Page 66 of Riot House
Wow. He’s really not going to tell me? “Were you—were you hooking up with girls. Is that why you won’t say?”
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Would you be jealous if I had?”
It kills me that I let myself ask that. It kills me that he looks so damn pleased with himself now. I just revealed a soft, vulnerable part of myself; I bared my neck, exposing myself to him, and now he has all he needs to rip out my throat. “Just answer the question, Wren.”
Still glowing with satisfaction, he sucks on his bottom lip, shaking his head again. “No, Little E. There were no other girls.”
Relief should be the very last thing I feel, but it surges up inside me nontheless. “Okay. So, what? You’re just done with me now? Because normally guys don’t make you promise to spend time with them and then just disappear into thin air.”
He goes still. Doesn’t look up. Not really. Just turns his head slightly toward me, his eyes half-closed, turmoil written on the lines of his face. “That’s what you wanted, right? What you’ve wanted this entire time. For me to leave you alone?”
Yes. Itisall I’ve wanted. I’ve waded through thigh-deep frustration and anger in my attempts to distance myself from him. But now that we’re here, he’s giving me this out… I’m pretending like this is some new revelation, striking me out of the blue, but that isn’t the truth. I’ve wanted him since the moment I set eyes on him, smoking that cigarette outside the academy, waiting for me in the half-drawn shadows. Even with his shitty attitude, and his sharp tongue, and his suspect history, I’ve wanted him. And that kiss we shared on Friday night made me unravel in a way that thrilled and terrified me.
“Who did you pay to find the bird?” I demand.
“What?”
“The bird. My mother’s bird. You left it for me outside my room. Who did you pay to sift through a filthy vacuum cleaner and collect all of the pieces?”
Wren’s head jerks back; his brows hike up his forehead, crimping together. “Who did Ipay?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’tpayanyone. And the pieces were a lot more difficult to come across than that. The janitor had emptied the vacuum into the dumpster by the kitchen. It was empty otherwise, but it was still an unpleasant task.”
Do I believe what he’s telling me? He not only didn’t force someone into doing his dirty work, but that he did that really, disgusting, unbelievably gross dirty workfor me? I’m having trouble conjuring the image of him vaulting over the side of a dumpster so he can pick through grime and muck in order to do something kind for another human being. I get as far as seeing him there, beside the dumpster, but the rest of the image won’t materialize. In my head, he lights up a smoke, leans against the dumpster, curling his lip up in an arrogant, smug way as he tells me to go fuck myself.
“You were gonna ream me out for bullying someone into putting it back together for you. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s why you came here?” Wren asks. He sits down on the edge of his bed, waiting for me to answer. I don’t know that I can, though. Now that I’m here, and he’s acting weird and vulnerable, I’m at a complete loss.
“Yes,” I confess reluctantly. “I was. I figured you’d had a friendly conversation with Tom or one of his friends and suggested they do you a little favor or wind up with a black eye.”
Something doleful and unhappy plays out across his face. He studies his hands, picking absently at a chip of black nail polish. “I might have done that. Another time. But not for something I planned on giving toyou, Little E. You seemed cut up over losing the thing, and…I don’t know,” he says, “I wanted to make it right.Iwanted to make it right. Not coerce someone else into doing it for me. So, yeah. After the night of the storm, I went and found the janitor. He pointed me in the right direction, and I spent a couple of hours every night sticking my fucking fingers together with Gorilla Glue, trying to make it whole again. I had to use clay to fill in the parts where pieces were missing. And that was it. I fixed it. I gave it back to you. No need to make a big deal out of it.”
I’ve never seen him look more uncomfortable than this. He looks like he’s simultaneously being bitten by thousands of fire ants and having bamboo spikes shoved underneath his fingernails.
“I don’t understand you. How can you look so wound up and miserable over the fact that someone found out you did something nice for them?”
“Because I’mnotnice,” he grinds out. “I don’tdonice things. I don’t know how to…benice.”
This is not the Wren Jacobi I know. That Wren is confident and so sure of who he is. This Wren is tense, it feels like he’s going to blow any moment now. I sit down next to him without considering the consequences—how his close proximity might affect my breathing, or how the heat from his leg resting against mine might make my head spin like a top. “You didn’t answer the question,” he says.
Indecision has me by the tongue. I did avoid answering the question he posed to me, yes, but I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to reply. Carina would tell me to run like the wind, get away from this as quickly as possible and thank my lucky stars that I escaped unscathed. But, then again, Wren was right. I haven’t seen him do anything unforgiveable since I arrived at Wolf Hall. I have no reason to think he’d do anything to hurt me.
“You asked me to trust you,” I whisper, afraid of the words even as I’m saying them. “And I’ve been scared to. I know that wanting to be with you, in whatever capacity, is probably the stupidest thing I can possibly do, Wren. But I do. I do want you, and…the answer’s no. I don’t want you to be done with me. I feel like there could be…”
“More,” Wren supplies. “A lot more. Between us.”
“Yes.”
The points where my body is making contact with his—my knee, my thigh, my hip, my shoulder—all feel like they’re pressed up against a vat of boiling water, and that vat has been growing gradually hotter and hotter as I’ve been sitting here, so slowly that I haven’t noticed that it’s too, too hot until the contact is suddenly scalding me. I want to pull away, but Wren angles his head, looking sideways at me, and I’m staked to the spot, unable to move a muscle. “I can’t promise I’m not gonna hurt you, Little E. But I can promise that, if I do, it won’t be on purpose. I can also promise that I’ll do everything in my powernotto.” He swallows thickly, his throat bobbing. “Do you think that might be enough?”
The air’s so laden with tension that it feels syrupy as it trickles down into my lungs. His muscles lock up, his shoulders rising a fraction as he waits for my answer. Aware of how idiotic this whole thing is, I slowly nod my head.
Wren’s eyes come alive. “Thank fuck for that.” Twisting, he grabs me, holding my face in his hands, and his mouth is on mine before I can even react. Heat roars up from the very soles of my feet, flooding my body until it’s burning at the very crown of my head, and nothing,nothingfeels stable anymore. The bed tilts, the floor shifts, my mind capsizes, and I’m moving, scrambling to get closer, climbing into his lap like some wild animal, trying to wrap myself around him.
This is no slow burn. We’ve already done our little dance, our back and forth with each other over the past few weeks more than enough foreplay for either of us. His tongue drives past my lips, tangling with my own, tasting me, licking me, exploring my mouth with a frantic urgency that has me panting and whimpering like a needy fucking dog. Wren’s hands move to the small of my back, pulling me to him, and I arch into him, crushing myself up against his chest, wanting so badly to be even closer. Wren lets out a groan, breathing heavily into my mouth, and hearing it, hearinghimcoming undone, ignites fireworks in my head.
This is happening.
