RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,133
Just different. You use the same colors that she used. The tone isn't the same, though.”
I grunt at that. “Yeah. She was optimistic. I've never had that in me.”
Elodie's eyes convey many things as she looks back at me over her shoulder. Sadness. Regret. Kindness. The smallest ounce of pity that makes me want to claw my way out of my skin. I suddenly don't want to be in here anymore. As if she can feel me withdrawing, Elodie steps away from the paintings, coming to me, taking my hands in hers.
“Show me where you sleep?” It's a small request, but I'm shot full of nerves by the prospect of showing her my room.
“Where I'm supposed to sleep, downstairs? Or the room I claimed up here?”
“Up here.”
My heart skitters treacherously as I walk her down the hall and into my room. It's not much. The slope of the roof is steep and means I have to bow my head; there's only a small section of the space where I can stand up straight without risking a concussion. I smirk to myself when I realize that Elodie doesn't have that problem. She's so short that she can stand tall the whole time. She wanders around, inspecting the room from one end to the other: the bookshelf, with the well-thumbed copies of my favorite books; the small bed, bigger than a single but a far cry from the huge California king I have back at Riot House. The sweatshirt, slung over the back of the chair beneath the tiny window, that I forgot when I last came here; the old tennis shoes, and my grandfather's old, cracked compass on the window sill; the notepads, and the sketches pinned to the walls, and the candles, melted into puddles of wax on the dusty floorboards.
She pores over each little detail of the room, assessing and weighing each little thing like she's putting together the pieces of a puzzle that have been missing until now. I watch her silently, my chest aching, my hands burning with the need to touch her. I keep them to myself, though, leaning against the wall, savoring the unfamiliar, troublesome emotions that are digging their roots down deeper and deeper into me, wrapping their tendrils around my bones.
I always thought I'd find ultimate happiness within the pages of a book. I've been so convinced of that fact that I've devoted so much of my life to disappearing inside them, searching for that which has always eluded me. I should have known that I wouldn't find what I was looking for on ink and paper. Even the poets entrusted their foolish hearts into the hands of others. Especially the poets. That was both their salvation and their ultimate downfall; without knowing the joy of loving another human being, they would never have been able to write about the soaring joy that always made my heartbeat quicken. And they'd never have been able to capture true desolation and sorrow without enduring the kind of suffering that can only come from lost love.
As Elodie spins around, breathing deeply, taking everything in for a final time, I admit something that I've stubbornly refused to ever admit to myself before: I am fucking scared.
This girl has no idea the power she holds over me. She can't begin to imagine the lengths I will go to or the worlds I will burn down in my mission to make her happy.
“Not quite as impressive as my room at Riot House,” I say, when she comes to face me.
She shrugs, smiling. “I like this room just as much. It's yours. I can tell you've spent a lot of time here. I can imagine a younger, less jaded version of you drawing on the bed, and sitting in the chair, reading Treasure Island.
I laugh gruffly, nodding as I look down at my feet. I did both of those things more times than I can count.
“What's your room like downstairs?” she asks.
“Sterile. Bleak. Empty.”
She accepts this description without question. “I don't want to sleep down there, then. I want to sleep here. With all the memories of you, before I knew you. Would that be okay?”
Christ, doesn't she know that I will give her anything she fucking wants? I'll rip out my mangled, blackened heart for her and set it at her feet if it’ll please her. “Yeah. We can manage that.”
“Won't your father be scandalized if we sleep in the same bed?”