RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,99
air.”
He goes still. Doesn’t look up. Not really. Just turns his head slightly toward me, his eyes half-closed, turmoil written on the lines of his face. “That’s what you wanted, right? What you’ve wanted this entire time. For me to leave you alone?”
Yes. It is all I’ve wanted. I’ve waded through thigh-deep frustration and anger in my attempts to distance myself from him. But now that we’re here, he’s giving me this out… I’m pretending like this is some new revelation, striking me out of the blue, but that isn’t the truth. I’ve wanted him since the moment I set eyes on him, smoking that cigarette outside the academy, waiting for me in the half-drawn shadows. Even with his shitty attitude, and his sharp tongue, and his suspect history, I’ve wanted him. And that kiss we shared on Friday night made me unravel in a way that thrilled and terrified me.
“Who did you pay to find the bird?” I demand.
“What?”
“The bird. My mother’s bird. You left it for me outside my room. Who did you pay to sift through a filthy vacuum cleaner and collect all of the pieces?”
Wren’s head jerks back; his brows hike up his forehead, crimping together. “Who did I pay?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t pay anyone. And the pieces were a lot more difficult to come across than that. The janitor had emptied the vacuum into the dumpster by the kitchen. It was empty otherwise, but it was still an unpleasant task.”
Do I believe what he’s telling me? He not only didn’t force someone into doing his dirty work, but that he did that really, disgusting, unbelievably gross dirty work for me? I’m having trouble conjuring the image of him vaulting over the side of a dumpster so he can pick through grime and muck in order to do something kind for another human being. I get as far as seeing him there, beside the dumpster, but the rest of the image won’t materialize. In my head, he lights up a smoke, leans against the dumpster, curling his lip up in an arrogant, smug way as he tells me to go fuck myself.
“You were gonna ream me out for bullying someone into putting it back together for you. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s why you came here?” Wren asks. He sits down on the edge of his bed, waiting for me to answer. I don’t know that I can, though. Now that I’m here, and he’s acting weird and vulnerable, I’m at a complete loss.
“Yes,” I confess reluctantly. “I was. I figured you’d had a friendly conversation with Tom or one of his friends and suggested they do you a little favor or wind up with a black eye.”
Something doleful and unhappy plays out across his face. He studies his hands, picking absently at a chip of black nail polish. “I might have done that. Another time. But not for something I planned on giving to you, Little E. You seemed cut up over losing the thing, and…I don’t know,” he says, “I wanted to make it right. I wanted to make it right. Not coerce someone else into doing it for me. So, yeah. After the night of the storm, I went and found the janitor. He pointed me in the right direction, and I spent a couple of hours every night sticking my fucking fingers together with Gorilla Glue, trying to make it whole again. I had to use clay to fill in the parts where pieces were missing. And that was it. I fixed it. I gave it back to you. No need to make a big deal out of it.”
I’ve never seen him look more uncomfortable than this. He looks like he’s simultaneously being bitten by thousands of fire ants and having bamboo spikes shoved underneath his fingernails.
“I don’t understand you. How can you look so wound up and miserable over the fact that someone found out you did something nice for them?”
“Because I’m not nice,” he grinds out. “I don’t do nice things. I don’t know how to…be nice.”
This is not the Wren Jacobi I know. That Wren is confident and so sure of who he is. This Wren is tense, it feels like he’s going to blow any moment now. I sit down next to him without considering the consequences—how his close proximity might affect my breathing, or how the heat from his leg resting against mine might make my head spin like a top. “You didn’t answer the question,” he says.