RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,98
off to one side, the line of my jaw hard like I’m clenching it, and there’s a detached, aggressive light in my eyes that makes me look hard, too. Fierce.
“I liked you best when you were angry. In the beginning,” Wren says. He stands in the doorway with his arms loosely folded across his chest, watching me with another of his unreadable, unfathomable expressions on his face. “I don’t know anymore, though. Now, I like seeing you smile, but it’s hard to paint you like that.”
“Why?” The word comes out as a whisper. A single, rush of air past my lips.
“Because you’ve never smiled at me, Little E. I could steal those moments where you looked angry, when you weren’t looking, because they were familiar. I’d already earned the anger and the hate you wore. But when you laugh with Carina, or you smile at someone you don’t even fucking know as they pass you in a hallway…” He shakes his head. “I don’t own those moments. They don’t belong to me. I sure as shit have no right to take them and make them my own.”
“I didn’t even know you painted,” I whisper.
He arches a dark eyebrow, canting his head to one side. “Didn’t you?”
“Urgh, yes. I did. I don’t even know why I said that. I just…”
“You don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to feel. You’re scared of the truth and what it could mean. Down is up, and up is down…”
He makes it sound so confusing. It’s as though he’s reading my mind. “Yes. All of that,” I agree.
He enters the room, approaching with slow steps that seem designed to give me time to react and escape. I remain rooted to the spot, not daring to breathe as he gets closer and closer. He stops, close enough that his arm brushes up against mine as he comes to stand in front of the painting, his sharp green eyes assessing his work with a cold detachment. “I don’t like painting people,” he says quietly. “No matter how well I capture their likeness, I always end up projecting my own emotions onto them. They always end up angry and ready for a fight.” He touches his fingertips to the deep furrow he painted in between my eyebrows, rubbing them as if he might be able to ease the tension he created on my face.
“You shouldn’t have come here, y’know,” he says tightly. “This isn’t exactly a safe place for someone like you.”
“Someone like me? God, I’m not some weak, pathetic, defenseless girlchild who can’t look after herself. I think Pax’s esophagus will attest to that. And this is your home, anyway. What the fuck do you get up to here? Am I supposed to be worried for my safety?”
“Yes!” He sounds so exasperated. Looks it, too. Dragging his hands back through his hair, he wheels away from the painting, stepping toward his bed. “I can’t spell this out for you, Elodie. It’s too…it’s fucking complicated, and I should never have pursued you the way I have been doing, but I’m a prick, all right? I’m not known for doing what’s best for other people.”
Biting down hard, clenching every muscle in my body, I gather up what little courage I have, and I ask the question I came here to ask. “You disappeared, Wren. You vanished for three whole days without any word of explanation. Are you gonna tell me where you’ve been?”
He shakes his head so slowly, looking down at his hands. “No. I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
Wow. He’s really not going to tell me? “Were you—were you hooking up with girls. Is that why you won’t say?”
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Would you be jealous if I had?”
It kills me that I let myself ask that. It kills me that he looks so damn pleased with himself now. I just revealed a soft, vulnerable part of myself; I bared my neck, exposing myself to him, and now he has all he needs to rip out my throat. “Just answer the question, Wren.”
Still glowing with satisfaction, he sucks on his bottom lip, shaking his head again. “No, Little E. There were no other girls.”
Relief should be the very last thing I feel, but it surges up inside me nontheless. “Okay. So, what? You’re just done with me now? Because normally guys don’t make you promise to spend time with them and then just disappear into thin