am dangerously good at birthdays.”

Damn, I want to hate them as a couple but I can’t. 

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“The balloon was just the beginning. Jameson Hawthorne didn’t do anything halfway.

The ocean. A cliff. A wager. A race. A dare. I’m going to remember this”

“Max replied, but before I could process what she was saying, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye—or maybe I sensed it. Sensed him. Clad entirely in black, wearing a ten-thousand-dollar tuxedo the way other guys wore ratty sweatshirts, Grayson Hawthorne stepped onto the dance floor.

He came home. That thought was accompanied by a memory of the last time I’d seen him: Grayson, broken. Me, beside him. Back in the present, Grayson Hawthorne let his eyes linger on mine for just a moment, then swept them over the rest of the party. “Ferris Wheel Leapfrog Death Match,” he said calmly. “This never ends well.”

SHE CAN FEEL HIM. WHY ISN’T SHE WITH HIM 😭😭

“You know what you would do in my position.” I would have bet my entire fortune that somewhere, he had a journal—and a plan—of his own.

Grayson’s eyes found their way back to mine. “You aren’t me.”

I wondered if there was anyone at Harvard—a single person—who knew him even a tenth as well as his brothers and I did. “You promised you would help me.” The words escaped before I could stop them. “You said you would teach me everything I needed to know.”

I knew better than to remind Grayson Hawthorne of a broken promise. I didn’t have the right to ask this of him, to ask anything of him. I was with Jameson. I loved Jameson. And, Grayson’s entire life, everyone had expected too damn much.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t your problem.”

“Don’t,” Grayson ordered roughly, “look at me like I’m broken.”

You are not broken. I’d said those words to him. He hadn’t believed me then. He wouldn’t now, either.”

Yo… what happened?? Did I miss something 😃

Great. Now Avery is 100% choose Jameson. Yay 😃 

When will it be Grayson's turn 😔 Eh, it's okay, I'll love him lolol. 

“You know that this isn’t about Grayson and me,” I said, forcing the image of Grayson walking away out of my mind. “Tell me you know that, Jameson.”

“I know,” he replied, “that I love you, and despite all odds, you love me.” Jameson’s smile was smaller but no less crooked than usual. “I also know that Gray’s the better man. He always has been. The better son, the better grandson, the better Hawthorne. I think that’s why I wanted so badly for Emily to choose me. For once, I wanted to be the one. But it was always him, Heiress. I was a game to her. She loved him.”

What so now when she TRIES to tell you how much she loves you, you say this? It’s like you WANT her to be with him. 

“I moved on from Emily,” he said. “Gray didn’t. And I know in my soul that if he had, he could have loved you. He would have. With everything you are, Heiress, what other choice would he have had?”

“It was always going to be you,” I told Jameson. He needed to hear it. I needed to say it, even though always painted over so much.

In response, Jameson gave me another crooked smile. “It’s times like this, Heiress, that I wish I’d fallen in love with a girl who wasn’t quite so good at bluffing."

“No matter what I was or what I did—it was never enough. The old man was always there, pushing for better, for more.”

I’d thought once that he had bulletproof confidence. That he was arrogant and incapable of second-guessing himself and utterly sure of his own power.

“And then,” Grayson said, “the old man was gone. And then… there was you.”

“Grayson.” His name caught in my throat.

Grayson just looked at me, his light eyes shadowed. “Sometimes, you have an idea of a person—about who they are, about what you’d be like together. But sometimes that’s all it is: an idea. And for so long, I have been afraid that I loved the idea of Emily more than I will ever be capable of loving anyone real.”

That was a confession and self-condemnation and a curse. “That’s not true, Grayson.”

He looked at me like the act of doing so was painful and sweet. “It was never just the idea of you, Avery.”

I tried not to feel like the ground was suddenly moving underneath my feet. “You hated the idea of me.”

“But not you.” The words were just as sweet, just as painful. “Never you.”

I want them to be together so can’t but this is the outcome? FML. 

“I wanted Eve to be different,” Grayson told me. “I wanted her to be you.”

The Final Gambit quotes

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