Page 158 of These Summer Storms

His brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“I mean my father wasn’t talking about the stock.” She brandished the letter, in which Franklin had spelled out his plans. “He was talking about me.I’mClass A stock. That’s what he used to call me. Class A. He played me.” Jack was the other shoe, after all. “And he played you, too.”

Franklin had known he was dying, known, too, that this was what he wanted—to tidy everything up. He wanted Jack in the family, controlling the show. And he knew that the only way to do it was to woo him in.

Jack and Alice were Franklin’s endgame.

And she should have hated it. That this was Franklin’s plan. That he’d won again. Endlessly controlling. Moving them all like pieces on the chessboard.

She turned to her siblings. “You said I was in control. Do you see it now? Do you see that he was messing with my life from the start, too? Not only for the week or for the summer. He’s been messing with me foryears. Since he kicked me out.”

She was coming undone, tears streaming down her face in frustration and sadness and a particular kind of disappointment that came with finally,finallyseeing your parents for who they were—human. “And I’ll never get away from the last conversation I had with him, when he kicked me off the island. Because he’sdead. And now, there are no more answers. There are only questions. A lifetime of unanswered ones.” She looked at Jack. “Like how he convinced you that coming here was a good idea.”

“He never convinced me that it was a good idea,” Jack said, stepping toward her, stopping the moment she stepped back, toward her siblings, who were lined up behind her like an army, like they were all on her side for the first time in her life. He sliced a hand through the air. “I told him from the start that it was ridiculous. That he should tell you all the truth.”

“Yeah, but you fucked me anyway, right?”

Everyone sucked in a breath.

“Alice,” Emily whispered, as though she could stop her from making a mistake. Well. The joke was on Emily. Alice only ever made mistakes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alice said, hating the way emotion finally,finallyslid into Jack’s gaze, like she’d actually hurt him with that. “I shouldn’t blame you. You’re part of it, too. Just another thing my father collected. You know what his truth was? He was so fuckingbored. He was so bored with everything he’d built, he had to churn to build new stuff, to sell more, to be a bigger genius.

“He was so bored with the toys he amassed—the rocket ships and the hot-air balloons and the stupid cars—he had to crash one into the ground.

“He was too bored to care about how his kids might feel when hedied,so he built us a game to play when it was over, forgetting that we wouldn’t be bored. That we’d besad.” She looked to her siblings, wide-eyed, nodding their agreement.

“He got everything he ever wanted and so he kept himself busy by collecting people,” she said, finally, turning back to Jack. “And guess what…you’re one of us. Like a bug under glass. He couldn’t even set us free at the end. He had to leave us all here. Trapped. Manipulated into wanting exactly what he wanted for us.”

Alice looked to Greta. “But you didn’t want it.”

Greta shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

To Sam. “And you didn’t get it.”

“No.”

To Emily. “And youreallygot screwed by all those secrets.”

Another one of Emily’s little laughs. “I sure did.”

“Ask me.”

Alice spun around to look at Jack, his face set like marble, so handsome it hurt to look at him. “What?”

“Go on, Alice. Ask me if I want the same thing he wanted for me.”

She knew the answer. Knew that when he gave it to her, it was going to break her. Again. “No.”

“I want it,” he said, coming for her. “I want it, and you do, too. And the difference is, I don’t care that your dad set it up. I’m grateful for it.Because let him control it all if it means I get to do this whenever I want.” He reached for her, and she didn’t move, her traitorous body loving the way his hand slid into her hair, gripping, claiming her, tilting her up to him as he took another step forward, into her space, so close she could feel the heat of his frustration.

“I spent my whole life wanting this. Aching for exactly this—for this feeling. For the knowledge that I had someone on my side, and now you’re here and you’re fuckinggreat. I want you. Not for the company or the stock or the money. Not out of some misplaced loyalty toward your dad. I want it for me, because I’m a selfish bastard, and I’ve wanted you since the moment I sat next to you on that train.”

“Oh,” Emily whispered. “He’s good.”

“I thought he was an asshole,” Sam said.

“Both,” Greta added.

---