RIOT REUNION (Crooked Sinners) by Callie Hart

Author:Callie Hart [Hart, Callie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-06T18:30:00+00:00

19

WREN

The key turns in the lock.

So surreal.

When we closed up the house and drove away at the end of summer, I didn’t think we’d be back here for a long time. Long enough to forget how the place smells. How normal it feels to walk through the giant front door, like it’s only been a matter of hours since we were here, not a couple of months.

We’ve already missed a week of college. Harvard isn’t the type of school you can just no-show, but we had our assignments sent to us, crying illness. Thanksgiving is right on top of us anyway, so here we are, back at Riot House. I dump our bags just inside the door, a complicated tangle of emotions pulling taut in my chest. My relationship with this house is difficult. My father never wanted me to buy the place. I made mention of the fact that I wanted it in passing, and he’d informed me in no uncertain terms that I wouldn’t be buying it. I was underage, and he was my guardian. My grandfather had only just died and left me my inheritance. General Jacobi had assumed that he could torment me, lording over me the fact that he would have control of my money until I came of age. It had come as a rude awakening to him when my grandfather’s estate had named someone else the executor of my inheritance. A lawyer of my choosing. That had been easily dealt with. Fifty thousand a year to let me do whatever the hell I wanted with my own money. A private agreement, made in confidence between myself and my legal counsel. Nothing on paper.

So, I’d bought the house. I don’t think the General even knew I’d done it until a year later, when Wolf Hall Academy’s board had written me up for throwing parties and leading my fellow students astray. They’d recommended to my father that I move back into dorms, where the beadiest of eyes could be kept on me. He’d been livid, naturally. He’d given up trying to control me by then, though. So long as I wasn’t under his roof, it didn’t matter to him which roof I was under.

Elodie sighs dreamily as she follows me inside. Her eyes rove over the familiar hallway, drinking everything in, a thoughtful look on her face.

“Weird?”

“Weird.” She agrees. “Feels like we never left.”

I neglect to say that it feels right, being back here. Our new home in Cambridge is an empty shell. No furniture. No artwork. No personality. No memories. Little E and I haven’t had a chance to make it our own yet. There are so many memories absorbed into the very walls of Riot House. My own art hangs on the walls. There isn’t a surface within this building that I haven’t fucked Elodie Stillwater on.

This is home.

Elodie almost looks sad as she spins around, pirouetting a full three-sixty, taking everything in. “It’s a shame we can’t move this place, brick by brick, to Harvard.

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