London, England

The day of Nash’s bachelor party

Xander Hawthorne was a man of many talents.

“You have no vision.”

“You have no decency.”

Even from the hallway, Xander immediately recognized which one of those statements had been made by Jameson and which had been made by Grayson. Given that one of Xander’s talents was Hawthorne mediation, he took the entire exchange as his cue to make an entrance.

“You have no baked goods!” he intoned, joining the melee and wheeling an enormous corkboard and assorted supplies into the room where his brothers were debating the evening’s plans.

“I’m not hungry.” Grayson frowned. “And where did you get that corkboard?”

Xander responded as one did in situations that called for subtlety and nuance: by tossing multiple objects directly at Grayson’s head. “Have a scone! Hold my yarn!”

Grayson caught the scone with one hand and the skein of yarn with the other.

Xander blithely continued distributing supplies. “You, pushpins!” he told Jameson, tossing a small box of them his way. “Me, index cards!” Xander grinned. “Scones for all of us!”

Grayson eyed the board, the cards, and the yarn, ignoring the scones altogether. “We’re planning Nash’s bachelor party, not solving a murder, Xan.”

Jameson gave the box of pushpins a twirl. “I like it.”

“You would,” Grayson muttered.

Gray might require some persuading, Xander thought. “Marker incoming!” He flung the marker at Grayson’s forehead. Nothing said persuasion like a projectile thrown with love.

Grayson’s hand caught the marker a second before impact.

Beside them, Jameson snapped his fingers. “I need my own marker and an index card,” he told Xander, with an expression that could be described as either wicked… or inspired.

Grayson scowled. “Do not give him an index card.”

“I will not,” Xander replied solemnly. “I shall give him five index cards!” In the interest of fairness, Xander distributed the same number to Grayson and to himself. He tossed Jameson a marker, then uncapped his own and scrawled his first contribution onto one of his cards.

Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “What in the name of all that is good and holy do you mean by clubbing-slash-RBG?”

Xander ignored the question. “I need a pushpin,” he told Jameson, who responded by taking Xander’s card and pinning it onto the board—alongside two of his own.

Grayson read Jameson’s cards. He opened his mouth to object, but Xander intervened. Since he was out of projectiles, he opted for diplomacy. “We each get five cards and three vetoes,” he suggested. “Once all proposals and vetoes have been finalized, the activities that remain on the board will be locked, and we’ll use the yarn to plot out the night’s progression from start to finish.”

It was a good plan. A very Hawthorne plan.

“Deal,” Jameson said immediately.

Grayson inclined his head—and then he stepped forward and mercilessly removed one of Jameson’s cards from the board. “Veto.”

This was going to be fun.

London, England

Some time later

Indoor ice-climbing facility

“So this is what five hundred tons of ice looks like,” Jameson mused as all four of them walked toward the base of the towering frozen wall. Xander assessed the situation. The higher you went up the wall of ice, the more treacherous the climb became.

Excellent! Xander was pleased. “The ice is a metaphor,” he said sagely.

Nash cocked a brow. “A metaphor for what?”

“Either your heart or your ass,” Xander replied immediately. “It’s hard to say which.”

Nash snorted. “My heart ain’t ice, Xan.”

That was why they were here, why Nash had used his yearly 911, why the four of them were celebrating with one epic night. Nash Hawthorne had fallen in love. He’d let someone in. He’d proposed. To Xander, that seemed as breathtakingly magnificent as the massive wall of ice in front of them.

“You do realize,” Grayson told Nash archly, “that you have just implied that your ass is ice?”

Nash tilted his head back, looked at the bell at the top of the climb, and gave the ice ax in his hand a little spin. “Let’s make this interesting.” Nash had taken off his trademark cowboy hat when they’d arrived at this establishment, but his tone was one hundred percent cowboy-proposing-a-shoot-off. “First one to the top…” Nash threw down the gauntlet.

Xander beat his brothers to filling in the blank. “Wins the right to choose our fake names for the evening! And last one to the top…”

“Has to wear the leather pants,” Jameson cut in.

Grayson’s right eyebrow twitched. “What leather pants?”

“The leather pants,” Jameson replied. “I like to think of them as yours.”

Xander adopted an angelic expression. “I might have brought them with me to London. A Hawthorne comes prepared!”

Refusing to rise to the bait, Grayson turned his attention to the ice wall, skimming his gaze over the most hazardous portions. “Since I do not intend on coming in last,” he said finally, “I have no objection to the proposed wager. Nash?”

The man of the hour grinned. “Bring it on, little brothers.”

Xander exchanged looks with Jameson and Grayson, and in the silent language of three brothers born in three years’ time, they reached an unspoken agreement. Nash is going down.

He was the guest of honor at this little shindig. Those leather pants were rightfully his.

“You three done silently plotting against me yet?” Nash drawled.

“What’s that saying of yours?” Jameson gave his own ice ax a twirl.

Xander and Grayson supplied the answer in a single voice: “There’s no such thing as fighting dirty if you win.”

London, England

Some time later

Skywalk Experience

Location: a billion-dollar stadium. Activity: not soccer—or football, as it was called on this side of the pond.

One by one, the Hawthorne brothers donned the appropriate harnesses.

Their guide cleared his throat. “Are you sure that you are quite dressed for this activity, sir?” The man eyed Nash’s cowboy hat—and his leather pants.

“You’re right.” Nash removed the hat with one hand and strode to the side of the staging area, where an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl sat by herself. She’d been sneaking awed looks at them since they arrived. Based on her puffy eyes, Xander was guessing the girl had gotten scared and bowed out of doing the Skywalk with her group.

He was also guessing she’d recognized the famous—and occasionally infamous—Hawthorne brothers.

Nash knelt in front of the girl. “Do me a favor, little darlin’?” He held the hat out to her, and the girl looked like she was going to faint—or possibly combust with joy. “Hold my hat.”

With their harnesses clipped to the supports, Xander and his brothers began their ascent. Stage one of the climb took them around the outside of the stadium, slowly winding their way higher and higher.

The view was already astounding. Jameson was at the front of their group, Xander in the rear. But Grayson was the one who broke the awed silence of their climb.

“Would you rather,” the most intense Hawthorne said, enunciating the words as the wind around them ticked up a notch, “die by falling to your death from a great height… or by tripping over your own two feet and hitting your head on a rock.”

“Height.” Jameson didn’t even have to think about it.

Xander’s imagination took hold. He visualized what that fall would be like, imagined seeing it coming, anticipating the splat. “Rock.”

Nash weighed his options. “Rock,” he said finally.

Grayson, as the person who’d issued the scenario, went last. “Height.”

That surprised Xander a little, but before he could follow up, Jameson was tossing another scenario out like a grenade.

“Would you rather have your ex officiate your wedding… or have her marry one of your brothers?”

Xander, as always, appreciated Jameson’s unique combination of creativity and deviousness. The question was clearly targeted at Nash, and the idea of Alisa officiating what would no doubt be a very goth wedding was priceless.

Nash groaned. “You’re evil, Jamie.” He paused. “And wedding. Definitely the wedding.”

“I’m going to go with have her marry a brother,” Xander declared, just to keep things interesting. If one wanted to get technical, he did not technically have an ex—though he did have a fake ex. “Keeping it in the family: the Hawthorne way.”

“Very funny, Xander,” Grayson said.

And so it went, scenario after scenario as they made their way to the top. Would you rather discover that your inner monologue has somehow become a popular podcast or lose the ability to think in words at all?

Would you rather sprout horns every time you experience sexual attraction or burst into noisy tears every time you try to tamp down an emotion?

Would you rather be incapable of lying or incapable of being lied to?

“Would you rather shave your head…” Xander posed as they approached the summit of the climb. “… or shave Grayson’s head?”

“What?” Grayson was not amused.

Their guide chose that moment to delicately interrupt and direct them toward the next section of the Skywalk, which would take them out over a glass roof, the stadium visible more than a hundred fifty feet below. This time, Nash went first, and as he did, he posed a scenario of his own. “Would you rather get to see the old man again, just once, for an hour,” Nash said, taking his time with the words, “or have him see you—everything your life is, everything you are—every day?”

It wasn’t like Nash to bring up their grandfather. He and the old man hadn’t been on the best terms for the years leading up to the billionaire’s death. Of all of them, Nash was the one who’d most resisted becoming what Tobias Hawthorne wanted him to be.

Ambitious.

Fueled by purpose.

Extraordinary.

“I’d choose,” Nash said quietly, “for him to see me.”

“I wouldn’t.” That was Jameson, but Xander didn’t hear the rest of his response, because for an instant, all Xander could think about was what he could do with an hour, what he would say to the man who’d raised him.

The man who’d kept his father from him for years.

“Xan?” Grayson’s voice was quiet as they reached the end of the glass walkway, and Xander realized that he’d missed Grayson’s answer. I’m the only one who hasn’t replied. “I’d take the hour,” he said, then he looked to Nash. “You’d really want him watching you every day?”

Nash didn’t wait for their guide before he strolled up to the very edge of the stadium. All that was left now was the descent. The jump.

“Sure would,” Nash drawled. “I’m livin’ my life on my terms. Getting married to a girl of my choosing. Helping people, when and where I want to. Someday, Lib and me, we’ll have a family, and our kids?” Nash’s whiskey-smooth voice grew thick. “They will always be enough for me.” Nash looked down at the drop and didn’t so much as blink. “Let the great Tobias Hawthorne chew on that.”

Xander joined Nash at the stadium’s edge, followed by Jameson, then Grayson. For a moment, the four of them stared out at the city.

And then they jumped.

London, England

Some time later

A nightclub that shall remain nameless

Moped racing was the third activity of the night. By the time they’d sated the Hawthorne need for speed, it was getting late. But not too late, Xander thought wickedly, for the next stage of the plan. Clubbing!

“We’re on the list.” Grayson adopted an inscrutable expression as he met the bouncer’s gaze.

“Last name is Thorne,” Jameson added. He’d won at the ice climb, and that was the fake surname he’d chosen for them—an obvious abbreviation of their own.

“First names?” the bouncer grunted.

“Remington.” Jameson gestured to himself, then nodded to Nash and Xander. “Dallas. Hawk. And…” Jameson grinned as he turned toward Grayson. “Sven.”

The bouncer looked up from the list. “Sven?”

Xander admired the fact that Grayson’s lips didn’t so much as twitch.

“Is there a problem?” Gray asked, his tone exuding power and calm.

The bouncer looked back down at the list. “No problem.”

Like clockwork, a hostess appeared to escort the four of them past the ropes. “Right this way, gentlemen.”

Xander grinned. The VIP area awaited.

“What do you think, Sven?” Jameson said as the four of them slid into a booth behind yet more velvet ropes. “The dance floor calling your name?”

Grayson ignored the question, and Xander could not help but notice that the hostess seemed to be making a real effort not to stare at him—at all of them.

Fake names only go so far.

“What can I get you gentlemen to drink?”

Since this stop had been one of his contributions to the evening’s plans, Xander took it upon himself to answer her. “What do you have that glows in the dark?”

A minute later, the hostess was out of earshot, and Nash shot the other three a look. “If we stay here, we’re going to be recognized.”

“All four of us?” Grayson said. “Together? Without question.”

One Hawthorne could sometimes go incognito. But all four brothers? There was no way. Which was why, in Xander’s opinion, there wasn’t a moment to waste. “All the more reason to get down to it,” he said.

Nash’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Get down to what, exactly?”

“RBG,” Xander replied, as if that was self-explanatory. But since his brothers were looking at him like his meaning somehow wasn’t clear, he placed his phone in the center of the table, brought up the new app he’d been working on, and elaborated. “Random Boogie Generator. It’s like a random number generator but with dance moves.”

Silence descended over their table. Jameson recovered first. “Let’s not forget,” he told Nash, “this is your party.”

Nash rolled with the punches. “What kind of dance moves?”

Xander smiled peacefully. “All kinds.”

The waitress reappeared with a tray of glasses, the contents of which did indeed glow in the dark. After distributing them, she made her exit once more.

Nash surveyed the crowded dance floor. “This isn’t exactly my kind of establishment, and that’s not my kind of dancing.”

Grayson was the one who replied. “We… dare… you.” Each word was issued with the force of a gunshot. His eyes on Nash’s, Grayson raised a glass. Xander and Jameson followed suit.

Accepting his fate, Nash did the same. He tossed back his drink and grinned. “Bring it.”

London, England

The same nightclub

Twelve minutes later

The situation was thus: Nash on the dance floor. Cowboy hat? Check. Leather pants? Check. Ass? Shaking.

Letting his own body move to the beat of the music, Xander continued calling out dance moves as the RBG provided them, well aware that Nash was starting to draw an audience. “Hip thrust! Hip thrust!”

Nash complied. “We sure this is random?”

Jameson took the phone from Xander and hit the button. “Body roll!”

Xander grabbed it back. “Cha-cha!” He tossed the phone to Grayson next.

Gray caught it, hit the button, and met Nash’s gaze. “Booty pop.”

Nash popped that booty.

“Hip thrust!”

“Shimmy!”

Nash was definitely being recorded, and this was definitely ending up on the internet, but Hawthornes didn’t do anything halfway.

“Pirouette!” Xander yelled over the now-roaring crowd. And then he hit the button one last time and grinned. “Shirt off!”

London, England

Outside the nightclub

A few minutes later

In the alleyway, Xander eyed the club’s back exit, Jameson beside him, each of them holding a roll of duct tape. After a moment, the metal door opened, and Grayson slipped out.

“Did he see you leave?” Xander asked.

“He did,” Grayson confirmed.

“Think he’ll take the bait?” Jameson asked.

Grayson brushed an imaginary speck of lint off his suit. “What do you take me for, an amateur?”

Sure enough, Nash followed.

Did the four of them have to pounce the moment he came out the door? Strictly speaking, no. Did they have to overpower him, duct-tape him, blindfold him, and hoist him into the air? Also no.

But did they?

Certainly! Per the plan, they ditched the mopeds, stuffed Nash into the back of a chauffeured car, and instructed the driver to deliver them to the exact spot on the Thames where a speedboat was ready and waiting.

Did they have to tape Nash to the guardrails of the boat?

Yes. Yes, they did.

A high-speed boat ride, a few more alleyways, and a remarkable descent later, they arrived at the evening’s last location: a medieval crypt beneath London, big enough to host a ball. The architecture was stunning. Tonight, the space was lit only by candlelight, a single table set up in the middle of the room, four chairs surrounding the table.

Jameson removed Nash’s blindfold, and Xander heard the breath their brother took in as he absorbed their surroundings.

“Lib would approve,” Nash said quietly, and Xander wondered if Nash was imagining getting married to Libby in a place just like this: eerie but beautiful—almost otherworldly.

“I can’t believe you’re getting married.” The words were out of Xander’s mouth before he’d even thought them.

“Wild horses couldn’t stop me.” Nash’s gaze landed on the table, which held a single champagne bottle and four elaborate goblets.

“Black champagne,” Grayson said, crossing the room to remove it from the ice, “in Libby’s honor.”

There was an emotion Xander couldn’t quite pinpoint in Grayson’s tone, in the lines of his face as he removed the cork from the bottle and poured the black champagne, which appeared closer to a very dark purple in color.

Swallowing, Grayson closed his fingers around the stem on one of the goblets. “To Nash,” he said quietly.

Jameson brushed past Xander and claimed one of the goblets. He held it slightly aloft, his gaze landing on Nash’s. Xander felt a shift in the air, like the winds of change.

In this moment, Nash and Libby—it was real. And tonight wasn’t just adrenaline-fueled fun and leather pants and forcing Nash to dance. It was a rite of passage. The end of an era and the start of another.

“Right after Emily died,” Jameson said softly, his eyes still on Nash’s, “you came home.”

“And you,” Nash countered, “stole my motorcycle.”

Xander’s eyes widened. After I worked so hard to prevent it the first time? “I can only assume,” Xander said cheerfully, “that the ass-kicking that followed was epic?”

Jameson met Nash’s gaze. “It was something.” The memory thick in the air between them, Jameson raised his glass. “To Nash.”

Feeling suddenly nostalgic, Xander claimed his own goblet of black champagne. He held it aloft and closed his eyes, and a moment later, he opened them. “Do you remember the time I climbed that tree?” he asked Nash.

“Which tree?” Nash replied calmly.

“Sequoia National Park.” Xander could feel himself smiling. “I was five.”

“The giant sequoia?” Nash groaned. “I still don’t know how the hell you got all the way up there.”

Now it was Xander’s turn to meet Nash’s eyes. “You got me down.” A muscle in Xander’s throat tightened as he raised his glass. “To Nash.”

The four of them fell into silence for a small eternity, and then Grayson spoke. “The December that Xander was born,” he said quietly. “The day he came home from the hospital.”

Nash gave Grayson a look. “No way you remember that. You were two.”

“I remember… you.” Gray’s voice was thick now. “Always you.”

Xander felt that. They all felt it. This moment. This time in Nash’s life. This change.

“Always,” Nash said, his voice coming out rough and low. “Lib and me getting married won’t change that. It won’t change us. This.”

Silently, Grayson raised his glass all the way up. One by one, the others did the same.

“What happens in the tree house…,” Grayson said, his voice thick with emotion.

“Stays in the tree house,” Xander, Jameson, and Nash finished as one. All four of them took a drink of the black champagne. All four of them felt the moment—Xander knew they did.

This time, he was the one who broke the silence. “More champagne,” he declared. “Then who wants to wrestle?”