Games Untold (The Inheritance Games #5)

And One Time He Didn’t

And One Time He Didn’t

M axine Liu was absolutely, positively not going to show Xander Hawthorne her tattoo—the very nerdy, extremely secret tattoo she’d admitted to hours earlier in Hawthorne Chutes and Ladders.

Tell me more , Xander had said, about this nerdy tattoo.

But that was not going to happen! She and Xander were completely platonic! Which was why she was, at this very moment, stepping through the doorway into Xander’s room. As a friend!

She was stepping through the door to his bedroom as a friend .

Avoiding looking at said friend, Max focused on the room instead. Complicated machines lined every inch of the walls like sculptures. Max watched as a dozen marbles ran down a long metal ramp and onto what looked like a tiny little Ferris wheel, which dumped them onto another ramp, which fed into a funnel…

“That one waters my cactus once a week,” Xander said.

“Your cactus?” Max repeated.

Xander was absolutely unabashed. “His name is Mr. Pointy.”

Of course it was. Max really, really needed not to look at Xander’s face—the dancing eyes, the full, curving lips—so she glanced up at the ceiling instead.

Big mistake.

“ Fax me ,” she whispered, then told herself that absolutely was not an invitation, but… but.…

THE CEILING.

The ceiling was nothing but books. Thousands of them, spines down, defying gravity, seemingly nothing holding them in place.

“How are they…” Max couldn’t help herself.

“Magnets,” Xander said cheerfully. “Mostly.”

This time, Max spared herself from looking at his jaw, cheekbones, and long, long Hawthorne lashes by looking down. The floor beneath her feet was made of whiteboard material, and there were handwritten notes scrawled all over it.

“You’re working on something?” she guessed.

“I’m kind of working on everything,” Xander admitted. “It’s possible that I also have a lab-slash-workshop, but when you’ve got to science, you’ve got to science.”

Max needed to science . She needed to science right faxing now. “Ahem.” Max hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Change the subject! she thought frantically. “So where do you sleep?” she asked.

Oh no.

Oh no.

That was not a good subject change. Yes, Max. Ask your extremely platonic and well-muscled friend here about his BED.

“Sleep.” Xander nodded sagely. “Yes. I do the sleep.”

“Where?” Max was digging herself a hole, and she just couldn’t stop , because there wasn’t a bed in this entire room, and now that she’d asked, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Besides, there was no reason in the world that the two of them couldn’t just have a nice, reasonable, completely friendly and appropriate conversation about beds.

Xander gave a helpless little shrug. “What are your thoughts on blanket forts?”

Max’s reply was immediate: “Right up there with book bouquets.”

She knew she probably shouldn’t have said that, but there was no unsaying it, so she just stood by and watched, with no small degree of fascination, as Xander approached a truly impressive collection of bobbleheads built into one of the machines on the walls. He tapped out a sequence, one head after another, like he was playing a very unconventional piano.

Suddenly, the floor beneath Max’s feet began to part. She jumped to safety and stared as a hidden subsection of the room, recessed a good four feet into the floor, was revealed. It was rectangular in shape and twice the size of a king-sized bed.

It was also completely covered in blankets. Piles of them. Mounds of them.

Dozens of them. Max couldn’t keep her eyes from darting to Xander’s any more than she could keep herself from walking right to the edge. “May I?”

Xander inclined his head. “You may.”

Max leapt. Xander followed on her heels and a moment later, they were both swimming in blankets. Literally.

“I don’t like beds,” Xander said.

Xander Hawthorne did not like beds. He did like blankets—and, she soon discovered, plushies. Nerdy ones. Adorable ones. A couple downright bizarre ones. Is that a stuffed Tesla coil?

Max had always pictured herself with someone dark and broody. A rogue assassin. A vampire of questionable morals. Someone with a checkered past and a heart in need of healing.

But there Xander was, with his blankets and his plushies and an entire ceiling covered in books.

Max sighed, and then she turned her head to look at him, which she knew was a mistake. “I believe I was a promised a fort .”

One epic fort later, Xander threw out a challenge. A game.

Hawthornes and their games , Max thought.

“It’s called Go, No Go,” Xander intoned. “The rules are thus: I will present you with questions about your preferences, and you have to answer: go or no go .” Xander disappeared under the sea of blankets for a moment, then popped back up holding a plush in each hand. “If your feelings on the topic are positive, you say go and hold up this narwhal. If you’re not a fan, it’s no go and this cupcake.”

Max eyed the cupcake, the narwhal, and Xander in turn. “Why not just call it Yes or No?”

“Because at any moment,” Xander replied, “I can flip things and yell go instead of posing the next question, and once I do, you have until I say no go to catch me.”

Max gave him a look. “What happens if I catch you?”

Xander grinned. “You’re not going to catch me.”

“Spoken like a mother-faxing Hawthorne.”

“I take it you’re ready for your first question?” Xander rubbed his hands together dramatically. “ Star Wars ?”

“Go.” Max held up the stuffed narwhal.

“Strawberries?”

“Go.” Narwhal.

“Chocolate?”

“Go.” Narwhal.

“Nutella?”

“Also go.” Max made the narwhal dance a little this time.

Xander studied her with incredible focus and precision. “Scones?”

Max lowered the narwhal and raised the cupcake. “No go.”

Xander clasped a hand to his chest like she’d shot him.

“Not sweet enough,” Max opined. “Next question.”

“You just need some additional scone-eating practice,” Xander assured her. “A refined scone-tasting palette does not develop overnight.”

Max narrowed her eyes. “Scones are like muffins that got confused.”

Xander gasped. This time, it was Max’s turn to grin.

“I’ll let you redeem yourself,” Xander told her gravely. “Robots?”

“Do the robots think they’re human?” Max shot back.

“No?”

Max raised the cupcake high with no remorse.

“Yes?” Xander amended his prior response. Max rewarded him with a little narwhal dance.

“My turn.” She tossed both cupcake and narwhal at Xander. He caught them. “Romance novels?” Max questioned.

“Which subgenre?”

Up until that moment, Max had been doing a really good job of holding it together. But this?

“What?” Xander said. “What did I say?”

“You.” Max pointed at him. “Your opinion on romance novels depends on the subgenre!” Max stared at him and was reminded of why staring at Xander Hawthorne was not a good idea. “You, with the face! And the abs! And the blankets!”

“I also have a cactus,” Xander reminded her.

“Mr. Pointy,” Max said. And just like that, she knew: This was happening. “I should not do this. We should definitely not do this.”

“Of course we shouldn’t,” Xander agreed. “And we shan’t.” He paused. “Or shall we?”

Max swallowed. “ This ,” she said. “Us. Go or no go?” Her heart was brutalizing the inside of her rib cage.

Go or no go, Xander Hawthorne?

Across from her, Xander raised the stuffed narwhal into the air.

“Go!” Max yelled, and just like that, the chase was on. Xander almost had her when she whirled around. “No go!” she said.

Xander froze.

Max arched a brow. And then, in blankets up to her knees, unable to resist for another second , she tackled him.