Page 39

I WANDER THE CASTLE’S CORRIDORS, ALONE.

The cold is nothing compared to the chill I’ve found myself unable to fend off since the meeting ended. I hardly even feel the pinpricks on my skin with the horrible crew fight running on repeat in my head.

While I’m convinced enough of their cooperation in the heist—okay, except Abigail’s—I might’ve lost something much more valuable.

What unnerves me most is how unsurprising it feels. I predicted resentment and rejection from my crew, didn’t I? I usually love it when I’m proven right.

Not now.

The problem has left me sleepless. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and go to Norway, wondering whether there will be anyone I care about to come back to.

Jackson, Deonte, Kevin… Will everyone just leave? Abandon me like every Owens in Volenvell did?

Why not?

Passing windows that look onto the courtyard, I notice the light is on in Leonie’s room, the only fragment of illumination on the dark architecture.

Of course Leonie is the only other person restless this late. I turn away from the windows, hoping to forget the dark vision of my future.

Trust no one, even if it means losing everyone.

What a depressing Owens Family Rule.

I round the next corner, continuing deeper as I pass darkened candleholders on shadowed white walls. My mother had trusted my father, didn’t she? The decision had wrecked her, had nearly ruined her life. Only now, escaping this family, has she found freedom. Found happiness.

Which is the whole problem. I can’t escape them when I’m one of them.

Family isn’t a vault. It’s a labyrinth. One with no ending, no escape, where you can roam indistinct passages forever. Finding promising new possibilities around every corner, but none of them lead out.

I want to find the way out. I want to remain myself , neither my mom nor my dad. I just can’t see it right now. Resigning myself to sleep or sleeplessness, I finally head back to my room.

Where I find Jackson. Sitting on the floor in front of my doorway.

Waiting.

He looks up with anguished eyes.

My heart lifts. He hasn’t left.

“I figured you wouldn’t want to speak to me after that.” I keep my voice low, hiding my wounded wariness and not wanting to wake any eavesdroppers.

Jackson rises to his feet. He looks the way I feel.

Enduring in exhaustion. Racked with worry.

Only moonlight illuminates him from the hallway windows, lighting his features in soft snow-white.

His perfect dark-chocolate hair slants unnaturally, evidence of his hand pressed to his forehead in deliberation while he waited.

His rumpled shirtsleeves look like he’s rolled and unrolled them repeatedly.

It only makes him more handsome.

“I won’t pretend I don’t disagree with some of your choices,” he starts, “but…”

He reaches for my hand, our fingertips brushing.

“I’ll always be waiting for you, Olivia,” he says. “No matter what.”

One sentence and he unravels every code, cracks every lock in my heart. I want to fall into the fairy tale of his words—and I could. I could let his reassurance erase my doubts like fresh snow making the world new in gleaming white.

Instead, I force myself to remember that even Jackson has his limit. Fairy tales are for princesses. Not heiresses.

“I know you want me to have the kind of relationship with my sister that you have with yours,” I reply, patient yet resolute. “But surely you’ve seen by now how for some families that just isn’t possible.”

“You aren’t your family,” Jackson replies immediately. “I’ll never stop telling you that.”

His reassurance is firm. It’s exactly what I wanted to hear—exactly what Jackson has always told me, ever since I first wrestled with the fearsome question, long before the wedding heist was even a figment of my imagination.

I look up. I meet his gaze in the night.

“I don’t know anymore,” I whisper.

The words come out tortured, a confession I could only ever make in the dark. To him. Tears leak from my eyes, hot in the cold corridor.

Jackson doesn’t hesitate. He reaches for me as if every fragment of him cries out to comfort me.

I know the look in his eyes, one I remember from drives home from headache-inducing dinners with Lexi.

From days I hid in the East Coventry High library when everything caught up to me.

From every moment I’ve really, really needed him.

His hands in my hair, he pulls me to him.

I shatter in his arms. I can’t help myself, clinging to him like he can hold the pieces of me together.

Jackson embraces me, steadies me, comforts me. With his arms holding me, his heart against mine, weakness and exhaustion flicker into volatile, combustible desire. My mouth finds his, desperate.

Yes , my jumbled, hurting, hungry mind urges. Yes, maybe if I lose myself in Jackson, I’ll be saved from my family.

Frantic hope overruns me. Jackson kisses me like he does everything—without reservation—his hands lowering to lock on my hips, his mouth giving while mine takes, his need unrelenting in every caress. His familiar scent is what passes for home within Leonie’s wretched walls.

I push forward. Leaning my weight on him until he’s pressed to the wall, I pin him. He’s in my trap in so many ways. Doesn’t he know it? Doesn’t he doubt or fear or resent me?

He doesn’t seem to. He grips me fiercely, his tongue meeting mine. I match his every move, parrying, pushing us with every rush of lips. He isn’t just the guy I love—he’s my worthy opponent, forsaking nothing, wanting everything. I lose myself in him, in us, until he’s the one to withdraw.

“Don’t go tomorrow,” he implores. “Stay here with me.”

I say nothing. Instead, I kiss him as if I can hold off heartbreak. Ferociously, without reservation. Jackson possesses the impossible power of making me wish I was endlessly closer to him. I feel its machinations now, with my mouth on his, feeling reckless.

He kisses back as if it’s everything he can do to keep me here.

I swallow the sounds he makes, his panting, his moaning.

I hoard them, and the way he stops to look at me in the moonlight.

His hands roam restlessly up the curve of my back.

Everywhere he touches me lights up. I feel incandescent, a lovestruck diamond in the dark.

I want more. I want him .

Our every caress grows harder, hungrier. I don’t know how I’ll stop. I want to do what he said. Stay. It’s horribly, wonderfully tempting. More so now, while I’m losing myself in his relentless need. There’s a reckless abandon in his kisses that feels dangerous.

I like it. No, I love it. As if we’re on the edge of something new. Something sharp and dark and glittering.

Jackson repeats himself. His voice comes out demanding and determined. “Stay, Olivia. Stay with me.” It’s a command wrapped in a plea. “Stay,” he whispers into my cheek. Our faces are close, our chests heaving in competing rhythms.

No one could mistake Jackson Roese for my crew’s out-of-place golden boy now. No. He’s pure, demanding intensity. I’m used to feeling like I ruin everything—now, I want to be ruined. I want him to devastate me.

I even forget my doubts, my suspicions, my family. This new side of Jackson beckons to my own selfishness. We could be selfish together , I imagine with fraught excitement. Just us. I could give up on everyone else. Why not, when they’re giving up on me?

What if, from the ruin of the Volenvell heist, I end up with something surpassing gemstones or gold—the perfect partner?

I’ve long feared pulling Jackson into my heists would destroy our relationship. But maybe I’m wrong. If I draw him deeper into my schemes, he might not leave me. He might become like me instead.

It’s enthralling. Intoxicating. It’s what I envisioned on the day that Dash’s wedding invitation inspired my first heist. Us against the world. The ultimate score. Jackson descending with me into ruin forever—

No.

The denial reverberates from somewhere hidden within me. Frustrating and… a relief. The deepest part of me remembers I can’t pull down Jackson. I can’t warp his goodness in my own devious image. It’s not fair to him, not fair to everyone he loves.

I won’t let it happen.

Which leaves me only one option. I control my hurtling heartbeat.

“Don’t ask that of me,” I reply quietly.

Jackson’s hands still.

The suspense is horrible. Even if I know what’s coming, the heart-stopping interim is not fun.

His eyes meet mine, and I wonder if this is it. We’ve always been on opposite cliffs, only a bridge over a deadly fall connecting us. Is it time for the line to snap?

Then the Jackson I know returns. The recklessness disappears. His sad smile is patient, kind, and wonderfully him . He pushes a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“I’ll be waiting for you, then,” he says.

His words hurt and heal in equal measure. Can we live a whole life like this? Jackson waiting for me to return? It comes down to one question.

“What if I am like my family, Jackson?”

He clasps my hands to his chest. Fending off the cold—for now.

“Then I’ll join you in the dark,” he vows.

I shake my head, shivering against his warmth.

“No,” I say. “Never. I want you to be you . Only you.”

Jackson meets my resistance without reservation. “All right,” he replies. “If I can be me, then you can be you.”

I look up. His eyes on mine finally— finally —rid me of the deep chill I couldn’t escape in the corridors. “Can it really be that simple?” I dare to ask.

When Jackson smirks, I realize his recklessness isn’t gone. It’s just changed into the kind I recognize on him. Jackson is reckless in kindness. Rebellious in hope. Dangerous in love. “Nothing simple is safe,” he replies.

I smile. He’s right. I step out of his embrace, feeling enough warmth of my own to sustain me. “I’ll be back soon,” I say, reluctant to leave.

Jackson pulls me back to him, kissing me once more, deep and slow. “We’ll pick this up where we left off,” he promises. He releases me, and I watch him walk to his room.

As I enter mine, it takes everything in me not to go after him instead.