Page 92 of Glorious Rivals
Go on.Fight.See me as the threat I am.
“There’s nothing to link me to anysponsorbut conjecture.”Savannah might as well have announced that she was not in the business of blinking first.
“Are you so sure,” Rohan said silkily, “that Avery Grambs and the Hawthorne brothers will care whether or not there is conjecture involved?Or will they care only about taking out a threat to themselves?”
Take the scholar’s deal, he willed her silently.Betray me.Hurt me.Do your worst, Savannah Grayson.Pain only counted if you didn’t see it coming.Pain only counted if youcared.
“Is that how it is?”Savannah closed the space between them, rendering it nonexistent in the bat of the eye.Toe-to-toe and face-to-face with him, she was anything but distant, anything but cool.“Is this your play?Once our alliance has reached its end, once the competition has been dispatched—are we going head-to-head the way we planned, or are you hoping to take me out the coward’s way?”
Rohan leaned forward, so he could speak directly into Savannah’s ear, his lips almost brushing skin.“No spoilers.”
Savannah stared him down for an exquisite second or two, and then she took a step back.“Why are we here, Rohan?”There was a different quality to her voice now, something more guttural, something sharper—and she’d used his given name.“What are we doing?”
It was clear: Savannah wasn’t talking about the ruins anymore.This thing between them had a weight to it, a gravitational pull that held them together like a binding, a fist-thick rope running from the core of him to the core of her.And there Rohan was, brandishing a knife.He’d been cutting through fiber after fiber with each push, anddamn it—
Why hadn’t it snapped?Why hadn’t she?Make your move, love.Make it now.
“Do you know what this place is?”Savannah said in that socialite voice of hers, the corresponding mask descending over her face as she dragged manicured fingers lightly over a stone fireplace that still stood.“To me?”Savannah Grayson was not a person who gave an opponent long to answer.“My cousin Colin died in this fire.He diedhere, before I was even born.”
“Colin Anders Wright.”Rohan knew the names of the victims of the fire, but his research into the Hawthorne family had only gone back so far.
“My father raised him like a son,” Savannah said, that high, clear voice of hers struck through with iron.“Loved him like a son—more than he could ever love a daughter.”There was the slightest of pauses and then: “Gigi looks like Colin.Our father adored her for that from the day she was born.I was different.I did not look a thing like the lost son.I was not an easy child to love.ButIplayed the game.”
The game as in basketball—or being exactly what your father wanted, expected, and demanded you to be?Rohan could feel himself getting sucked into the labyrinth, into the room in his mind devoted wholly and entirely toher.
Careful, boy, the Proprietor’s voice warned, the reminder surging through Rohan’s body like current through a wire.
“Are you done?”Rohan asked Savannah.
“I think sometimes,” Savannah Grayson said softly, “about what it might have been like if Colin hadn’t died.If Toby Hawthorne hadn’t thought it was a good idea to play with fire.”
“Toby.”Rohan could feel the final pieces of this puzzle coming together “Your father blamed Toby Hawthorne for Colin’s death?”
There was something about the way that she was standing with hands to her sides that made Rohan imagine that each of those hands held a blade.“Grayson,” she said, her voice low, “wants me to believe that my father thought Avery was Toby’s daughter, that my father went afterher—for revenge.”
“But you don’t believe that?”Rohan pressed, stepping into her personal space once more.
This time, Savannah did not step back.“I don’t believe it matters.Whatever happened to my father, however it happened, Avery Grambs and her people—they covered it up.”
There was a danger in understanding someone a little too well.The bigger danger, however, was that Savannah Grayson was letting him understand her.
Letting him in.
Letting him see her bleed.
You were never enough, were you, love?For anyone.Not your father.Not even Gigi, in the end.
With anyone else, Rohan would have used the intimacy of that understanding to his advantage.He would have taken her head into his hands, brushed the pad of his thumb gently over those sharp, sharp cheekbones of hers like he was ridding her face of an imaginary tear.If she’d been anyone else, he would have made her feel like they were in this together, so that when hedidbetray her, she would never see it coming.
But touching Savannah Grayson, evenpretendingto feel for her—Rohan couldn’t risk it.He couldn’t riskthis, whatever it was, a moment longer.
Take the knife and cut the rope.“Winning won’t get you what you want now.”
Savannah’s voice went low again.“And you are so sure that you know what I want?”
She wasn’t letting go.Damn it,why wasn’t she letting go?
“I know you,” Rohan said.“And that is enough.”She was mercilessly in pursuit of his own ends.Just.Like.Him.“We’re far too much alike, you and I.Best not to trust either of us, really.”His British accent took a turn—less aristocratic, playful in the darkest way.“You never know when the switch might flip.”
