Page 16 of The Brothers Hawthorne

“They have to be perfect.” Grayson forced his eyes up to meet his brother’s. “That’s what the old man said. No room for error. When you only get three lines, every word has to be the right word.” He swallowed. “It has to be beautiful. It has to mean something. It has to hurt.”

Jameson frowned. “Hurt?”

Grayson’s hand found its way to his pocket, to the medallion inside. “When words are real enough, when they’re the exact right words, when what you’re saying matters, when it’s beautiful and perfect and true—it hurts.”

Grayson slipped the medallion out of his pocket and handed it over.

Jameson examined it. “Did you have to engrave the words on the metal yourself?”

Grayson shook his head and swallowed. “I just had to be sure that they were perfect first.” He took the medallion back from Jameson. “What about you? What was your challenge?”

“A card castle.” Jameson’s expression was murderous. “I had to use five hundred cards. No glue. No adhesivesat all. Nothing but cards.” Jameson disappeared out the tree house window again. Grayson heard him moving around up in one of the towers, and when he came back, he was a holding a fancy camera in his hand. “I had to take a photograph every time it was going well and every time I failed.”

Seven years old. Five hundred cards.Grayson was willing to bet Jameson had failed a lot. He held out his hand for the camera, and to his surprise, his brother handed it over. Grayson scrolled through picture after picture. Jameson had started trying to build tall towers, then switched to wide.

Every time something beautiful emerged on the camera, the next shot showed the ground littered with cards.So many times.There were hundreds of pictures on this camera.

Grayson skipped to the last shot. Jameson had built his castle in the shape of an L, five stories tall, flush against the walls of one of his rooms.

“When did you finish?” Grayson asked, still staring at that last picture.

“Last night,” Jameson said. “I cut slits in the floor.”

No adhesives. Nothing but cards.But using the room? Grayson could see how that would be more of a gray area—but still! “You carved slits in the wood floors?” he asked, half-horrified, half-awed.

The old man loved Hawthorne House. Every floorboard, every light fixture, every detail.

“And the walls,” Jameson added, completely unrepentant. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you decide what you’re going to do with your ten thousand dollars this year?”

Invest.“Yes,” Grayson told his brother. “You?”

Jameson nodded. By the rules of the game, their choices on that front were not to be discussed. “I guess that just leaves deciding what talent we’re going to choose to cultivate next year. I was thinking…” Jameson assumed a ready position and slashed his hands through the air. “Knife fighting!”

Grayson’s eyes were drawn back to the camera. He thought about some of the shots Jameson had taken—the successes and the failures—and something in him itched to reframe them or, better yet, to catch the cardswhilethey fell.

“Photography.”

“No way!” Jameson retorted immediately. “I never want to take a picture again.”

Grayson didn’t put the camera down. “Do what you want, Jamie. No one ever said we had to pick the same thing.”

“Fine,” Jameson declared. “Then I’m picking rock climbing.” He jumped back up on the windowsill. “Because unlike certain other people in this tree house, I’m not afraid to fall.”

CHAPTER 12

JAMESON

This time, Jameson was the one who set the place for the meeting. Beside him, Avery took in the location he’d chosen: a medieval crypt the size of a ballroom, an eerie, elegant underground chamber hidden away from the world.

“You rented it for Nash’s bachelor party?” Avery guessed—correctly.

Before Jameson could reply, Ian stepped through the doorway and made a show of raking his gaze across the cavernous space: dark stone columns stretching up into an arcing stone ceiling, stained glass letting in the only hints of natural light from the world above.

“Interesting meeting place.”

Jameson gave a little shrug. “I’ve always been just a little bit much.”

“Hmmm.” Ian made a noncommittal sound, then allowed his gaze to land on Avery. “And I see you brought company.”