Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paloma Faith

I tell myself I don't care that much, but I feel like I die 'til I feel your touch.

Avery and I decided we would be the ones to go to Vincent Blake's house, when we actually figure out where his mysterious mansion is located. I was desperate to leave, desperate to get my hands on whoever laid theirs on Grayson. But Avery insisted that we think rationally, she called Landon and spoke with Alisa to plan our next moves. I was mad but I knew my emotions couldn't be trusted at the moment because of how angry I am.

Instead of staying with Avery, I had an epiphany and decided to run upstairs towards my room following the realization I had. Jameson, Nash and Xander all share a look before chasing after me, playing entourage as we run into my bedroom.

I get down on my stomach at the edge of my bed, my arms reaching deep beneath. "Watcha doin Pear?" Xander asks with a rising worry.

I grunt as I pull it out. My suitcase, it's heavy with the clothes I haven't unpacked yet having only arrived today and not planning to stay more than a day or two.

I don't respond as I hoist the case onto my cleanly made bed sheets. Just as i'm about to crack it open, I notice a new padlock on it, one that wasn't there before. 

My eyes widen with worry, "Someone's been in here. Someone's tampered with my shit!" I yell, rattling the lock with all the muscle I can muster. 

"Hey, calm down, you can have a costume change later." Xander jokes sarcastically.

"Shut up and help me break this shit off!" I shout angrily as if it's their fault. My harsh tone seems  to work, as all three boys jump into action, attempting to break the lock off.

"It's too strong. What do you need?" Nash determines, turning to me for an answer. "Jamie, top drawer on the left." I shout orders, he obeys and opens the drawer. 

"It's empty." He tells me. "Tell me everything in there." I say.

"Uhh, some lint, a quarter, hair ties, pack of cigarettes, lighter, tampons, hair pin, a nickel-" He lists with furrowed brows.

"Bring me the cigarettes, a hair tie, the lighter and a hair pin." I decide.

He looks at me with confusion but nevertheless grabs all the loose items and hands me it all.

"What's this all for." He asks with a glint of wonder in his emerald eyes. 

I use the hair tie to tie my hair back, with the cigarette and lighter I light myself a cig and smoke it casually. "Seriously?" Xander yelps frustratedly. "Just wait." I bark in response, balancing the smoke between my lips.

I take the hair pin and the lighter, lighting flames to the end of the pin until it melts. "Hey careful!" Nash points his finger when I start playing with fire.

"Relax, Dad." I mock, blowing some smoke out without departing the cigarette from my mouth.

I use steady hands to slide the half melted pin inside the key hole. I shimmy it around until it slots into the place I wanted it to. I manage to manoeuvre the half melted pin through every ridge of the lock until it's welded into the perfect key shape. I twist it until the lock pops off.

"How on earth did you learn to do that?" Jameson gapes. "My guilty pleasure is cop shows." I clarify as I pull the lock off and start unzipping the case.

"So who the hell did this?" Nash asks. "I can imagine it's someone who didn't want me to see the contents once I figured out what they were." I determine.

"And what are such contents?" Xander raises a brow as I raid my own bag. 

The contents of Toby's birthday present to me that I bring everywhere. If the timelines match as well as I think they do, Blake would have had him at this point. 

"What's all this?" Xander asks me, picking up the letter with my name on it. I slap his hand away and slowly reach out to pick things up one object at a time. 

Starting with the ring box, the ring is gone as I wear it every day without fail. But the ring box holds a pouch of cleaning supplies for the ring, it's pretty normal for jewellery but something in my mind makes me place it to the side just in case.

The letters appear next, 17 total, one for each missed birthday. There could be some sort of message.  

Then three polaroid photos, my Mother and I the day I was born, my Mother the night I was conceived, and Eve smiling. Suddenly the smile seems a lot more daunting than it had when I initially opened this gift.

'Thought you may like to see a photo of your sister' it says on the back. 

I pick up the bag of the powder like cleaning substance, inspecting the packaging closely.

In extremely small handwriting is, 'my clever girl' which is hard to see unless you're looking for it and squinting. It lets me know i'm on the right track.

"Is this from Toby?" Nash questions.

"Yep." I sigh, smoke evaporating from my lips as they part. 

I open the packaging and spread it across the bottom of the first of my 17 letters. Just as expected, some ink starts bubbling and spreading across the very last line of the page. 

It only has one word, but that one number is enough to know i need to keep going. '1' it says. 

I do the same to the next, all three brothers watching me astounded that I had it in me to have the brain capacity to figure this out. 

I make a note on a separate piece of paper of every single word and number I find until I get to the final letter, scrawling down the final number to the address. '1 Old Wood Creek Ave. Dallas, TX 75231'

I fold the letters and place them back in the box. My hands linger on the photo of Eve as I pack everything else away. I know the exact source of the padlock, it was the evil sister of mine with a passion towards endangering our Father. I don't know whether it's my sheer fury or if deep down I was onto something, but I click the lighter over the photo and the polaroid sets alight.

"Jesus kid!" Nash yells, stomping the flame out with his boot. The photo of Eve is nowhere to be seen, only a hidden note in red ink beneath. 

'Blood is not family. If you're reading this, it's probably too late. I can imagine she has already meddled and ruined the new family you have built. I am proud of you. This will be over soon, I promise.' The small note reads.

I grit my teeth and push myself to my feet.

"Hey, Pear? What you doing?" Avery stands by my doorway. "I know where we're going." I tell her briefly, brushing past her and heading for the roof where the helicopter is located. It took a lot of arguing to try convince Nash to let us go, but thankfully Jameson and Xander tackled him and we made our getaway.

Soon enough we take off. Oren, Alisa, Avery and I the only ones here. I hate helicopters but Grayson is worth it. It's a forty minute drive total.

We stay silent, I stare down at my phone. At the photo of Grayson's beaten, bruised and broken body. His face looks so tired, the glint in his silver eyes are gone, nothing more than blood and swelling around those eyes I know so well.

"He's going to be fine." Avery speaks up. We're yet to speak about our fight. 

I can't help the tears that gloss over my eyes, painfully squeezing them shut tight as I picture Grayson's yells and groans of pain from the call.

"Hey, come here." Avery frowns, opening her arms wide for me to collapse into. I don't care about any fight right now. I collapse into the arms of my big sister.

"I'm so sorry." She sobs softly into my hair as she strokes my back calmingly. 

"It's not your fault." I dismiss immediately. "No. I'm sorry for everything, Pear. I'm sorry for not looking out for you when you were going through stuff, i'm sorry for constantly blaming you, i'm sorry for fighting you for getting with Jamie-" Avery cries.

"That was completely valid." I scoff a wet laugh, pulling away from her hug and watching as she chuckles too, wiping the stream of tears from my cheeks. 

"No. It wasn't. We weren't together at that time." She reminds me. "But you love him. I can see that you love him." I tell her. 

This makes her let out a small sob. "I ruined it though." She tells me. "You didn't ruin it. You were stupid, yeah. But you didn't ruin anything. If you could see the way he looks at you and talks about you, you would understand that nothing about your relationship is ruined." I tell her.

"But I cheated. It was the worst moment of my life. I cheated on him, how can I ever win back his trust." She sniffles.

"You fight for him. You apologise. You tell him how much he means to you. You prove he can trust you. You do whatever the hell it takes to win him back." I tell her.

"Paris, I hate to be the one to say this, but you need to take your own advice." She tells me.

"Huh?" I tilt my head with confusion. "You love Grayson." She reminds me. "He doesn't love me." I tell her firmly, wiping away the extra stinging tear that slipped put from vocalising what i've always known.

"Are you stupid?" She rolls her eyes, I stare blankly at her. "He loves you. Even if he won't say it. He is in love with you so much it hurts him to be away from you, I mean when you left for school he was depressed. Like genuinely depressed. He was sulking around, sleeping half the day away, drinking. He was a mess." Avery explains.

"That kind of loss doesn't happen when you lose a friend. He might not say the words, but he shows it. So take your own advice and fight for him." She tells me logically.

"I tried that. I left him a drunk voicemail telling him I don't care if he loves me back, that I love him either way. He listened to it and never called back." I explain with grief.

"Well say it to his face. It's a lot harder to leave someone on heard in real life." Avery offers. 

"What if I don't get the chance. What if he dies." I tremble violently at the thought alone. "Don't be stupid. Grayson is the perfect leverage for Blake. He wouldn't kill him." She tells me.

We arrive at the Blake house. I had thought Hawthorne House was the largest house i'd ever seen, but this trumps all.

Avery and I leave Alisa and Oren at the gates, being let in by simply flashing the guards the seal we have. A driver starts driving us through the property towards the building. 

Security follows us as we make eye contact with Eve. I get ready to pounce but Avery grips my hand to rationalise me, which works.

We walk towards her hand in hand, my teeth gritting so hard they may snap. "This all would've been so much easier, if you just gave me what I wanted." She tells us, turning around to lead us around the house towards the back.

A silver haired man stands, looking around 80, but still in good shape. He has my eyes. He fires a shotgun into the air, making us both flinch.

In the huge garden, a loud bang is heard between trees when a bird hits the ground. "Around here, we eat what we cook." He informs us nonchalantly looking towards us.

"Where are they?" I waste no time, my voice rough but my words sharp as a knife.

"Enjoying my hospitality." He shrugs calmly with a mischievous smirk. Avery pops open the box she brought, the diamond chess box she retrieved from Tobias' vault. "Tobias was always the showy type." Vincent Blake scoffs as he picks up a piece, inspecting it.

"A set you carve yourself, plays just the same." He tells us.

"I believe this is yours." Avery places the seal down on the table before us. "And we'll call that a gift." She gestures to the box boldly. She's playing the smart game. 

"I didn't ask you to bring me a gift, Avery Kylie Grambs." He speaks clearly.

"You didn't ask for anything. You told us to bring your son's remains." I speak up matter of factually. "You'll get him. When the investigation is over, the authorities will release his remains to you." I add. "For what it's worth, i'm sorry for your loss." Avery says, her voice and features unwavering.

"I don't lose, Avery Kylie Grambs. My son however, has appeared to have lost quite a lot." He says. 

"Your bastard son, impregnated an underage girl, then got physical when she had the audacity to be mad that he was using her to get close enough to make a move on Tobias Hawthorne." I raise my voice.

He just hums, "Will was fifteen when Tobias and I parted ways. The boy was irate that we had been double crossed. I had to disabuse him of the notion that we had been anything. What happened was between young Tobias and I." He explains.

"Tobias bested you." Avery determines. "And look how well that turned out for him." Blake replies.

"Your son hated him. And he was desperate to prove himself to you." Avery tries. 

"Tobias should have let me handle Will. He knew the kind of hell there would be to pay for bringing harm o my boy. Choices, young ladies, have consequences." He tells us directly.

"And how would you have handled what your beloved son did to Mallory Laughlin." I grit my teeth. "That's neither here, nor there." He brushes off.

"Boys will be boys. Right?" I add. He scans me up and down. 

"I understand you have some friends outside the gates." He moves on. "The entire world knows we're here. They know what happened to your son." Avery explains.

"Do they?" Eve challenges. "That's enough Eve. I shouldn't have sent a little girl to do a mans job." He speaks up. 

"If i'd brought you your son's remains, you would have blackmailed me for breaking the law." Avery tells him cleverly.

"Blackmailed you into what, I wonder." He shakes his head mock curiously. 

"If Grayson and Toby do not leave this building with us, we will have no issues doing another interview on the way out." I bark.

"An interview? Will you tell them about Sheffield Grayson?" He smirks.

"Eve may have failed at her primary task, but she's a Blake, and we play to win. I'm still considering whether she's earned this." He says, gesturing to a new golden seal. 

"But the information she brought me when she returned was.. quite impressive." He speaks proudly. 

"I read between the lines. Grayson's Father was missing. Right after an attempt to your life orchestrated by him. Sheffield Grayson had plenty of motive for it to be him. But that wasn't enough proof, so I asked Mellie. She told me everything I had to know." Eve smirks satisfied.

"The sister who never did a damn thing for you?" Avery questions, "Half sister." Eve corrects quickly.

"It was a rather touching reunion. Especially when I told her I forgave her. That I was there for her. She feels awful by the way, about what Grayson did and what Oren covered up." She tells us.

"It seems, that I have the upper hand, once again." Vincent Blake grins a small and evil smile. 

"What do you want?" Avery demands. "Anything I want from you, i'll take." He tells us with confidence. 

"I'll play you for it. Chess. If I win, forget about Sheffield Grayson and see to it that Mellie and Eve do the same." Avery bargains.

"And if you lose?" He asks curiously. "A favor. Very soon, i'll have control of the Hawthorne fortune. Billions. A favor from someone in my position has to be worth something." Avery shrugs.

"A game seems fitting. But we're not going to play. Eve will play for me. Toby will play. And as will your sister, in place of you." He tells us.

The shock from hearing Toby's name paralyses us both so much we forget to react to the final part. Me. I will play chess. To win my sister's entire fortune, and my boyfriend, and my father. Pretty unfair deal considering i've never played chess in my life.

"What?" Avery croaks nervously, this is straying from the plan we had.

"Paris Riley Hawthorne. I'm sure you're an excellent chess player considering your Father?" Blake shrugs. "I've never played in my life. This isn't fair." I tell him desperately.

"Eve? Would you fetch your Father." Vincent orders. 

"And Grayson." I demand suddenly. "No, I don't think so." Blake shakes his head.

"Yes." I yell firmly. "If you don't bring Grayson out right now then I'm not playing." I demand.

"That's hardly any tone to address your Grandfather in." Blake frowns menacingly. 

"Bring me Grayson or so help me god, i will-" I begin shouting.

"Very well. Fetch the boy." He tells Eve.

Eve saunters inside the building. We wait in silence. My foot tapping on the stone ground.

Toby arrives first. On his own. His bruises are healing, his beard is scruffy. But he's alive. Which is all I need to see.

I rush toward him and give him a hug, as does Avery. 

Then from another door, appears Grayson, limping and being dragged by the careless hands of Eve.

I immediately ditch my Father and run towards him. The tears in my eyes already glistening down my cheeks.

"Gray." My voice cracks at the sight of him. He looks potentially worse than in the photos. So much blood, his jacket and tie ditched, leaving only a sweat soaked shirt. His blonde hair is covered in red blood, his face bruised and beaten to a pulp. He looks awful. But the spark in his eyes relight when he sees me.

He immediately pulls me in, I bury my face in his chest and sob. He holds me so tight I fear I may never breathe again, but it would be fine even if I couldn't. Because i'm holding him. And I wouldn't let go even if it was going to kill me.

"Your face." I cry out, trying to brush my thumbs across his cheeks but resulting in no more than a wince and sharp groan of agony.

"I'm fine." He dismisses with a hoarse voice from yelling out in pain. "Shut up Gray, you're not fine. It's okay. I'm gonna get us outta here." I nod assuringly.

"What do you mean get us out of here?" He asks carefully.

"You'll see." I nod promisingly. He doesn't ask me any questions, knowing he won't like the answer. Instead he just wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me in. And we hug. We hug until we're told to stop by Blake. 

"Enough. Come over here and play your first match." Vincent Blake tells me.

Grayson looks down into my eyes with worry. I squeeze his bicep assuringly.

(a/n. This is insane. 100k reads on Riches. I don't even know what to say at this point. Words cannot express my excitement. I have a couple surprises coming your way so wait for the following part to be published later today and you'll see. Thank you. Honestly thank you so much!)