Page 7 of Riot Reunion
The sound of splintering wood is deafening.
For a moment, Elodie and I stare at one another. Neither of us looks in the direction of the coffin. Neither of us dare. Elodie’s post-sex glow is gone, traded for a bloodless, ashen expression of horror. Damn, I think she’s about to throw up. “What do we do?” she whispers.
“What do you wanna do?” I hiss back.
The casket definitely broke. It is, in the very least, cracked wide open, if not in a thousand pieces on the floor. I risk a glance over the other side of the marble plinth, and oh shit. Yeah. That’s not good. Jason Stillwater, grey and puffed up like a bloated, beached whale, has tumbled out of the plush, luxury casket, and is sprawled across the cold church flagstones in a very undignified manner. He's dressed in full military regalia, of course. His hat is missing, though. It takes a moment for me to spot it, lying on the ground over by the lectern. It must have rolled away when Jason was unceremoniously ejected from the coffin.
“How bad is it?” Elodie asks.
I turn back to her, folding my arms tightly across my chest, nodding furiously. “Yeahhh, on a scale of one to ten, it's pretty bad.”
Elodie tries to step around me, to take in the scene for herself, but I block her path, stopping her. She doesn't need to see this. Her father was a grim man to behold when he was alive. Now that he's dead, he looks like something out of a nightmare. I don't want the image of him, with his sallow flesh and the dark hollows under his eyes haunting her forever. “Don't,” I say. “It's probably for the best if you...don't.”
She swallows thickly. “Well, we can't just leave him there.” She blinks, as if rethinking the whole dilemma. “Wait.Canwe?”
“Go outside. Wait for me by the car. I’ll deal with this.”
Elodie meets my gaze, chewing on her bottom lip. She doesn't want me to have to deal with this at all. She feels bad, but she has the foresight to know that she shouldn't witness whatever lies on the other side of this plinth. “You're sure?”
“I’m sure.” I plant a quick kiss on her forehead, then urge her towards the church’s exit. “Go.”
Her heels make a loud clicking sound as she hurries away. The nine-foot-high wooden doors to the church groan mournfully as Elodie swings the left side open and disappears through them, out into the grey rain beyond.
A blast of frigid air howls through the church, as if the ghost of Jason Stillwater crept in while the door was open and is now making its displeasure known at the undignified treatment of its remains. I mean, I get it. I’d be pissed, too, if my Earthly remains were dumped out of my coffin onto the cold floor of a Catholic church.
I’m the world's biggest asshole. I allowed Elodie to think I was going to fix this situation. Put Jason back in his coffin. Like hell I am, though. I'd rather rip off both my own balls than touch this sick pervert, five days postmortem. Instead, I nudge the fucker’s body with the toe of my polished Italian leather shoe, baring my teeth at the cunt as I flip him over onto his back.
Death makes fools of us all.
In life, Jason was a behemoth of a man. Strong. Broad and tall, with hands the size of shovels, the guy could inflict some serious damage on pretty much anybody he had a mind to. There was certainly no contest when it came to overpowering his daughter and shoving her inside that box; Elodie didn't stand a chance. Now, Jason looks like some kind of wax figurine. Pathetic. Small. Insignificant. For a brief second, I consider going to get Elodie. Maybe sheshouldsee him like this. It might reinforce the knowledge that he can't harm her anymore. The thought is fleeting.
Someone will be coming for Jason soon. He needs to be transported to the cemetery, after all. Someoneelsecan find him and stuff him back into his box. And, yeah, they’ll wonder who had the audacity to disrespect the dead like this. But that’s me to a tee, right? One disrespectful asshole. And Jason Stillwater deserves to be robbed of the last shreds of his dignity before he goes into the cold, hard ground.
2
ELODIE
OCTOBER
Before my fathershipped me off to Wolf Hall, I’d bounced around the world with my parents, fated to be swept along on the tides of my father's career. Home was a foreign concept. There were beds that I slept in more than once. Cities and towns and schools that became familiar. But the moment that happened and I made the mistake of settling in, everything that felt safe and comfortable andminewas ripped out from underneath me.
Wolf Hall was the first time I put down real roots anywhere in a very, very long time. Then, after graduation, I’d panicked. For an unsettled week or two, I’d waited for the fear to set in. To feel like I was unmoored and adrift again, being pulled along in the ebb and flow of someone else’s tide. Wren wanted to travel with me, wanted to show me all of his favorite places, and while the prospect of sharing the things that delighted him lit me on fire, I’ll admit that Iwasworried. I never stopped to wonder what I wanted to do. WhereIwanted to go. In Paris, sitting outside a cafe, with the bursts of autumnal color setting the world ablaze down the Rue Saint-Dominique, I’d mulled over this thought, drinking a cup of hot, bitter black coffee, tearing apart a flaky croissant with my bare fingers, dipping it into the black liquid. Where did I want to go? Of all the places in the world, where did I feel like I needed to be? Horrifyingly, my mind came up blank. Not even the faintest flicker of a suggestion came to me. Not a single place where I felt like I might be at peace.
And then something happened. A flutter of motion had caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, and I’d turned to find Wren emerging from the café, shrugging his shoulders into his thick wool jacket, popping the collar as he’d emerged into the cool fall air. A great cloud of fog had bloomed on his breath as he’d exhaled. His cheeks had been flushed pink from the already wintery temperatures. When our eyes locked and he flashed a broad, heart-stopping smile at me, something had clicked into place.
I didn't need to wrack my brain, searching for the perfect place that I wanted to go next because my home wasn't a place; my home was a person, and his name was Wren Jacobi. I haven't worried about being swept along with his plans since that moment—I haven't needed to. It isn't even a case of, ‘wherever Wren goes, I go.’It's a simple matter of,‘We go together.’When I started school at Harvard, so did Wren. And when he decided that he would live in the penthouse suite of a hotel until the perfect place to buy came along, it wasn’t even a question that I would be living with him, too.
After months of living out of suitcases, studying at a too-small table, and feeling generally unsettled, however, things are about to change.
“Idolove the light.” I trail my fingertips over the living room wall, walking towards the massive picture frame windows that overlook Central Square. The view is quaint as hell. On the 5th floor of the old, historic building, Wren is devoid of emotion as he paces from room to room, his bright jade eyes skipping over the features of our potential new home.
My heart still somersaults whenever I see him. It’s cold as hell out today, but he walked from the hotel in nothing but a black button-down shirt, the sleeves cuffed to the elbows, and his regular black jeans. His hands are spattered with paint—slate-grey, morning frost, winter steel, deepest black. There are even tiny flecks of it on his cheek and temple. Even while staying in a hotel, Wren hasn’t put down his paintbrushes. It didn’t take long for me to realize that without his art, my dark-haired prince passes beyond a veil of shadows where even I cannot follow; the moody landscapes he paints give him an outlet for something too dark and heavy to process in any other way. They depict a bottomless pain without a need for words, and somehow, they are beautiful.
He moves with a practiced ease, curls of his hair shielding his pensive expression from the cold, assessing eyes of the realtor who let us into the apartment fifteen minutes ago, and out of nowhere, I feel like I could split open like over-ripe fruit from loving him so much. It takes my breath away.
As if he can sense what I’m thinking, the tiniest, knowing smile toys at the corners of Wren’s mouth as he walks past me. His fingertips graze the back of my hand, the lightest of contacts, as he passes by.
The place is drafty and massive for an apartment. Twenty-foot-high ceilings. A small sunroom with quaint black and white tiles on the floor. Parquet flooring throughout the rest of the space. Gorgeous original features that give the place the kind of character that can't be found in newly constructed high-rise apartments. I haven't even asked how much the place costs. Even with the impressive life insurance payout I got when Jason died, I wouldn't be able to justify spending the kind of cash that this place is worth. Wren, on the other hand, seems to have a bottomless well of money that he doesn't appear to be worried about exhausting.
