CHAPTER 80 GIGI
GIGI
It had been an hour since Gigi or anyone else had heard anything. An hour since the last text had come through. There had been eight total—one from Jameson to Nash and another one to Libby, three from Xander to Max, two from Grayson to Lyra plus one that Grayson had sent to Gigi.
Her brother—her infuriating big brother, the best big brother—had sent her a picture of a cat. Baby’s first cat meme, and Gigi couldn’t even enjoy it! Over a yowling cat, Grayson had typed the words: You can yell at me when I get back.
And Gigi would! Oh, how she would. She was going to be at the very front of the yelling line, which was really saying something, because that line was very long.
Nash and Libby were going to kill all three younger Hawthorne brothers.
Alisa’s revenge would doubtlessly be epic.
Oren had long-since taken his leave, a strike force of one, because any more than that, and they’d run the risk of catastrophic blowback… or failure.
Wholesale failure. From what they’d been told, if the Crucible failed, the Candidates would die. So Oren had gone alone… or so they’d believed. It had taken Gigi a while to find Slate’s note—on the roof, where she’d gone to scream.
Easy there, sunshine. You’re a force, and I’ll be fine. I always, never am.
Always, never. He’d gotten that from her, because Gigi had told him once that she was always, never careful. But even she hadn’t inserted herself into Oren’s strike force—a force of two, apparently.
“Jell-O.” Gigi spoke the word into the air, unable to even consider coming in from the roof.
“So much Jell-O for you, Mattias Slater. And pudding! You are going to be fine, and you are going to come back, and you are going to wake up every morning for a week straight covered in Jell-O and squishing pudding out of crevices you didn’t even know you had. ”
But as furious as Gigi was, she couldn’t stop rereading that note. You’re a force. She knew somehow that he meant that, that he hadn’t left her because he thought she was weak. This just isn’t my kind of mission. It was the kind, Gigi knew instinctively, where lines might need to be crossed.
The kind that might mean Code Name Mimosas came back with more marks tattooed on his arm—if he came back at all.
Eventually, Knox found her on the roof. “You okay?”
“Slate’s gone. Savannah’s gone. Grayson’s gone. So… not really.”
“Want to scream?”
Gigi shook her head. “Won’t help.”
Knox’s brow furrowed. “Want to hit me?”
“Why would I want to hit you?”
“I don’t know.” Knox threw his hands up in the air. “Most people seem to want to.”
“So you assume it’s therapeutic?” Gigi said incredulously, and then her phone buzzed.
Her heart jumped into her throat. Grayson? Slate? But when Gigi looked down at her phone, it wasn’t either of them.
The phone calling her—it was Savannah’s.