FEARLESS \\ Grayson Hawthorne [1]

Chapter 14 - Breathe

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"Cause no one thought it was gonna end that way."
- Taylor Swift
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Jess's P.O.V

"That sick son of a bitch." Jameson shook his head. "All of this—the clues, the will, her—all of it for this? He just found a random person born on that day to send a message? This message?" Jameson's voice was tight.

"Jamie—" Grayson tried to comfort his brother.

"Don't talk to me." Jameson shot his gaze to Grayson then to my sister. "Screw this. I'm done." Jameson turned away from the three of us. Avery trailed after him.

"Where are you going?" Avery asked. Jameson looked straight into Avery's eyes.

"Congratulations heiress. I guess you had the good fortune of being born on the right day. Mystery solved." Jameson turned away.

That was it he was done.

Grayson looked as if he might break. He was trying to keep his cool exterior up, trying not to react. Watching him I wondered if after this whole thing was over if Grayson would go and swim laps for hours to make the pain feel a little less hard.

"I'm sorry." Grayson spoke, his voice cracking. "It's not Jameson's fault that he's like this. It's not Jameson's fault..." He paused seeming to not be able to finish the sentence. The wall he built up starting to crumble apart. "This is how the game ends." Avery shook her head at Grayson.

"I should have known." Grayson's voice trembled. I grabbed his hand, which he gladly took. "I did know. That day the will was read, I knew that all of this was because of me." Grayson looked over to me, I didn't have many comforts to offer, but I could offer him the chance to talk because he had built this guilt up to the point that it was destroying him, keeping him away from being happy, from moving on with his life.

"Grayson," His name came out of my mouth in a slight tremble. "Tell us what happened that night." I held his hand tighter as he began reliving the memory.

"We'd always known her. Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin have been at Hawthorne House for decades. Their daughter and granddaughters used to live in California. The girls came to visit twice a year—once with their parents at Christmas time, and again in the summer, for three weeks, alone. We didn't see much of them at Christmas, but in the summers, we all played together. It was a bit like summercamp, really. You have camp friends, who you see once a year, who have no place in your ordinary life. That was Emily—and Rebecca. They were so different from the four of us. Skye said it was because they were girls, but I always thought it was because there were only two of them, and Emily came first. She was a force of nature, and their parents were always so worried she'd over exert herself. She was allowed to play cards with us, and other quiet, indoorgames—but she wasn't allowed to roam outside the way we did, or to run."