“So good,” I murmur without even meaning to, my mind flickering back to a moment I’m not particularly proud of. It’s a moment I try to pretend doesn’t exist, that I’ve attempted to wipe from the narrative of my life. But it’s there, and I can’t forget it. Neither of us can, I bet.
“Shit, Bern,” Aaron growls back, curving his inked fingers against the back of my neck and giving me goose bumps. He pulls my face back toward him, kissing me again and then pressing our foreheads together. Our breath mingles as my eyes close and I’m reminded of that time in tenth grade when, in the midst of all Havoc’s bullying, Aaron and I fucked each other.
It was hot and desperate and sweaty, much like it is now.
It was also a mistake. I’m not sure yet if this is or not.
My hips move faster, increasing the frequency of our shared breaths, our mouths nipping at one another as we push closer and closer to the edge. I'm not expecting to have an orgasm, but it hits me anyway as I open my eyes and find his, watching me, always watching me.
The front door flies open and slams into the wall, but that doesn't stop me. When I look up and see Vic scowling at me, I shove my hand into Aaron's sweats and slick my thumb across the salty wet pre-cum at the head of his cock. He’s close, fingers digging into my upper arms as I give him a few hard, punishing pumps of my fist. Like a good boy, Aaron comes right in my hand, filling my palm with his seed.
Oscar and Callum appear behind Vic, stepping in from outside.
The former doesn't appear to have any reaction whatsoever, but the latter … Cal smiles at me in a way that sends heat shooting through my belly, like he’s remembering what happened between us yesterday. As for my part in the matter, I just sit back and look them over as Aaron pants beneath me. He doesn't even flinch when I wipe my hand on his sweats.
“Mitch is out for blood,” Vic snarls, looking at me like he's torn between kicking Aaron's ass or fucking mine. “We have a problem.” His head snaps up and his eyes narrow, causing me to turn and look. I don't expect to find Hael, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me with an inscrutable gaze. He grins, like he always does, but there's something missing, some key ingredient to his usual cocksureness. “The hell are you doing anyway?”
“Maybe you're not the only one who likes to watch?” Hael quips back, and I swear to god, you could hear a pin drop in that room.
“For the love of the devil's cock,” Oscar murmurs, which is actually a pretty fucking unique expletive. “I knew this would happen.” He moves over to my discarded shirt and picks it up off the floor, thrusting it out to me with a curled lip, like even the thought of touching something that was on my body disgusts him. Pig. I take the shirt, but I just use it to clean the rest of the cum from my fingers, staring Oscar's gray eyes down like I've got nothing to lose.
No, wait, not like I've got nothing to lose. I'm already there.
“You see a pair of tits and forget what's going on here?” Oscar snaps again, drawing Vic's sharp gaze. “The Charter Crew is at your house, Hael.”
“Fucking what?!” Hael snaps, breaking out of his strange reverie. He tears his eyes from me and then rakes his tatted fingers through his hair. “You got the boys on it?”
“They're on it, but we need to go,” Vic says, that booming voice of his cutting through the bullshit in the room. That's not a request; it's an order. I chuck the cum-covered t-shirt at Oscar's face, but unfortunately, he's a dexterous motherfucker and manages to catch it. Once he does, he drops it like it's hot and then scowls at me.
At least that's something, right? An actual expression of emotion.
“Bernadette, stay here with Aaron and Callum.” Vic moves to turn away, but I'm already standing up and facing him down, naked in a sea of tattooed demons. There are five very dangerous, very pretty men in this room with me. But the way they all look at me? I've never felt more powerful.
“You messed up by failing to show me that video; I'm coming.” Vic works his jaw for a moment, but then just shakes his head at me.
“You're going to be the goddamn death of me, Bernadette. Get dressed. You have two minutes, and if your ass isn't sitting bitch-seat, you're not going.”
I flip his back off as he storms outside, leaving me to stalk past Hael and up the stairs to grab my clothes. After I get dressed, I head out the front door and down the driveway, passing by Oscar as I go. He watches me, turning those gray eyes of his down to mine when I pause beside him. On impulse, I lean in toward him and lift up on my tiptoes, careful not to touch him.
It’s clear he doesn’t like to be touched.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t get off on seeing me with Aaron,” I whisper with my lips hovering near his ear. He scowls at me, but I’ve very clearly found a weakness in him that can be exploited: he doesn’t notice me slip his revolver out of Hael’s open trunk. It’s in a black leather gun case that I very quietly slip beneath my own leather jacket.
“Get away from me, Miss Blackbird,” Oscar purrs, in the most vitriolic way possible. But fuck him, mission accomplished. He clearly has no idea how much I mess him up. He must really freaking hate me.
Doesn’t matter, I got what I wanted, smiling as I move around him toward Vic’s bike.
I feel almost maniacally excited at the prospect of violence. After all, if I'm shedding blood, I don't have to give a second thought to what happened with Aaron. Or why Hael Harbin, of all people, was watching.
The Charter Crew—Mitch's insane motherfucking clown posse—are waiting outside this small white cottage in a shady part of town. Well, I think the cottage used to be white. The exterior walls are in desperate need of replacing; the bottom row of siding is covered in moss and clearly succumbing to the elements. Oddly enough, there are flowers planted in neat rows on either side of the walkway, some fall-blooming yellow thing that I'm pretty sure is an Oregon Grape.
Vic pulls right up into the middle of all that shit on his Harley, knocking the kickstand into place with his foot and then lighting up a cigarette, all before ever turning off the engine. Hael is right behind us, driving his Camaro right up and over the curb to park in the lawn. There are tire tracks there in the grass, making it fairly obvious that this is where he always parks.
He steps out of the driver's side, looking like a devil with that red hair of his, his beautiful mouth turned down in a frown. Oscar isn't far behind him, hands crossed pleasantly over the end of one of the baseball bats from Halloween night, still studded with nails but blessedly free of bloodstains. Chills chase up my spine as I think of Danny, lying dead on the bloodied floor. Where did they take him? Where did they bury him? And how did they get back so quickly? Supposedly, there are no secrets in Havoc, but is that really something I want to know?
“Where the fuck is my brother?!” Kyler snarls, getting right up in Vic's face.
For his part, Victor doesn't react, continuing to smoke his cigarette as my eyes pan past Kyler to find Billie and Kali. The former has red-rimmed eyes like she's been up all night, but the latter … she just smirks at me when she sees me, sending my pulse racing. How dare she flaunt herself in front of me like that. How goddamn dare she. I wonder, not for the first time, if the baby she's carrying is my stepdad's.
Kali keeps smiling at me, but it isn't a nice smile. As they say, every rose has its thorns. But I'll be damned if I let Kali Rose make me bleed. One day, the world is going to realize that she’s a lowlife, scummy, thieving bitch.
“What are you doing here?” Vic asks calmly, smoking his cigarette like he has all the time in the world. The wind catches the gray ash from the end, sending it spiraling down the quiet street. It smells like bum piss and neglect over here in the Four Corners neighborhood. On my right, there's a row of shitty, rundown houses from the 1940s. On the other side, the railroad tracks. Other than South Prescott, this is considered one of the worst neighborhoods in Lane County.
That, and it's Hael's home.
The look on his face as he leans back against the Camaro, mus
cled arms crossed over a red wifebeater, is pure murder. It's one thing to start a gang war in Prescott, it's a whole other thing to bring that shit to his fucking house.
“We're making a stand,” Mitch says calmly, reaching out to put a hand on Kyler's shoulder. He pulls his friend away, leaving Kyler to pace and run his fingers through his dirty blond hair. “Tell us what you did with Danny.”
Vic laughs, the sound like rusty nails and forgotten dreams. Mitch grits his teeth, brown eyes narrowing on Havoc’s leader. Mitch gestures with his chin, and then glances up in the direction of the chain-link fence that cuts across Hael's driveway. Just a few seconds later, several thugs in clown masks appear, dragging a redheaded woman between them.
She's wearing an apron, her face covered in bruises. One pink heel is still clinging to her foot, the other is missing.
“What the actual fuck?!” Hael roars, and then everything just happens in a blur.
Dozens of boys appear from the bushes, wearing skeleton masks—just like they did on Halloween night. Guns are drawn, and in less than a minute, Vic, Mitch, and I are in the middle of a stand-off.
“Let her go,” Hael growls out, losing every ounce of his usual cool. There's a deep-seated fear behind his eyes, a long-held terror finally realized. Mitch's cronies toss the comatose woman down on the gravel driveway and leave her in a heap.
It doesn't take a genius to put the pieces together: that's gotta be Hael's mom.
“Ballsy,” Victor says, still smoking, acting like he doesn't give a fuck about any of this. I can read the bullshit in his tense shoulders, but the show he's putting on must be good enough for Mitch because fear flickers in his gaze for the briefest of seconds before he banishes it.
Vic swings a leg over the motorcycle and stands up, leaving me straddling the back. Without being asked, I get off, too, and head straight toward Hael's mother.
“Tell your bitch to back off,” Mitch snarls as one of the clown-masked assholes turns his weapon on me. I ignore him, kneeling down next to the woman and swiping some of her red hair back from her face.
“If you call my girl a bitch one more time, I will kill you, and I won't care who sees me do it.” Victor's gaze follows me for a moment before he turns back to Mitch. “You think you can waltz into my brother's home and assault his mother and there won't be consequences? I sure hope you know what you're up to, Mitch.”
Mitch laughs, but the sound is strained. He's playing the nonchalant act, too, but he's not nearly as good at it as Vic is. In fact, that's Mitch in a nutshell, isn't it? A less good Vic. A watered-down Vic. A charlatan. A fucking copycat. Call him an inspiration, if you will, but Havoc was here first. We were here first.
Do it first or do it best, but when somebody does it first and best, well, you're fucked.
Good choice for the Charter Crew, to choose those clown masks, because that's all they are. Imitations. Shadows.
Havoc, they're OG.
And I'm one of them.
“You think we knocked this bitch out?” Mitch asks incredulously, pointing over at Hael's mother. “We found her like this.” A smirk lights his lips as I glance back to watch the interaction between him and Vic, sitting down to pull Hael's mother into my lap. “Looks like her ol' man was knocking her around a bit.”
“Fuck,” Hael growls, the pain in his voice like broken glass. It cuts me to hear it, deeper than I ever could've expected. Even after seeing the video, even after knowing they kept it from me. Shit, Bernadette, you're getting soft. Only … I don't feel soft. Instead, I feel the opposite, like something inside of me is solidifying, turning my heart to stone.
I turn my eyes back to Mitch and frown.
The Charter Crew, what a joke.
In this world of sinners and saints, there is only one authority.
Havoc.
“What goes on with our families is none of your business,” Vic says as Mitch circles him. Victor doesn't even bother to follow him with his eyes, so unconcerned by his rival that he'll show his back to him. Pretty gutsy, if you ask me.
The woman in my lap stirs, murmuring in French as she struggles to sit up. I try to soothe her, smoothing back her hair with my fingers, but she shoves me away, pushing herself into a sitting position, red hair disheveled, pretty face mottled with bruises. She looks around the mess we've made of her neighborhood before her eyes settle on Hael.
“Qu'est ce qu'il se passe?” she whispers, brown eyes widening. One of her hands comes up to tangle around a cross hanging at her throat. “Ils ont fini par venir pour moi c'est ça?” I have no idea what she's saying. There aren't exactly a lot of foreign language classes at Prescott High. We have an English as a Second Language class for Spanish-speakers, but that's about as close as we get to culture in South Prescott.
“Calme toi Maman. Ça va bien se passer,” Hael pleads, taking a step closer to her, and even though the situation sucks, and I'm royally pissed at the Havoc Boys, I have to admit that it's hot when he speaks French like that. When one of Mitch's guys pulls back the hammer on his revolver, Hael stops in his tracks, scowling and cursing under his breath. “Nique ta mère, Mitch,” he murmurs, but nobody but Hael knows what that means so the insult is lost in translation. “Let her go back in the house, and we'll deal with this like real men.”
“Real men?” Mitch asks as Kali watches me with dark eyes from across the street. I can only pray her ass gets hit by an oncoming train. If only the universe were so kind. “Real men don't play games in the dark. Where. Is. Danny? Either you take us to him now or else this shit gets real.”
“Wrong,” Vic snaps, flicking his cigarette aside and pointing at Mitch with a tattooed finger. He looks like a dark god right now, commanding an army of undead delinquents. It shouldn't make him more attractive to me, but it does. I both crave his commands and despise them, all at the same time. “Real men, as you've so eloquently put it, are as at home in the dark as they are in the daylight. If we want to play games with poor little Danny, who's to stop us? Besides, there's nothing for us to take you to. We fucked around with him and he ran off into the woods. Not our fault if he fell into a cougar's jaws.”
“Goddamn it, Victor,” Mitch snarls, but before he can get another word out, Hael's mother starts screaming.
“They're coming for me!” she screams in a strange accent, digging her fingers into her hair, eyes darting wildly around the neighborhood. “They're already here; I can smell them. I can smell them. Je les sens.”
“Arrête ça, Maman,” Hael pleads, his teeth gritted, shame coloring his face. This isn't something he ever wanted anyone else to see, let alone Mitch and his crew. Things start making sense: the way Hael acts when his mother is mentioned, the way he avoids her calls, the pair of them homeless and sleeping in the shelter with me and Pen and Pamela.
Clearly, Hael's mom has some serious mental health issues.
She tries to tear away from me, and several guns swing our direction. I stand up after her, trying to keep her still and quiet, but she's fighting me, clawing at my skin with long nails, weeping and shaking and murmuring in French.
“Get that crazy cunt to calm her tits down or—” Mitch starts, but I’m just done listening to men squabble. This woman needs help. Now.
“Or you'll show us all what a real man can do?” I interrupt, reaching beneath my leather jacket and removing the revolver I pinched from Oscar. As soon as he sees me going for it, his gray eyes widen behind his glasses. He didn't expect this shit, now did he?
Glad to know I can pull one off on these boys.
I level the weapon on what's left of Mitch's El Camino. It's fucked from when Hael ran the SUV into it, and I feel my lips split into a grin as I fire a round into the rear windshield, shattering what’s left of it.
“What the fuck?!” Mitch howls, but there are too many witnesses here for anyone to actually put a bullet in another person. This is all for show, all an act. Well, I'm tired of playing my part. I want a new role. I fire off another round into one of the rear
tires as chaos erupts around me.
This dark, horrible part of me cackles as fists fly and the boys spill blood, and I'm tempted to point this gun at Kali and cross her name off my own list. But I don't. I know better. Besides, Hael's mother is in full hysterics now, sobbing and clinging to me like I'm her only way out.
“They're after me,” she whispers in that unusual accent of hers. “And they'll get you, too, cher,” she sobs as I tuck the gun back beneath my jacket, catching her before she falls to her knees. While the world around me falls to violence and turmoil, I take Hael's mother by the hands and lead her up the front steps and into the house, closing the door behind us.
Nobody notices us leaving, so I take advantage of the moment and get her situated on the couch as she cries. The house smells like bleach, but underneath it, there's the acrid stink of piss and cigarettes. This woman, in her pink apron, she clearly cleans it, but there's somebody else here who messes it up, and I'd bet the very few pennies I have to my name that it isn't Hael.
“Cher, listen,” she says, taking my hands in hers as my eyes flick to the front door, wondering when or if someone might come storming in here with a gun in their hands. Or if the cops will show up. Unfortunately, the Four Corners neighborhood is technically unincorporated Springfield, meaning the city police won't show up here for shit; this is county territory, so we'd have to wait for the sheriff. Likely, none of the neighbors will bother. The people who live here are well-aware of the costs of getting involved in a gang war. “They're coming for me.”
“Who?” I ask, even though I know I probably shouldn't engage this woman without Hael around. She squeezes my hands, digging her nails into my skin. The move triggers something inside of me and I tear away, stumbling back several steps as old memories come flooding into my brain, a broken dam that rages and destroys as it overflows its banks.
“Bernadette,” Mom snaps, turning around to look at me, digging her red nails into my arm hard enough to draw blood. Her face is a mask of rage; I can't bear to look at it. Instead, I focus on the crescent marks in my skin, unsure of where my blood ends and her red nails begin. “This man is going to be your new daddy. You will show him respect, or I'll beat it into you.”
Chaos at Prescott High Page 9
