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“Hey, do you know where Hannah is?”
“How should I know?” Anae snaps. “Probably scurrying around the basement with the rest of the rats.”
Wow. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.
“Allrighty then.”
“Wait,” she says sharply, slapping away the hand of the woman doing her hair and turning around in her spinny chair to face me. “Don’t go anywhere until I’m done in here. I want to talk to you and Hannah together before I leave for school.”
I frown, unsure what that’s all about, but as the poor woman doing her hair looks near tears, I decide I should probably let them get back to… whatever they’re doing.
Since I’ve looked everywhere else, I trudge up the closet steps in one of the guest rooms they don’t use and find Hannah in the attic.
This room was never meant to be a bedroom. It’s big enough to be a storage space, but not much else. Only the middle of the room is tall enough to stand up straight in. The roof slopes on both sides, rendering much of the space useless. They alsousedthis as storage space prior to putting Hannah up here, so there are totes and boxes filling the narrow spaces on either side.
I can’t be in this “room” without becoming enraged, so I focus my attention on Hannah, sitting on a little blue storage ottoman by the window since it’s the best source of light. In front of her is a scratched accent table they used to have in the foyer, but they moved it up here when Jackie bought an expensive new one. Apparently, Hannah is using it as her vanity, because she’s leaning over it now, applying mascara.
My problems fade away and my plan to turn the pool house into her place comes back full force. I got distracted with my own life, but I need to get back to that project. I’m convinced if I actually make the space habitable for her, maybe she’ll change her mind about staying there. It’s only a pool house, but it would be so much nicer than this fucking bullshit.
I know she loves this house, but I want to burn it down—with the Richards women still inside.
“Oh, you should have texted me that you were here,” Hannah says, sitting back and popping the mascara wand back into the tube.
“They make you get ready in here? It’s as dark as a dungeon. You can’t even use your old bathroom? It’s literally empty. Nobody’s using it.”
Hannah waves me off as she stands. “I’m sure I could sneak in there and get ready, but it’s not worth it. They’d be so angry if they caught me. The whole point of putting me up here was to punish me, it wasn’t because there wasn’t space for me downstairs.”
My eyes bug out. “You didn’tdoanything!”
Hannah shrugs, stepping into her shoes. “I displeased the king, and he likes to see me punished for it. Anyway, what do you need help with?”
“Right now, I need help with containing my temper because I want to go raise absolute hell with your stupid housemates.”
Hannah lightly grabs my wrist and drags me over to the window so she can actually see. Then her eyes widen when she catches sight of the hickeys. “Are those…?”
I nod grimly.
“Landon?” she guesses.
I nod again, exaggerating my pout.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place. Have a seat over here by the window so I can see what I’m doing.”
I glare out the window before sitting down with a huff. “If you don’t move on your own soon, I swear to god, I may be tempted to kidnap you.”
“It’s not all bad,” she says as she grabs her brushes and various makeup containers. “The view out this window is lovely. I can see the ocean. I didn’t have that in my old bedroom.”
All I want to do is rage and forcibly remove my best friend from her childhood home, so I force myself to keep quiet as she moves my hair and begins her task of covering all of Landon’s handiwork.
It takes a while, but when she shows me a mirror after she’s all done, I truly can’t even tell there was ever a mark on my neck to begin with.
“Wow, thanks, Hannah. You did even better than I expected.”
“No problem,” she says, turning around to return her makeups to their correct spots on her makeshift vanity.
I’m definitely buying her a vanity for the pool house.
I stand and look out the window at this view she claims is so great. My house is literally right on the ocean now, so the view from here doesn’t impress me, but it is nice.
