I feel my lip curving up in a scowl, my jaw clenching.
“Wasn’t it you who said you’d never agree to a fake marriage? That you’d rather die?” I quip back and Vic freezes, right between the peninsula and the fridge. He looks back at me.
“Is that what this is about?” he asks, his voice strange and light. “Jealousy.” Victor turns around to look at me, crossing his arms over his chest. I can’t take the way he’s looking at me, so I just turn away and shrug.
“Whatever. I’m going with Hael then. I wasn’t asking you, by the way, I was just telling you my plans.” I start toward the door when Vic’s hand lashes out, like a fucking king cobra. He yanks me around to face him as Hael makes a sound of annoyance behind me.
“You really can’t handle it, can you? Just the threat of me marrying that girl is enough to undo you.” I tear away from Vic but we both know it’s only because he let me go. Oscar comes into the kitchen at that same moment, bringing in the scent of Pine-Sol and weed when he does. There are so many jars of it, stacked in the spare bathroom shower and on the floor. Even though all the plants have been processed, the smell has stuck to the walls and ceiling, no matter how often Oscar scrubs the fucking room.
“You’re not fighting with him again?” he asks, like the very idea annoys the shit out of him. “Over Trinity Jade?”
“Stop saying her name like that,” I bite out and Oscar smiles as Hael comes over to stand beside me, swinging his keys in a circle around his finger. When he puts a hand on my hip from behind, it burns. Tomorrow I’m going to wear those high-waisted, forties style shorts with the silver buttons. They’re black, and my ass hangs out of them, but I’ll wear them and sit on the hood of the Eldorado while Hael works underneath.
“Like how?” Oscar demands. There’s barely a question mark at the end of it, more like a statement. He takes his glasses slowly off his face and then folds the arms back. Vic looks from him to me.
“Like she matters,” I say, my voice sharp. “Because she doesn’t.”
“She doesn’t?” Oscar parrots, and Vic gives him a sharp look as Hael’s fingers squeeze my hip hard enough to bruise. He’s warning me to keep my temper. I know he’s probably right, that Oscar’s baiting me, but it’s working for some stupid fucking reason. “She seems pretty important right now; I won’t lie. If Vic really did marry her, he’d have access to business connections we could only ever dream of.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Vic says as Oscar stares me down with his graveyard-colored eyes. His smile is like a knife, and it cuts right through me. “Oscar, knock it the fuck off. I’ve warned you once.”
And he did, at the beach. If Victor said it, he’ll follow through with it. That’s the scary thing.
“Hm,” is Oscar’s only response. He moves past me and up the stairs toward the bathroom. I’m tempted to chase after him, just to punch him in the spine, but I’m not giving that asshole any power. It occurs to me that he might be as jealous of Victor as I am of Trinity.
I look back at Vic.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just show up to school on Monday together.”
“Why don’t you check in tomorrow and we’ll see?” Vic retorts, narrowing his eyes. He walks by and puts his hand on the top of my head in a way that just pisses me off. I smack his hand aside, but he just smiles at me.
“Careful, princess,” he warns, and I wonder, if I pushed, if he wouldn’t take me to bed and destroy me in it.
“You sure you want to come with me?” Hael asks, his voice a hollow echo, the way it gets when his family is brought up. I know why he stays, because of his mom. And mom is truly a powerful word, a blessing for some and a curse for others. I know all about the word mom. “It’ll probably be boring as fuck.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I say, glancing back at him and finding his honey-almond eyes on me.
“Okay, Blackbird,” he says, and then he steps away from me, releasing my hip and leaving me to shiver in the darkness of the Fadler house. “Get your stuff and let’s go.”
I wonder if, this time, I might be the one who gets to comfort Hael Harbin in the dark.
“Maman, je suis rentré!” Hael calls out when he opens the door and the spicy scent of cayenne pepper and oil drifts over to me. He tucks his keys into his jeans pocket as we pause in the living room so he can re-lock the door. There are seven locks in total on it which isn’t surprising over here in the Four Corners neighborhood. Everyone in South Prescott who gets gentrified off the block escapes over here, so it’s nearly as bad. Nearly. But not quite.
“Bienvenue!” she calls back. “Je suis en train de cuisiner dans la cuisine.”
“She’s making dinner,” he tells me, translating with a sly smile on his face. When he leans in toward me, I take a step back so he can put his palms on the wall on either side of me. Our bodies are far too close right now. Just the smell of him is making me sweat. “Do me a favor and hide your bag in my room. Mom doesn’t approve of sleepovers—especially with girls.” He winks, and I gape at him.
“Your mom doesn’t approve of premarital sex?” I whisper, trying to hold back a laugh. All things considered, I mean, come on, this is Hael Harbin. He laughs, putting his head down, forehead against mine. It feels nice, to stand like this, even if his mom could walk in at any moment. We’re sort of past parental scandal here in Havoc.
“She was raised Catholic,” he says in explanation, shrugging his shoulders and standing back up. “I don’t agree with it, but I play along.” Hael smiles at me, and I can tell why he does it. Because it’s not about rules, it’s about respect. He respects his mother, so he does his best to please her.
I look down at the floor for a moment, at the toes of the boots I’m wearing, and then back up at Hael.
“I brought heels,” I tell him, and it takes a moment, but he grins at me like a wild thing.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he says with a laugh, slapping my ass and sending me down the hall to his room. I store my bag on the floor on the far side of his bed, sweep my hands down the front of my hoodie dress to straighten it out, and take a deep breath.
When I walk into the kitchen, there’s a brass band on the radio and Hael is spinning Marie in a circle and then dipping her while she laughs. Her red hair falls back in a wave, the lines around her mouth brightening. When he pulls her back to her feet, she murmurs at him in French and then turns to look at me.
“Bernadette’s having dinner with us,” Hael says, and his mom smiles at me like she’s never seen me before. Maybe she doesn’t remember me from the last time I was here? I sure as fuck remember her, weeping and shaking and mumbling about people coming to get her.
“This is your new girlfriend?” she asks Hael in accented English. She sounds like faraway places and Louisiana secrets. I smile and nod.
“Yeah, I’m Bernadette Blackbird … Hael’s girlfriend.” Our eyes meet as I shake his mom’s hand and end up pulled into a hug instead. She squeezes me tight and then invites me to dance with her for a moment. I’m no good at it, but it makes me laugh anyway.
Hael hauls himself up to sit on the countertop, looking years younger than I’ve ever seen him.
“Qu'est ce que tu prépares?” he asks, his voice teasing. She slaps at him when he reaches over to snatch a package of cookies that’s sitting on the counter. The atmosphere in here is so disturbingly normal that I’m not quite sure what to do with it. I lean my shoulder against the cabinets, a genuine smile resting on skeptical lips.
“Après le dîner, Hael,” Marie chastises, and even if I can’t understand French, I can guess what she’s saying, and I laugh. No cookies until after dinner, Hael. As if her son doesn’t fuck like a porn star and kill people in the dead of night.
“Wow, Hael Harbin being told no dessert before dinner,” I tease, and our eyes meet from across the room. There’s a tension there that makes him curl his fingers around the edge of the countertop.
“I always save my dessert
for after dinner,” he tells me, voice dropping in invitation. His mom slaps at him again and chastises him in sputtered French, kicking us out to set the table.
After dinner, I get to see exactly what he means.
“Your mom is nice,” I tell him, studying the same comic books that I looked at last time I was here. The collection gives a nice, little insight into the man standing behind me. The tortured superhero, the story with a twisted narrative, the redeemable villain. It’s all here, contained in ink and glossy paper. The most important story that it tells, however, is the one about Hael himself.
Just as I find myself wishing I could believe in impossible things, things like justice and peace and goodness, so does he. It’s all a bunch of fairy-tale crap, but it’s nourishing to the soul.
“She is,” he agrees finally, but he doesn’t sound entirely happy about it. “Too nice.”
Hael rests his hands on my hips, but not before sliding them underneath the hem of the hoodie dress so that they’re pressed into my skin on either side. When I exhale, the fog from my breath obscures the image of my panties in the window.
“You want to get her away from your father?” I ask, and I can see Hael nod behind me.
“She’s a grown woman though, so what can I do? I can’t lock her up; I can’t make her leave.” He pauses, and we both know what he means by that. He could theoretically do those things; with Havoc, he has the power. But he wouldn’t. That’s what he’s trying to say. “I figure I’ll stay here either until graduation or until I can figure out a way to get rid of my father.”
“Considering all the things we do, I bet we could find a way to make that happen.”
“We’re racking up a big body count,” Hael says contemplatively. “I just don’t want to get caught. If that happens, we’ll never see each other again.” His voice sounds distant for a second, but then his hands are roaming up and he’s leaning down to kiss the side of my neck. “I hear you brought heels?” Hael asks, and I nod because I don’t have the voice to speak right now, not as he drags his hot fingers down my belly and teases the edge of my panties.
“Slutty ones,” I add, and he laughs, pushing his fingers under the panties and then into me. I’m so slick and wet that he’s able to put three in like it’s nothing. “Oh, Blackbird baby, you’re so ready for me and we haven’t even started. Must’ve liked Mama’s cooking, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I whisper, leaning back into him. I think about Brittany, but only for a minute. Just long enough to be glad that she isn’t carrying Hael’s child. Then I close my eyes and let Hael work his magic with steady fingers while he sears the side of my neck with his lips. “Can we get to the garage?” I ask, thinking of the Eldorado parked inside of it. What’s left of the cherry-red Camaro is outside and under a tarp. I wonder if Hael’s going to be able to fix it?
“Why the garage?” he asks me. “You want to see your car that badly?”
“I wanna see you shirtless and under the hood,” I breathe, leaning into him even harder as my knees get shaky and I find myself having trouble standing. Hael releases me without an orgasm and then licks his fingers in just such a way that I get chills when I turn around and see him doing it.
“We can go. Just don’t let my mama see you, cher. I don’t wanna get in trouble.” He gives me a naughty smirk before heading for the door and opening it. The garage door is immediately to the right, so it’s easy to sneak into without Marie noticing us.
Hael shuts and locks that behind us, pulling up a song on his phone and chucking it onto a rolling metal toolbox to play quietly. He cracks the window on the far side of the room just enough to let in a little night air as I look around.
Fat white moths fly around the light in the center of the room, wings flapping lazily. They look drunk. I glance back at Hael and find him trading out his t-shirt for a gray wifebeater. He kicks a small rolling thing that looks like a skateboard toward the hood of the car and then sits down on it.
“Looking good, huh?” he asks me, because I haven’t seen the Caddy since the day we got Brittany’s DNA test back. It looks substantially different already. Missing parts are now attached, it has wheels and tires, and there are the makings of an interior stacked in one corner of the garage.
“You’ve been working your ass off, Hael,” I murmur, moving over to the car and running my hand along the length of a rusted door.
“Don’t sound too excited,” he says, lying back on the board and then sliding underneath the car. “It gives me something to do when that man is here.” He makes a sound of disgust as I sit down on the stone steps near the door to the house and watch him. I’m not going to let him work for very long, and he probably knows it. This is our version of roleplaying, with just a little truth thrown in. That’s what makes it taste so goddamn sweet; you can feel that all-encompassing comfort of a story with a kernel of reality hiding at its core.
“You sure we can’t just … make him disappear?” I ask, thinking absently about the party and the knife in my hand. “Doubt you would’ve done it, even if you’d had the chance,” the ghost of Kali whispers in my ear. Fuck, I should take off this stupid spirit board dress. It’s probably summoning that cunt from the depths of hell.
“Probably will. Just not yet. We’ve got enough problems, don’t you think?” Hael continues tinkering with the car, and I realize he truly has just gotten straight to work down there.
“Maybe we should call off the last name on my list,” I wonder aloud, and Hael doesn’t answer me. I can’t decide if that’s because he enthusiastically agrees with me or vehemently disagrees. Could be either. It’s definitely not out of a sense of neutrality toward the question.
After a moment, I stand up and Hael’s head pops out from under the car.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, pausing with my hand on the doorknob as I glance his way. “And I’ll be careful.”
He laughs at me as I slip out and find the heels I packed earlier. They’re, like, four inches tall and made of black leather. Little skull charms hang from the peep-toes. I stole these from the Hellhole once and never wore them. I mean, fuck, I’m the queen of heels but nobody wants to walk around the Prescott High campus with bear traps on their feet. I’ll likely never wear these out … but wearing them in sounds nice.
I slip into one of Hael’s t-shirts to hide the fact that I’m not wearing anything but for these heels.
He hears the difference in footwear the second I step into the garage, sliding out from underneath the Eldorado to look at me.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he murmurs, sitting up and swiping a greasy hand over his face. I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t think he deserves this, and I can’t for the life of me understand why.
“You’re looking at me like you think I should run,” I reply, lifting a brow in question. With great reluctance, Hael lifts his eyes from my body to my face. The smile etched into his pretty mouth is tired and grim, that crack in his personality as visible as it’s ever been.
Unlike Oscar, Hael is okay with a little vulnerability.
My right hand curls into a fist against the doorjamb as I think about Oscar’s distant, gloomy gaze, about his words, like pins and needles being pushed into my soul. We’re all about heartbreak and unhappy beginnings here in Prescott.
I’m just hoping that whatever dark goddess is in charge of my life takes pity on me and gives me a happy ending.
“I’m looking at you like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver,” he tells me, standing up and then using his shirt to swipe some of the sweat and grease from his face. Luckily, he isn’t too fussy about it. I don’t want him clean; I want him dirty. I want his greasy handprints all over my naked body. “You have no idea what it means to me to have you here.”
“Tell me then,” I challenge, coming down the two steps into the garage. Our gazes meet, and I feel my breath being siphoned from my body. Hael is like an inferno, a fire that burns so hot it draws all the oxygen from the r
oom. There’s no question as to how he’s been able to have any girl, anytime, anywhere. There’s an exciting magnetism to him that none of the other Havoc Boys share, a lightness in the face of so much dark. While Callum has accepted that he will always live in the shadows, while Victor seeks to command them, Hael is determined to be happy. Ultimately, that’s the only thing he really wants.
And somehow, I seem to factor into that equation.
“How do you do that?” he asks me as the song on his phone changes to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things”. It suits him, this song. I reach down and curl my fingers under the hem of the t-shirt—it just so happens to be a Batman tee—as Hael runs his tongue across his lower lip. “Look at me like you can read me in a single glance.”
“I just make shit up in my head,” I retort, slowly pulling the shirt up to reveal the creamy whiteness of my thighs and the vibrant pink splash of my dragon tattoo. “In reality, I don’t know shit. I’m as lost as you are.”
“Bullshit,” Hael retorts with a ragged laugh, running his hand over the seam in his jeans and taking hold of his thickening cock through the fabric. “It’s because you’re a writer, a poet. You see into people’s souls.” He winks at me, but I know he’s being serious right now.
“And you’re avoiding my question,” I reply, letting the shirt fall back into place. Hael lets out this low, deep chuckle and shakes his head, like he’s about to leap across this room after me. “What does it mean for you to have me here?”
He watches me carefully and then begins to circle toward me, past the Eldorado, as I match his pace, staying just ahead of him. We end up walking in a circle as we face each other, those same fat moths fluttering around in the in-between space beneath the light.
“It means …” Hael starts, grinning at me like the devil he is. His bloodred hair matches mine now, like we were forged from the fires of hell just to find each other. “Avec toi j'ai l'impression d'être une personne et pas juste un bon coup.” He pauses, and I frown at him. Speaking in French is hot as fuck, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying, and he knows it.
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