In Hawthorne world,ordinarywas relative. “Grayson told me the two of you are going back to college in the fall,” I said. The edges of my lips ticked upward. “He also told me he no longer intends to major in business. Apparently, he’s undeclared.”
“We’re both undecided,” Lyra replied.
The fact that Grayson had gotten to the point where he could let himself go forward without a plan—that was a testament to how much things had changed. But college aside, everyone knew there was nothingundecidedabout Grayson and Lyra.
When a person loved like Hawthornes loved, there was no going back.
Outside the window, there was a loud bang and then another one. Fireworksflewas they exploded against the night sky.
“That’s a lot of momentum,” Lyra commented, coming to stand beside me at the window.
“It’s a big catapult,” I said.
Lyra grinned. “What would you say is the collective noun for Hawthornes?” she asked. “A pack, like wolves? A den, like thieves?”
“Trouble,” I murmured.Allof us were trouble.
“Chaos,” Lyra suggested, as we waited for the next explosion. “A chaos of Hawthornes.” Purple fireworks lit up the sky—and then some.
“And that,” Lyra said, “is my cue.”
“Your cue?” I said.
Lyra took off running. One thing about Lyra Kane: She could run.
One thing about me: I was good at keeping up—even in a gown. Lyra slowed as we neared the carnival: the Ferris wheel, the catapult, and…the dance floor.
I stopped.The dance floor?Hundreds of delicate strings of lights crisscrossed overhead. A four-string quartet played. Rose petals had been scattered over the dance floor. And the ice sculptures…
Every last one of them was carved as a lemniscate.
Déjà vu hit me.The Ferris wheel. The dance floor. The musicians.“The introvert’s ball,” I murmured. For my eighteenth birthday, Alisa had been intent on planning an elaborate affair, but Jameson had wrested control away from her and planned a far more intimate one.
“I hate to break it to you,” Lyra told me, “but I’m pretty sure this is an introvert’swedding.”
He wouldn’t…I thought. But I knew: Jameson Hawthorne absolutelywould.
As one, our guests moved onto the dance floor, some from the right side of it, some from the left, leaving an aisle in the middle. Jameson took his position at the end of that aisle.
Oren stepped up beside me and cleared his throat. “You did say,” my head of security told me, “that you wanted me to walk you down the aisle.”
I felt a pang then, for Toby. For my mother. For both of them. But I knew, wherever they were, they were together—dancing, probably, the way my mom had every night, challenging each other in game after game, watching me and Eve.
Watching Oren walk me down a makeshift aisle.
As I walked, I looked at the people around me. Gigi and Savannah with Slate and Rohan. Acacia. Lyra and her parents and Cooper, who was on his stomach on the dance floor playing with Seren and Faith. Thea, Rebecca, and Max. Alisa. Knox. Zara. Xander’s father, Isaiah, was there, as were Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin and Jameson’s uncle Branford. And Nan appeared to have brought adate.
Oren came to a stop, and it took me a moment to realize that he was handing me off—to Xander. “I made a second, smaller catapult,” Xander informed me archly. “For your bouquet.”
“I don’t have a—”
Libby made a catch, stepped forward, and pressed a bouquet into my hands. Blue roses. I breathed in the smell of them as Xander stepped back from escorting me and Nash stepped in.
I looked up at him.
“Breathe, Avery.”
I breathed, and I just kept breathing until Nash handed me off to Grayson. “For old time’s sake,” he told me, “how about I call youMs. Grambsone last time?”