Page 62 of Riot Rules
Other Wolf Hall students stream around us, all making their way toward the main entrance of the grand building that’s just appeared out of the looming darkness ahead of us. It really is a beautiful house—all unique angles, knife-edge lines, and so much glass. Light blazes out of the numerous windows, throwing back the encroaching night. Inside, loud music churns, spilling out of the huge, open ash doors.
Presley’s grip on my arm tightens. “Either of you ever been inside?” she asks.
I shake my head, marveling up at the structure. “You?”
Mara just laughs. “Of course I have. If you think the outside’s impressive, just wait ’til you see the inside. It’s fucking ridiculous.”
* * *
Mara wasn’t joking.
The house belongs to Wren, but the Lovetts are just as wealthy as the Jacobis, if not even more so. Dash could afford to buy a place like this if he wanted. Three times over. Whenever we’ve spent time together, it’s either been in my room or at the observatory. I never even considered hanging out with him at Riot House—not with Pax and Wren around—so the whole money thing hasn’t really occurred to me. Until now. Now, it’s painfully obvious, and I’m feeling pretty foolish. How can I not have realized that this would be an issue before?
I come from a backwater town in Alabama. My mother never had two cents to rub together. Alderman has money and plenty of it, too, but he’s already done so much for me. I’m not expecting him to set me up for life. He’s giving me a stellar education, which is far more than I could have hoped for if I’d stayed in Grove Hill. I’m hoping that my grades will be good enough so that I can go to college somewhere on a scholarship. Alderman will argue. He’ll want me to attend an Ivy League institution, but I can’t let him spend that kind of money on me. A scholarship could still get me into a great school, but Dash? Dash is going back to the UK to study at Oxford. And once he’s there, amongst plenty of beautiful, rich English girls who are all from noble stock like him, it’ll only be a matter of time before he falls in love with one of them.
I’ll be nothing but a distant memory of that one time when he went slumming in New Hampshire.
All of this hits me as I step into the foyer of Riot House.
“Holy fucking shit,” Pres breathes. “What the hell? This place looks like a hotel.”
She’s right. And not a cheap hotel, either. A five-star hotel with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a fully equipped gym, Michelin-starred restaurant and day spa attached. The monstrous stairs dominate the entry way and lead up to what looks like an open landing, which leads to another, and then another. The whole thing draws the eye up, up, up, to a vaulted ceiling high above us, which isn’t so much a ceiling as a single, massive skylight. What a view of the night sky you could get through that thing, if none of the lights were on. Dash mentioned this when we met at the observatory for the first time. I hadn’t thought much of it, but now, seeing it, I’m struck with envy.
“I heard Wren did all of the paintings,” Presley says.
The artwork in question certainly looks like something that could have come out of Jacobi’s mind. Dark, swirling, moody and angry, the paintings hanging on the walls are definitely all from the same hand. They’re good. More than good. They’re brilliant, actually, each a seething raging storm captured on a canvas. I can see them being worth money one day. Not that I’d ever admit that within earshot of the artist.
Mara waltzes across the foyer, cutting through the crowd like she owns the place. Presley follows. I stand there for a minute, still trying to take it all in: the sunken living room; the massive sectional couches; the lilies in expensive vases; the gargantuan flat screen television; the glass coffee table that looks like an art piece. Nothing is too showy or ridiculous. There’s a subtle undertone of stupendous wealth here, though, and it’s freaking me the fuck out.
Damn.
I’ve been left behind.
Quickly trying to swallow down the major feelings of inadequacy that have begun to rear their ugly head, I hurry after Mara and Pres, shoving my way through the throng of people dancing in the massive living room. Eventually, I bully a pathway through the madness and wind up in the kitchen, where Mara’s holding court. Impressive, really. She was only sixty seconds ahead of me, but she’s already located the high-end liquor and she’s already poured out three shots. She offers me one and Presley the other, her smile positively wicked. “Here’s to avoiding the hosts for as long as possible and getting shitfaced on their dime,” she says.
Pres clinks her glass to Mara’s without hesitation. She needed some Dutch courage back at the academy just to walk down here. I have no doubt that she’ll be avoiding Pax all night, the tequila won’t help with that, but it might help calm her nerves a little. I, on the other hand, wouldliketo run into one of the party’s hosts.
There are limitations on the kind of interaction Dash and I can have here. I’m not expecting him to charge his way across a crowded room, sweep me into his arms, lift me off my feet and start making out with me. But there’s something to be said for some loaded eye contact. The weight of his eyes on me in the hallways of the academy is like a caress. On three separate occasions, I’ve found myself burning up and turned on from a lingering sidelong look he’s sent my way. He seeks me out, searching for me, then looks away. Searches for me, then looks away. Anyone who wasn’t paying attention would never notice the way his gaze constantly shifts, homing in on me every couple of minutes. I do, though, because I’m doing the same thing, always looking for him, always leaning intohim.
The three of us knock back the tequila, shivering against the trail of fire that burns its way down our throats. Pres sucks on a wedge of lime that she plucks from a glass bowl in the middle of the kitchen island, pulling a face. “Urgh, that’s disgusting.”
“Herradura Seleccion Supremaactually,” a low voice says behind us. “Four hundred dollars a bottle. That shit’s as smooth as a baby’s ass cheek, Red.”
Presley’s hand tightens around the shot glass. She looks like one of those fainting goats, right before they seize and topple over. The poor girl doesn’t turn around, which is a good thing because Pax Davis is wearing a black button-down shirt, black jeans and a black tie, and even I can admit that he looks smoking hot. It’s no wonder he gets so much modelling work. His tattoos are on show, creeping down his arms and up, out of the collar of his shirt. He winks at me, burns a hole into Pres’ back—looks like he’s actually checking out her ass—and then he keeps on walking, vanishing back out into the living room.
Mara’s mouth is puckered like a cat’s asshole. “He’s gone. You can breathe,” she says sourly. Poor Pres stays stock still, though, the shot glass in her hand shaking. Mara’s eyes go wide. “Breathe! Oh my god, girl,take a fucking breath!”
Presley inhales, the air pulling over her vocal chords, creating the kind of theatrical sound that actors make when they suck in a breath after nearly drowning. I take her glass and pour us all another shot. “Fuck, Pres. Are you sure you even like him? I think you’re confusing attraction with blind terror.”
Morosely, she accepts the shot glass and downs the expensive liquor. She takes it much better this time. “It’s both,” she says. “The two emotions are intrinsically linked now. I’ll be getting turned on during horror movies until the day I die. How fucked up isthat?”
It's hard not to laugh, but I cope.
Our conversation is halted by an excited scream from somewhere on the ground floor. A second later, Damiana Lozano careens into the kitchen, wobbling on four-inch-high heels, wearing a metallic silver dress that leaves nothing to the imagination. “Come on, assholes. Wren’s about to do the thing. He won’t start until we’re all there.”
I don’t know what the ‘thing’ is or where ‘there’ is, either, but our fellow classmates loitering in the kitchen do. Everyone rushes for the door that leads back out to the living room. Mara grabs Pres’ hand and then mine, and pulls us along behind her as she, too, charges out of the kitchen.
The music’s still thumping in the living room, the heavy bass rattling my teeth in my head, but all of the people who were dancing a moment ago have gone. Everyone is gathered at the foot of the impressive staircase in the foyer, where Wren, Pax and Dash are standing on the seventh or eighth step, high up enough that they can be seen above the tops of everyone’s heads.
