You and Grayson are both heirs, you to your own family and he to his.

Golden children, blessings, angels to society.

Brats, spoils children, idiots, menaces to society.

You and Grayson had both been friends since childhood, you shared secrets and made up lies of your own to tell your parents do you could hang out. Venturing through Hawthorne House to sleeping in dimly lit libraries.

Books upon books, grades upon grades, achievements and failures upon achievement and failures.

You two went through everything together.

That’s why it was so hard to be in charge of your mother’s work when she died in a car accident thanks to the paparazzi.

You were devastated, wouldn’t leave your room for weeks and eventually you finally pulled yourself together, made yourself presentable like you always did and took up your mother’s place.

Of course, the press had words for this, your decisions on how you ran things so differently from your parents.

To anyone else they would assume you were doing fine, taking the new position in stride but Grayson knew you better than that.

Knocking on the door to your room, having previously let himself inside since he had a spare key, he waited.