RIOT HOUSE

by Hart, Callie

  “No shit. That has to be the understatement of the century.”

  He pins me beneath a very serious, very green stare. “Are you done?”

  I bite the tip of my tongue, glaring back at him.

  “I’m sorry that I’m imperfect. I’m fully aware of my flaws. But I’ll work on a few of them if it’ll make you happy.”

  “Hah! Like my happiness means anything to you.”

  Sitting up slowly, Wren turns so that we’re facing one another, his expression frighteningly intense. “I care very deeply about your happiness. More than I should. I care about being personally responsible for your happiness, and that—” he shakes his head, “—is a confounding realization, believe me.”

  He looks so astonished by this turn of events that I actually believe him. “Must be weird, caring about someone else when you’ve only ever cared about yourself before.”

  Wren flashes his teeth—a quick grimace that looks pained. “There you go, making assumptions again. How about this? You suspend judgment against me for three nights. You come up here and you meet with me, and we talk. You actually listen. And then…then you can decide if I’m the Anti-Christ. At which point, I swear on my family honor that I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”

  “Three nights? If it’ll take you three whole nights to convince me that you’re not a horrible person, then I’m not sure I sho—”

  “Just quit being so spiky and agree already,” he groans. “Tonight, tomorrow night, and Sunday night. That’s it. Three nights. I’ll be on my very best behavior.”

  “And I’ll see that you’re not some evil monster and I’ll fall in love with you?”

  “Maybe,” he agrees. “Or maybe you’ll see that I am a monster. And maybe you’ll fall in love with me anyway.”

  In The Dark…

  I kick and scream.

  I learned a long time ago that kicking and screaming doesn’t help, but I have no choice.

  I am a deranged, trapped animal, howling for freedom.

  A freedom that will never come.

  “Please! Please, I promise…I won’t tell anyone. I won’t breathe a word, I swear. I promise, I promise, I promise. I won’t tell a soul what you’ve done. PLEASE! LET ME OUT!”

  18

  WREN

  She agrees to my proposal like the prospect of spending the next three nights with me will be so traumatic that she’ll need a decade of therapy afterwards. And perhaps she will. If that turns out to be the case, then I know a great guy in Albany who’s rates are reasonable, and I’ll happily pass on his information. But until that comes to pass, I’m going to make the most of the hours I get to spend with her. She sits Indian style on the blanket, using the material to cover her bare feet—they must be freezing—staring at me like she’s facing down the most daunting experience of her existence.

  “Ask me your questions, then,” I tell her, flopping down onto my back again, affecting an air of carelessness that I don’t feel. I’m far from careless, actually. This is a risky move on my part. I’ll be brutally honest with her, so that I can say I gave her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it is dangerous. She could decide that I revolt her and she really doesn’t want anything to do with me. If that happens, I’ll have to honor the deal I’ve made with her, and I’ll have to leave her in peace. Only, I know how badly that’ll affect me. It’ll destroy me from the inside out, and I won’t be able to do shit about it. A promise is a promise, and I don’t make them lightly.

  “Where are you from?” she asks, her voice as dull and flat as can be. She’s trying her best to show me how tiresome she’s finding this entire thing, and she’s doing a really fucking good job of it.

  “I was born in England. Surrey, to be exact. My mother was English. My father’s American, though. New York. The Jacobis have lived in New York since the city was established. We were money guys in the beginning. Bankers and investors. My grandfather joined the military, though, and then my father after him. Career army guys, both of them. I’m a blistering disappointment to both of them.”

  “Because you aren’t going to join up?”

  “Oh, no. I could enlist and I’d still be the biggest let-down either of them has ever suffered. See, I’m not traditional Jacobi stock. I’m disobedient.” I laugh as I say the word, hearing the identical ire in both my father and my grandfather’s voices at the same time. “I’ve always poked at the fences designed to control me and keep me in line. Tested their boundaries. It seemed imprudent not to.”

  “If your father’s anything like mine, then I’m sure that didn’t go down well.”

  Ruefully, I shake my head. “Not particularly, no. Are you telling me you railed against the almighty Colonel Stillwater?”

  “No,” she answers stiffly. “I decided at a young age that I didn’t like pain.”

  A knot forms in my stomach, tightening until it reaches the point where it’ll take days to unravel. “He hurt you?”

  “Oh, come on, don’t sound so surprised,” she says bitterly. “Don’t tell me yours didn’t hurt you. That’s all they know how to do, men like our fathers. We just made different choices, didn’t we? I didn’t fight back. You did.”

  I can’t tell if she sounds so angry right now because of the topic of conversation, or if it’s because I’m forcing her to stay here and do this with me. The why isn’t really important, though. I don’t like the harshness of her voice. Makes me think that she’s suffering. “No,” I answer. “I don’t like pain, either, Little E, but I couldn’t let him use it to control me. You should never give anyone that kind of power over you. No matter how much it hurts.”

  She makes a strangled, unhappy sound. “You haven’t met my father. You have no idea how badly he can make something hurt.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. Not one little bit. The beast inside me snarls, a low, threatening growl rumbling out from between jagged, sharp teeth. It rages against the idea that a grown man would hurt his own daughter. It demands to know what happened in crystal clear detail, so it can formulate an appropriate punishment for this heinous crime. On the outside, I marshal my face into a blank mask, struggling to maintain an air of calm.

  “You’ll be eighteen soon,” I say. “Then you’ll be legally free of him.”

  “It’s not that simple and you know it. My father’s not the kind of man to let me go, just because I become an adult. He’ll still be controlling every aspect of my life when I’m thirty for fuck’s sake.” She doesn’t sound upset, just resigned, which is even worse than if she were sad. Arguing with her will get me nowhere at this stage in our fragile proceedings, so I abandon the topic altogether. Our shitty fathers aren’t going anywhere, which is, in fact, the problem.

  “What else do you wanna know?” I ask.

  “Where have you gone to school?”

  “Always here. Always at Wolf Hall.”

  She seems surprised by this. Her eyes have been sparking with annoyance since she tumbled out of that crawlspace like a legless newborn deer, but her irritation falters as she looks at me now. “For real? You’ve never gone to another high school? Most parents shunt their kids from pillar to post until they don’t even know where they’re from anymore.”

  Goddamnit, she’s too fucking beautiful. It’s like staring at the fucking sun—I look at her for anything more than a second and my retinas threaten to explode. Neither Pax nor Dashiell would say she’s the prettiest girl enrolled at Wolf Hall, but to me, Elodie Stillwater’s the most enchanting thing I’ve ever fucking seen. The defiant pout of her mouth. The always slightly messy, in-need-of-a-brush unruliness of her hair. The bright, wide-eyed stare that catches you off guard. Her hands are so fucking small, it makes me want to weep.

  She’s tiny. Her waist, and her slim shoulders, and her feet, for fuck’s sake. It’s like she was crafted in miniature, the details of her hand-painted in with unwavering attention to detail. She looks as though she needs wrapping up in tissue paper, to keep her sa
fe like a precious treasure. But isn’t that just the kicker? Because everything about Elodie is a deception. She’s small, yes, but she can defend herself. She’s made out of tempered steel, not wafer-thin glass, and she sure as hell doesn’t need keeping safe. Underestimating her would be a regretful mistake. One a guy wouldn’t walk away from uninjured.

  “My father thought routine was more important for me than having him around. My mother died when I was three, and my new stepmother was highly allergic to small children, so it all worked out quite well for everyone concerned. They packed me off to boarding school when I was four. They’ve bought three new houses over the past thirteen years. I’ve always stayed in a guest room whenever I’ve been so graciously invited to stay for the holidays.”

  “They never gave you a bedroom?” Despite herself, little Elodie actually looks interested in what I’m saying. And then she goes and says something that counters any concern she might have been displaying. “That’s fucking cold. I guess that explains where you get it from.”

  I grin tightly. I mean, she’s not wrong. But still. “I have no reason to be warm to anyone outside of Riot House. Why would I wander around this place, beaming like a lobotomized monkey when half of these idiots don’t have two brain cells to rub together?”

  “My case in point.” Elodie reaches out, her hand darting forward; she takes the bottle of wine from me, her eyes growing round when I laugh. “What? You expect me to sit through all of this sober now? No thanks.” She pours a large amount of the Malbec into one of the glasses I brought up here, shoving the bottle into my chest when she returns it.

  Feisty.

  “It’s a cycle of misery, Wren,” she tells me. “You cling to your social outcast status like it’s a shield that’ll protect you from the realities of this life, but the truth is that it’s isolating you more and more from everyone around you. It’s not a smart defense mechanism. And, moreover, I can see straight through it. That’s how all of this started for you—you wanted to build up a wall around yourself so high that no one would ever be able to breach it. Now, your heart’s so frozen and iced over that it’s got fucking freezer burn.”

  “My heart is not top sirloin.”

  “Whatever. It’s fucked is all I’m saying, and you telling me you’re capable of caring about anything is frankly so unbelievable that this seems like a massive waste of both my time and yours.”

  “I’d hate to waste your time, Little E.” God, how can I want to kiss her so fucking badly while she’s telling me that I’m a lost cause? It’s nothing so predictable as the fact that most girls normally trip over themselves to be in my presence and she decidedly does not. There’s an element of that, yes, but this need…fuck me, it’s so much more than that. She’s weighed me and found me wanting. I’ve never given a shit about what other people think of me before, but this girl’s low opinion of me matters more than I can bear. Her defiance, and her strength, and her self-assuredness are addicting. She knows exactly who she is and what she stands for, and I want to breathe her like she’s life its very self.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she says, turning her head away. The candlelight glows against her hair, creating a golden halo around her head.

  “How am I looking at you?” This is sheer insolence on my part. I know precisely how I’m looking at her, and I’m not planning on dialing it down one iota. I want to devour her. Claim her. Bind her to me any way that I can. And if she can read that in the burning fire in my eyes, then so fucking be it. I’m not ashamed of how I’m feeling, and I sure as fuck won’t be hiding it from her, either.

  “Just…behave,” she warns. “You promised.”

  “Alright, fine. Have it your way. Ask me another question.” I wait with bated breath, tension building between my shoulder blades as I anticipate what she’s going to say next. It’s thrilling, this exchange, to know that the things she’s asking me here and now represent moments in the past when she sat alone in her thoughts and wondered things about me.

  Elodie takes three deep mouthfuls from her glass of wine. “Okay. Why did Dashiell treat Carina so badly? Was it some kind of bet between you guys?”

  “Dashiell likes to break his toys when they become too important to him.”

  She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “So, what? He did something to humiliate her and cause her pain because he liked her too much? That’s the excuse you’re arming him with?”

  “I’m not arming him with shit. And it’s not an excuse. I’m giving you the facts. Dash reacts badly to situations where he finds his power diminished in any way. And liking Carina made him weak. He saw that weakness as a perceived threat, and so he rooted it out with his bare hands and crushed it before it could hurt him.”

  The attic falls silent, the dusty old space breathing around us as Elodie studies my face. Her eyes rove over my brow, down the line of my nose. Her clear blue eyes hover over my mouth for a split second before they snap up to meet my own gaze. She looks like she’s stewing on something, words piling up in a traffic jam on the tip of her tongue.

  “I know what you wanna know,” I whisper.

  “Oh? Then please go ahead. Enlighten me with an answer, if you’re suddenly so all-powerful and all-knowing.”

  My breath catches in my throat—the strangest, most alien sensation. Something I haven’t experienced in a very long time. “You want to know if that’s how my mind works. You want to know if that’s what I’ll do to you, if you let me in. But you can’t allow yourself to ask me that, because asking is admission that you’re thinking about it. Letting me in. And that terrifies you.”

  “Jesus, Wren, I’m—”

  No. I won’t let her dispute it. It’s so fucking obvious. I’m sick of biding my time, waiting for her to relinquish herself to me. In one quick, predatory lunge, I rise up onto my knees, lean across the blanket, and I cup her face in both of my hands. I don’t kiss her. Not yet. It’s almost impossible, but I hold myself back. “My toys have never been important to me, Little E,” I whisper. “I don’t throw them away because I’m afraid of what they’ll do to me, or because I’m bored of them. I discard them because they never live up to my expectations. But you…” Her eyelids shutter. “You’re not a toy. I have no expectations of you. How can I when you’re constantly surprising me and throwing me off my fucking guard. If you let me—”

  Panic flares in her eyes. She’s staring at my mouth again, complete terror radiating off her in waves. “Wren—”

  “If you let me,” I repeat. “I’ll surprise you too. Just you wait and see.”

  She closes her eyes, a single tear streaking down her cheek. Out of nowhere, it’s as though she’s coming apart in my hands. “Please. Please. Please,” she whispers.

  Numbed all the way down to my bones, I let go of her, a bitter, acrid taste spreading across my tongue. I wasn’t trying to scare her. I wasn’t trying to break her. I—for fuck’s sake—I lean away, ready to do something monumental that I haven’t done in years—apologize—when she shakes her head and hurls herself forward, throwing herself at my chest. “Please,” she repeats. This time it sounds like she’s begging me to do something rather than to get the hell away from her. The desperation on her face makes my blood roar inside my head, clouding my vision and making my pulse soar.

  “All right. Okay. I’ve got you.” She’s in my arms, then. I crush her to me so hard that even I can’t breathe. My lips meet hers, and the kiss is nothing like it was supposed to be. Yeah, I’ve planned this. With the same meticulous attention to detail I put into all of my actions. I was supposed to tease her, my mouth hovering over hers, my tongue skating over her swollen lower lips, my hands in her hair, making her breath come quick until she was frantic and couldn’t stand for there to be any space between us a second more. There’s no patience to this kiss, though. No teasing to be had by me or by her. Only need, and want, and a form of panic that kindles in us both and spreads like wildfire. How easily this could all end in disaster. How quickly I could lose mysel
f, and how effortlessly I could break her.

  I feel it in her, as she must feel it in me.

  We’re both so afraid of the ending before we’ve even truly arrived at the beginning, but there’s nothing either of us can do to stop this thing now. It’s gained too much fucking steam, and neither of us know where the brakes are.

  Elodie’s heart is racing; I can feel her pulse slamming up against my chest, and she’s so alive and vital and fucking real that I can’t actually believe that this is happening. She kisses me back, her hands reaching up and winding into my hair, and my blood turns to nitroglycerin in my veins. One small spark is all it will take and I’ll go up like a motherfucking H-bomb. She pulls back, nothing more than a split second to suck in a desperate breath, and my world splinters apart.

  I was supposed to be puppeting this charade. There was an order in which this was all supposed to go, and at no point was I supposed to lose my goddamn mind.

  When was the last time I felt something like this?

  When have I ever felt something like this?

  Elodie makes a soft, whimpering sound as she brings her lips back up to meet mine, her fingers grasping tightly onto a thick tangle of my hair, and everything stills and blurs.

  She tastes like sunlight and honey.

  She smells like the last time I can remember being fucking happy.

  In my arms, her small frame feels like the most important, valuable thing I’ve ever held.

  Ripping my mouth away, I duck down, kissing the column of her throat, burying myself in the crook of her neck, and she begins to shake so violently that I have to press my forehead against her cheek in order to stop myself from going further.

  “Wren. Wren. Oh my god…” She pants my name, breathless, still arching her back and pressing herself up against me in a way that makes it very hard to think straight. “What the fuck are we doing? What is this?” she moans.