“I will eat my ice cream however the fuck I want,” I declare, leaning back in the skeleton hoodie, booted ankles crossed. My miniskirt rides up a little further than it should, the black buckles of my garters glinting in the lights from the diner window.
“Let her do it,” Hael purrs, hopping up beside me on the hood of the Eldorado. “Personally, I’m enjoying the show.”
“It’s not that I’m not enjoying it,” Aaron says, cupping his denim-clad crotch with a bit of a groan. “It’s that I’m enjoying it too much.”
“Why don’t you two just fuck in the backseat the way you did last time you were here?” Vic suggests, and I smirk at the jealous note laced through his voice. He’s watching me from the bench seat of the table where Aaron reclines, dark eyes drifting toward the street and then over to the woods on the other side of the lot.
“No fighting,” Cal warns, shaking one of the cans of spray paint as he glances over his shoulder. “We’ve had a good night tonight. Don’t ruin it by being jealous, Vic.” He stands up and strolls off in the direction of the portable toilets that line one side of the parking lot. This place gets busy enough that the single toilet inside isn’t enough, particularly when Prescott girls are always in there fixing their makeup. Or screwing. Plenty of kids go in there with that specific purpose in mind.
Anyway, Cal is able to slip into the shadows and out of Sara and Constantine’s view. I surreptitiously flick my eyes toward the metal pole of the now defunct sign as he begins to climb, shimmying his way up to the top. Once there, he makes quick work of the clown face, replacing it with one simple word.
That one word you definitely don’t utter at Prescott High.
Not unless you want them to own you. Destroy you. Consume you.
Not unless you want their love to obliterate you, to burn away your inhibitions like a moth drifting too close to the precarious twist of an orange-red flame.
Havoc.
“You did well tonight, Bernadette.” Oscar toys with the tray of food beside him, the tray he ordered much to my surprise. After a moment, he sits up straight and unwraps a burger, staring down at it with an intensity that would scare the shit out of me if, you know, I was the hamburger in question.
“Don’t act so shocked,” I say, sitting up fully and swinging my feet, heels bumping against the side of the Caddy. It fits in well here, with all these poor kids and classic cars and nostalgia. “I’m more than just a slippery cunt, you know.”
“As if I’ve ever treated you that way,” Oscar retorts and then, after another agonizing moment of staring at his food, he takes a bite of the burger. Good boy. He really is human after all.
“You’re right, you’re right,” I say, slicking my tongue around the ice cream cone in a way that really isn’t fair to poor Aaron. “You never treated me like a piece of ass—just a thorn in your side.” I wink at him to soften the blow, but it’s hard to stay mad at the guy when he’s got just the slightest bit of ketchup at the edge of his sharp mouth. He swipes it away with a quick flick of his tongue and I shiver. “But we’re all better now, aren’t we?”
“How could I mistreat you now?” he queries back, taking another bite of his food and closing his eyes for a moment while he chews. He opens them again, directing his attention back to me. “After what happened with the …” Oscar trails off for a moment, setting the remainder of his food down on the wrapper and meticulously cleaning his fingers with a napkin. It always throws me off when he’s wearing anything but a suit. Right now, of course, he’s got on the same matching black hoodie and black jeans as the others, but he’s the only one of the Havoc boys with a bit of white shirtsleeve peeking out against his tattooed wrists. “Miscarriage.”
“Ah, that,” I say, finally giving up on my sexual exploration of the ice cream and biting off the edge of the cone with a crunch. My eyes drift back to Cal as he slides down the pole of the sign just in time for Sara Young to glance his way. I swear, I can visibly see her sighing inside the Subaru. After a moment of what looks like arguing with Constantine, she starts the car and the two of them leave.
Guess they’ve had enough of watching us fuck and eat and chat like normal teenagers. Nothing to see here, folks. We totally didn’t just murder a nasty fucked-up pervert named Mason Miller. I have to say, I most definitely will not be seeing his ghost or James Barrasso’s ghost now or ever. I’ve got absolutely zero guilt about their metaphorical blood tainting my fingers.
“That,” Victor repeats with a long sigh, finally turning back to me. That stark possession in his gaze makes me shiver all over, and I know that when we get back to the hideous refuge of our safe house, I’ll probably spread my legs for him and submit beneath the wild, primal thrusting of his hips. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It wasn’t even really a miscarriage,” I start, but that’s sort of a cop-out thing to say. “It was a chemical pregnancy—meaning the egg is fertilized but it never fully implants in the uterus. If they hadn’t drawn my blood at the hospital, I might not even have realized …”
“Don’t downplay that shit to me,” Victor says, and his words are rough and very close to the cadence of his usual orders. But there’s pain there, too, and I have to remember that I wasn’t the only person that experienced that. It hurt him, and if it hurt him then it hurt me, too. I give him an apologetic look and he sighs. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay,” Aaron says as Callum rejoins us, chucking the spray paint into the nearest garbage can before he crawls up onto the hood of the Camaro and crouches there. Hael watches him for a moment, but then turns his attention back to me. I remember that day outside Billie Charter’s rachet ass trailer when Vic warned me against touching Hael’s car. Guess his sweet little bromance with Callum also allows for an exception to that rule.
“I’m not either,” Hael adds, shrugging his big shoulders. “But I feel marginally better knowing that Mason is a smear of crimson on the wall of KKKay’s.”
I shove the rest of the ice cream come into my mouth, chewing it thoughtfully.
“This will garner us a lot of respect among the lesser members of the GMP,” Callum muses as Victor hands him the rest of his chili cheese fries. Cal takes them, parking the basket between his booted feet as he maintains his crouch on the hood.
Across the lot, I see Vera climbing out of the passenger side of another pretty little vintage car. She’s wearing a completely different outfit than she had on at the club, and she pauses briefly on her way inside to wave at me. I wave right back.
“Frame-off restoration, mad respect,” Hael murmurs as he checks out her date’s car. He knows every student at Prescott with a classic car, and far too many details about their restoration projects. Sometimes, he forgets the person’s name but remembers the make and model of their vehicle. We all ignore him as he rubs his crotch the way Aaron did when it came to my sexual sucking of the ice cream cone.
“Mason’s death will make it even harder to convince any of his lower-level employees to come after us. Factor in James’ death, and the loss of Russ Bauer and Will Market, and there won’t be an asshole in that gang who volunteers for the project.” Victor is still watching me like the loss of that pregnancy is still weighing heavily on his mind. He’s talking business, but he’s thinking personal shit.
“Hey,” I tell him, sliding off the hood and moving over to stand in front of him. He isn’t about to just let me stand there, so he grabs me and yanks me into his lap instead, reminding me of that day he took me to the abandoned jailhouse and told me how much we both needed each other.
“I need a way to let my demons out, and you need a way to confront them.”
Fuck, that was sexy. How did I not just die on the spot? My fingers trace up the rounded curves of his tattooed arms, his sweater discarded so I can better examine the pull of his threadbare cotton shirt across his strong chest. No wonder Ophelia is afraid of her son. She should be. Their beef is far from just professional—it’s extremely personal. W
hen I let myself think about baby Vic suffering under the cruel hands of rich perverts, I start to crack around the edges with the desperate need for violence.
“Hey, what?” he asks, cocking a dark brow. My hands lift up to explore the masculine planes of his face. I use both of my thumbs to trace the beautiful curve of his lower lip. His tongue follows the motion, and my body gives an involuntary shudder.
“Think of the chemical pregnancy as a good thing. Like, it means I can get pregnant.” My mouth twitches a little since pregnancy and kids and shit are like, ten years too soon for me right now. “With my irregular periods, it was sort of a toss-up.”
Vic places his big hands over mine, pressing my fingers into each side of his face. Aaron watches us, but his body is relaxed, his expression soft. We’re settling into this together, into being a family, the way we should’ve been all along. Eight-year-old me should’ve lifted her chin up and stormed across that playground in her yellow rainboots and declared herself the keeper of these unruly boys. But since I can’t exactly go back in time, I’m making up for that now.
“When can we start on that by the way?” Vic asks, and I give a dry laugh. “Trying again, I mean.”
“You’re such a dick,” Aaron murmurs, glancing away toward the diner and the happy chatter from inside. We bounce back quick in Prescott. The shooting is a scar that streaks across the neighborhood, but we’re used to scars here. We live in the shape of scars, ragged lines that never quite heal. “She isn’t ready for a baby.”
“But when she is,” Hael begins, and I glance back in time just to see him flash a signature grin. “Who gets to go first? I think since Victor gets the legal marriage, and Aaron got the V-card—”
I interrupt here just to insert some of my ‘crazy political views’.
“Virginity is an abstract patriarchal social construct that has zero validity and exists for the sole purpose of commoditizing young women but go on, I’ll wait.”
Hael snorts and shakes his head, sitting up and leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees.
“I say it’s between me, Cal, and Oscar.”
“I say,” Cal begins, sitting down on the hood and putting his basket of fries in his lap. “We just fuck bareback and forgo a DNA test. Seems the fairest way to go, in my opinion.”
“You would think up an egalitarian approach to orgies and conception,” Oscar inserts, glancing back at me in just such a way that I wonder if he isn’t interested in a bio kid of his own. Biology means basically nothing to me. If I let myself dwell on it too much, I’d have to consider that Pamela and her broken, twisted DNA were an infection on my soul. That just can’t be true. We’re human, and if being human means anything at all, then it means overcoming the basics of biology by using our brains and our hearts and our spirits. “But I would like a child specifically made of my seed.”
My turn to snort a laugh as I adjust myself from Vic’s lap to the tabletop between him and Aaron, so I can better see all five boys at the same time.
“Just so you all understand that I’m the only one who gets to decide how this goes.” I muse on it for a moment, wondering if I’m really going to have to have like, five kids or something in the future, just to please five alpha dicks. “If you’re all really, really nice to me, I’ll consider your wishes on my thirtieth birthday. Then you can, like, draw straws or some shit.”
“I’m happy to go last or not at all,” Aaron volunteers, looking back at me with his pretty eyes glittering mischievously. He’s being serious, and he’s being nice, but he’s also throwing that niceness in the faces of the other boys to be a dick. Which I like. A lot, actually. “Whatever makes Bernie happiest.”
“Okay, fuck you, Fadler,” Vic says, chucking a stray fry in his direction, but he doesn’t sound totally pissed off about it. His obsidian gaze sweeps Aaron before panning across the other three boys. “Look, I’m not an easy person to get along with.”
“Understatement,” Oscar murmurs, but Vic just narrows his eyes and chooses not to comment.
“Anyway, I acknowledge Hael’s feelings—even if I consider him to be a whiny little bitch.”
“Aww,” Hael says, putting a hand to his heart as Cal chuckles. “I appreciate that, Vicki.”
“Call me Vicki again and see what happens,” Victor challenges, but he’s clearly being playful, and my heart swells like sixty-nine sizes larger. “We’re in this together, alright? I get it. I don’t share Bernadette; Bernadette shares herself. You happy now?”
“You look like you’re in the middle of an enema,” Hael muses, but he’s already smiling. “But you know what? I’ll take it. We’ve got to be solid, going into that fucked-up hellhole they call a prep school. There’s no room for dissent.”
Cal cups his hands around his mouth and howls, taking up the mantle of my little cry Havoc game.
The other boys follow suit and I mimic them, adding my voice to the chorus of sound as it takes over the night. In less than a minute, we’ve got more than three-quarters of the parking lot joining us.
It’s a fitting way to end our time at Prescott High, now isn’t it?
There’s something sinister about the grounds of Oak Valley Preparatory Academy. The last time we were here, to talk to David and Trinity, I felt it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Now that we’re here to stay, dragging bags from our cars and tossing them into a shared pile behind Hael’s Camaro, I know what it is: excess.
“Fuck, I hate this place,” I murmur, putting my hands on my hips as I stare up at the soaring sides of the dormitory. The ornate oak leaf designs around the windows and doors probably speak to some specialized form of architecture, but … we don’t really teach that sort of shit at Prescott High, you know what I mean?
I do, however, know that holding your keys between your knuckles isn’t a very good self-defense technique. Sure, if your attacker isn’t very experienced, those keys will hurt when you throw a punch. But if they know shit about shit, then they’ll just grab your hand in theirs and grind the sharp ends of the keys into you.
That’s what we teach at Prescott High. That, and how to contour, or do a Kegel, or suck a dick. Beat a bitch’s ass. Hotwire a car. That sort of thing.
I’m sure the teachers here are going to love the six of us.
I light up a cigarette as the boys finish unloading our things. We don’t have a lot—of physical crap anyway. It’s the emotional stuff we have in spades, that heavy, deep, aching sense of belonging, like a thorn in your side that you don’t want to pull out because you hate to love the way it hurts.
“At least we get to be here with the girls,” Aaron suggests, lighting up a cigarette of his own. The flicker of the flame bathes his just-this-side-of-too-pretty face in nicotine, tobacco, and bullshit. I like that, the way he can go from looking like the boy next door to the man that kicked the boy next door’s ass. “Three and a half months. That’s it. Then we’re done with all of … this.” He turns his green-gold gaze to the building, pausing at the sound of approaching footsteps on the gravel.
Before I even turn around, my eyes catch on Victor’s and I know exactly who’s going to be standing there when I finally deign to look.
Trinity Jade waits off to one side, dressed in her heather gray jacket and charcoal pleated skirt, sky blue tie catching in the breeze. It tangles her gold hair around her face as she studies us with dust-colored eyes.
“It’s always a pain when the wind shifts, isn’t it?” she asks, reaching up to tuck some stray blond strands behind her ear. “Sometimes, it blows Prescott trash into the wrong neighborhood.”
“Oh, and it looks like that’s too motherfucking bad,” I purr back at her, loving the way her eyes take in my curvy form, my too-small red tee that shows off my belly button, and the soft waves of my blood-dipped hair. Maybe she can see that I’ve got that freshly fucked look in my cheeks, too? Having five boyfriends is a real treat when you’re as parched as I am. “Because if you’re not really, really nice to me …” I mov
e up to stand in front of her, glad that I chose to wear wedges today. Tack those few extra inches onto my already much-taller-than-other-girls frame, and I tower over Trinity Jade. “I’m going to tell daddy Samuel all about your cheap-ass gangster blood.”
I grind my teeth briefly and flick my tongue against the corner of my mouth, just to taste my rachet ass lipstick, just to make sure it’s still there. If you’re smart, it isn’t difficult to steal nice lip stains. If you’re skilled, you can mix and paint and sculpt the cheap shit until it looks like the good stuff.
That’s what I’ve done today.
I call this shade Missed Opportunities. It’s red and scary and it reminds me of the blood that wouldn’t stop running down my legs.
Trinity looks right past me, toward Vic instead.
“I’ve spoken to my grandfather; he agreed to play along with this game of annulment for my sake, but he doesn’t understand. He’s a very forthright and honest sort of man. This won’t last long.”
Victor ignores her, looking at his Harley with a pained sort of expression. A valet is supposed to come by shortly to move our vehicles to the Student Parking Area. I don’t much like the idea of being separated from our only modes of transportation, but it’s part of the game, and we’re all very good at playing games.
“You can deal with my wife,” Vic says, gesturing in my direction with his chin as Aaron locks up the Bronco and gives it a gentle pat. Hael looks half-ready to cry over the Camaro, but it’s the Eldorado that’s really got him twisted up. “I restored that car for you, babe. Not for some stuffy ass valet to fuck around with.”
Sacrifices must be made, I suppose.
“Pardon?” Trinity queries, giving these long, slow blinks that really push me over the edge into believing she’s a true psychopath. Remember when I slammed her head into the bar at her own murder-mystery party? Or shoved the heel of my hand into her nose at the art gallery? I barely got a reaction out of the bitch. She’s fucking insane.
Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5) Page 25