Page 92 of Riot Rules
“Fuck this. I’m outta here.” Wren spins on his heel and storms away.
I yell after him, trying to convince him to stay, but he’s not listening—
“Let him go.” Pax shoves another shrimp into his mouth. “Moody bastard wants to sulk, then we should let him. Oh,shit.” He does a one-eighty, chewing as fast as he can. He swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What?”
“Incoming. Six o’clock. Your old man’s heading right for us.”
I resist the urge to check. To find him in the crowd and see what his mood looks like. I stare at the side of Pax’s shaved head instead, my mind careening all over the place.
“Well, well. Look who it is. Good evening, gentlemen. What a pleasure it is to see you here. Even if you did blatantly disobey me, boy. I distinctly remember telling you to wear a tux.”
I slowly turn to look at him.
Tall and broad, but slighter than me. He never could pack on any muscle when he was a younger man. He’s even thinner than when I saw him at Christmas. His dark hair, once a rich black, has turned to pepper and steel. His face is a crosshatch of lines that run deep around his permanently downturned mouth. Naturally, he’s wearinghistux. This is his big night—his chance to wow the Americans with his philanthropy and superior English breeding.
We regard one another, and there’s no hint of familiarity on his face. No kindness. No fatherly compassion. Not even a flicker of pleasure over being reunited with his only son. There is only the dull, weak, absolutely ordinary blue of his eyes, and the downturned, bracketed mouth, and the disapproval over the tux.
I put down my champagne glass on the buffet table and dust off my hands. “You know what? Fuck this. I’m out, too.”
42
CARRIE
Imagine my surprisewhen I run back into the party, and low and behold, it’sElodiewho’s about to go nuclear on one of the tech nerds from the academy. Tom Petrov. I have to peel her off him. It isn’t until I get the full story out of him that I understand why she’s so mad.
Tom was fixing Elodie’s phone for her. The phone that Wren inadvertently broke when he collided with Elodie in the hall earlier today—honestly, I’d forgotten all about it—and then Wren coerced Tom into giving him the phone. Long story short: Wren has Elle’s phone, and Elle lost her shit when she found out.
I’m not surprised. I would have reacted the exact same way. But now Elle wants to go up to Riot House, in the middle of the night, to get it back. She knows the pricks are out of town, and she wants to retrieve her property.
I would rather gouge my own eyes out than go to Riot House right now, but what choice do I have? I can’t let her go alone.
We leave Pres with Andre, who promises to take care of her, and I reluctantly agree to drive Elodie halfway up the mountain. I attempt to talk her out of this madness, but it does no good. Before I know it, we’re standing in front of Dash’s house in the pitch black, and little Elodie Stillwater is picking the lock on their front door.
Once the door clicks open, she steps inside and reacts exactly how one might expect her to react: she’s in awe of the place. The beautiful décor. The stunning staircase. The artwork on the walls. I begrudgingly admit that Wren is responsible for the stormy, violent, remarkable paintings, and I catch the admiration in her eyes. She tries to hide it, but she’s too late. I’m in no position to judge her at the end of the day. I swooned over Dash’s music when I heard him play the first time. How is this any different?
I try not to look up at the huge skylight overhead as I urge Elodie toward the stairs, but I fail. I haven’t gone up to the observatory since the night I found Dashiell there with his cock in Amalie Gibbons’ mouth. I ripped my star charts off the wall that night, too. Threw out my planet earrings. Buried my NASA shirts, my telescope and my other astronomy trinkets at the bottom of my closet. It hurt to eventhinkabout anything astronomy-related, because my love for the stars had become so intrinsically linked tohim. How I’ve missed the night sky, though. And how beautiful it looks through the vastness of Riot House’s skylight.
I suddenly feel very, very sick. Hollowed out and sadder than I’ve felt in a long time.
“Come on.” I usher Elodie toward the stairs. “No time to admire the architecture. We need to grab the phone and get back to the academy. I have an awful feeling about this.”
“Where’s his room? Tell me and I’ll go find it myself.”
Well, if that doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, I don’t know what does. “We’ll go together. It’s easier to get lost in here than you’d think.”
Elodie smiles. Squeezes my hand. “I’ll be fine. Stay here and keep watch. If you see lights headed up the road, shout and we’ll get the fuck out of here. One of us needs to be on guard.”
Coward that I am, I let her go. I saw the pity on her face; she knows how hard it is for me to be here, inhishome. God, the last time I was here…
I shove the memory down, willing myself not to catch hold of it and torture myself with a replay. What’s the point? What good does remembering any of it serve? It wasn’treal.
I wait in the thick silence, the walls of Riot House silently breathing around me. I can sense him here; Dash’s jacket’s slung over the back of one of the chairs in the sunken living room by the window; his running shoes by the door; his new glasses on the coffee table. I breathe in, wondering if I’ll be able to catch his scent lingering on the air, disappointed (and a little embarrassed that I even tried) when I don’t.
My nerves begin to get the better of me. I wait a minute, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to stay calm, but it’s no fucking good. I need to leave. “Elle! Hurry up, for fuck’s sake! I’m sweating down here!”
No response. “Elodie! I’m not kidding. Let’sgo!”My voice echoes up through the center of the house, bouncing off the walls, mocking me. I can’t be here. I can’t. I’m going to have to go and get her. I curse all the way up the stairs, racing past the second floor. When I hit the third-floor landing, I come to a grinding halt, my heart pulsing painfully.
