Page 83 of Riot House
I pat the bag I brought with me, raising my eyebrows. “Yes. Though why the hell you told me to bring a swimsuit, I do not know. The sun might be out, but there’s no way you’re getting me in a lake. The water’s gonna be freezing.”
The corner of his mouth lifts up. “Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours. I’m not gonna have you freeze to death, Elodie Stillwater.”
We burn down the mountain in record time. He drives even faster than Carina, but I don’t feel the same lurching in my stomach when he takes a corner. Wren handles his car like a pro, braking ahead of the turns and speeding out of them with so much control that I have to press my knees together to stop the heavy, hot ache between my thighs. God, I am such a fucking loser. In town, Wren takes a series of turns through residential streets, avoiding the main roads as he navigates us toward our destination.
“You’re really not gonna tell me where we’re going?” I ask.
He gives his head an exaggerated shake, biting back a smile. “Not on your life. We’re nearly at our first port of call anyway.”
Mere minutes later, we’re pulling into the parking lot of a ramshackle-looking building that looks like a rundown western saloon. The name‘Cosgrove’s’is scrawled in peeling once-white, now-grey paint down the side of the heavily weathered lap-siding. Wren pulls up next to a rusting old Buick and kills the engine, looking at me with a weird expression on his face. Takes me a second to recognize it as nerves. I don’t think I’veeverseen him look nervous before.
“Uhh...” He trails off, still deciding what he’s going to say.
“Uhh?”
“This place is mine,” he says.
I jerk my thumb behind me, out of the Mustangs’s rear window. “The bar?”
“Yeah. The bar.”
“What do you mean,it’s yours?”
“I bought it. Last year.”
“How? You were a minor?
“I have a guy. Edward. He manages my affairs for me. Just signs off on the legal stuff I can’t do. At least hedid, but I’m eighteen now, so…”
I shake my head, blinking at him. “With whatmoney?”
He laughs bitterly, scrubbing his hands through his hair and then down over his face. “Urrrrrghhhh. With some of my annual stipend.” He doesn’t sound happy when he says this. He seems frustrated and pretty fucking miserable, actually. “My grandparents were very wealthy people, Elodie. They gave Mercy and me an annual allowance to survive on. January first, every year without fail, an obscene amount of money’s deposited in my checking account, and every year I do my best to burn through the lot before spring.”
Holy hell. I figured, since his father’s just as high up in the military as my own, that his family had money. I didn’t think for a second that he has his own. “And do you manage it? Do you fritter away all of your money by April?” I ask.
He gives me a tight, sharp smile. “Never. I’d probably have to buy a small nation with a massive national debt to clear out my bank account at this point.”
Fuck.
“I have houses in Europe and Australia. I’ve got more stocks and shares than you can imagine. And when investing my money became far too responsible, I just started wasting it. Ridiculous vacations. Boats. Drugs. Lots of drugs,” he says. “And then I got bored of that, too, so I started buying failing businesses that would never make any money and sat back to watch the fireworks when my father found out. Cosgroves’ had the added benefit of being a licensed bar, where I could come and get fucked up whenever I wanted to, so...”
“Right. Makes sense.” I laugh a little nervously. I live so carefully, watching the balance on the American Express my father loads up for me. It’s one of the ways that he likes to remind me that he owns me, and I’ve never been able to forget it. Fall out of his good graces, and that’s it, I’m scraping by on next to nothing until he decides I’ve redeemed myself. Turns out, Wren’s never had to worry about money. He leans forward, resting his chin in his hands, staring out of the windshield into the empty road on the other side of the lot.
“I’d give it all away,” he says morosely. “Only my father would find out and send more. For the Jacobis, money’s an infinite resource, springing from a well that will never run dry. Mercy loves it. And I hate it more than I can say. Ungrateful, right? There are so many people out there struggling to make ends meet, and I’m bitching that I have too much fucking money. God, I even make myself sick. Come on, let’s go.” He explodes from the car, jumping out so quickly that his door’s slammed closed and he’s already opening mine before I register that he’s gone.
The inside of Cosgrove’s is a confusion of mismatched paraphernalia. There are quirky, at-odds items everywhere, ranging from stuffed moose heads to Native American wall tapestries. From old black and white photographs of construction workers sitting on the ledges of half-built skyscrapers in the 1920s, to an English telephone box, sitting in the corner like it just inexplicably fell out of the fucking sky and landed there all by itself. The bar smells of stale beer and sawdust, but it’s a reassuring smell, and even the sticky film that covers the chairs, the tabletops, the bar’s worn counter, and pretty much everything else inside the building doesn’t detract from its weird, otherworldly charm.
Wren stands in the center of the quiet bar with his hands in his pockets, looking around like he just doesn’t know what to do with the place.
“There are customers,” he observes. “We don’t usually have those.”
A short, squat man bullies his way through a set of swinging saloon doors that presumably lead out back, his expression darkening when he sees Wren. “No text,” he grumbles, clattering behind the bar. “I thought we agreed you’d text before you showed up. Can’t just go showing up out of the blue, spyin’ on me,” he grouses.
“I agreed to no such thing,” Wren sighs wearily. “It’s my bar. I can show up whenever I feel like it. And I’m not spying on you, Patterson. We want breakfast. That’s all.”
Patterson squints at him. “We?”
Wren tips his head in my direction, where I’m leaning against the bar. Patterson sees me and lets out a sigh of relief. “Well, at least you didn’t bring those animals down here with you. That’s a small mercy.” He’s talking about Dashiell and Pax, I’m sure. Walking down the length of the bar, the old man stops in front of me, looking me up and down. “Got all your own teeth?” he asks.
