Page 52 of Riot House
“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’mdisobedient.” 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 hurtyou. 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 havenoidea 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’venevergone 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 safe 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 whereyouget 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 expectmeto 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 isnottop 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 muchmorethan 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.
