Then

An hour later, Nash and I have what we came for, and we find a bar. I don’t feel the least bit guilty about not heading straight for the jet. Nash just met his father. Libations are needed.

I also try to offer up a distraction. “What do you think is in here?” I pick up the small glass vial that Tobias Hawthorne gave Jake Nash years earlier—the one Jake was instructed to give any Hawthorne who came looking. Inside the vial, there’s some kind of purple powder.

Nash says something in Spanish to the bartender, then takes up position on a barstool and answers my question. “Just another part of the old man’s game.”

Shot glasses are placed in front of us. Nash takes one and hands me the other.

“Cheers.” I down my shot, no hesitation. It burns all the way down. “So.” I give Nash a look. “Your father.”

“Seems like a nice enough guy.”

I reach for him, my fingers curling around his. Nash is used to being the protector. He’s not used to being protected, but right now, that’s too damn bad. I give his hand a squeeze.

Nash squeezes back, then takes his own shot. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Money talks.”

Jake Nash has spent twenty years in Cartago, living high and free—and far, far away from his son.

“Hypothetically,” I say cheerfully, “what are your thoughts on laying a curse on the bones of a man who is already dead? Because I know people.”

“Of course you do.” Nash grins and then he picks up his empty shot glass. “The old man was a real bastard.” Those words are said with no heat. “But he mostly ignored me. I was more of what you might call a group effort—Zara, the Laughlins, Nan, my grandmother Alice…”

“No one ever talks about her,” I note.

“She drank jasmine tea and loved to throw parties.” Nash smiles slightly. “I can remember her dressing me up in little suits. And if I happened to make a mud pie while wearing one of them, her response was usually to compliment my recipe.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember much more than that. She died before Grayson was born. Once Alice was gone, the old man’s focus shifted. Gray, Jamie, and Xan—they were Tobias Hawthorne’s from the cradle. The old man tried stepping in with me, too, but I wasn’t exactly obliging.” He nods to the bartender, and the next thing I know, we have a second round of shots.

Nash lifts his eyes and meets my mine. “To us,” he says. “To being better than they were.”

They. His grandfather. His father. His mother. And my parents, too. I think about Nash back on the plane, telling me not to apologize for the things I’ve survived.

To us. I take the shot, and then I decide that I am done being sad—for either of us. I point a finger at Nash. “You,” I say emphatically, “need a Magic 8 Ball.”

He cocks a brow. “That a kind of shot?”

From his expression, it is impossible to tell if that’s a joke. I smile slightly and give him an earnest reply. “It’s a toy. You know—you ask it a question, give it a shake, it gives you an answer?” My body is still burning from the second shot. It’s a good kind of heat. “I used to lay in bed at night,” I tell Nash, “and find a million different ways of asking the Magic 8 Ball if things would get better.”

I’ve never told anyone that before.

“And most of the time, it told you it would.” Nash gets it immediately.

“It’s possible,” I say loftily, “that I allotted myself a generous number of redos if I didn’t like the answer.” I point my finger at him again. Two shots in, and I am super pointy. “Come on, cowboy. I’m the Magic 8 Ball. You’re the one with the question.”

Is this a mistake? Probably. But I’m starting to think that everyone deserves at least one mistake in this life that they wouldn’t take back, even if they could.

“Okay, Magic 8 Ball.” Nash, as always, takes his time. “Am I going to be able to talk the indomitable Miss Libby here into a third shot before we head back to the jet?”

I take a moment to commune with the universe and consider my answer. “Ask again later.”

Nash is, as ever, undaunted. “Am I ever gonna get to see you with blue hair again?”

I push down the urge to touch the tips of my hair. I dyed it for Avery. To be respectable. To stop being me. “You don’t like the brown?” The question slips out.

Nash turns on his barstool to face me. “I like that you like the blue.” He cocks a brow. “So…?” he prompts.

I swallow. “Signs point to yes.”

Nash’s next question surprises me. “Will I ever see Jake Nash again?” Asking that question is as close as he’s come to admitting that he’s hurting, that he wants more from the man responsible for half of his DNA.

No matter how much I want to, I can’t lie to Nash. “My sources say no.”

He chews on that for a moment, and then he moves on. “Will I ever get to see you in a cowboy hat?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t count on it.”

“That sounds like a challenge. And for the record, darlin’, I’m pretty sure I’m winning that trouble bet we made about your sister.”

Given the number of secrets Avery has been keeping, I’m not sure I can argue. But I’m also not about to tell him there’s even the slightest chance that he’s right.

“One more question,” I tell him instead.

“What are your thoughts on going ax throwing?” Nash smiles what I think of as his cowboy smile, understated and slow. “With me.”

This is definitely a mistake. We are. But I can’t help myself. “Outlook good.”

Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s Cartago. Maybe it’s the fact that Nash Hawthorne has never even seemed to realize that the two of us don’t make any sense at all.

“My turn.” Nash is still smiling that same cowboy smile. “Ask me something.”

What do you see when you look at me? That isn’t a yes or no question. Am I just another person for you to save? Nope. I’m not asking that, either. But there is something I want to know, something I would ask the Magic 8 Ball if I had one with me now.

“Would Avery’s mom be proud of me?”

It’s probably a silly question, but Avery’s mother was the only person, when I was a kid, who ever made me feel special. And normal. She made me feel like I was both of those things at the same time, even though they weren’t the same at all.

Nash, in the role of Magic 8 Ball, considers my question, communes with the universe—and then he lifts his hand to my face, pushing his fingers back into my thoroughly demolished braid. “It is decidedly so.”

That’s a real Magic 8 Ball answer. You knew exactly what I was talking about the whole time, cowboy.

“How about that drink?” Nash murmurs.

One last drink, and then we’ll have to go back. To my sister. To his brothers. To reality.

I put my hand on the back of his neck. “Outlook good.”