Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5)

by C. M. Stunich

From the corner of my eye, I can see them. Shit, I can feel them. Seeing me on the ground like this, beneath number seven on my list, must just kill them. If I were one of the boys right now, I’d probably defy my queen’s order and come out swinging.

  Victor is standing there like a statue, stone-still, his control absolute. It’s what I see in his eyes that terrifies me, all the awful, awful things he’d do to Pam if given the chance. Aaron has his left hand balled into a fist, leaning against the doorjamb like he can’t bear to stand up. Hael is pacing, raking his fingers through his bloodred hair, while Callum crouches on the walk just in front of Aaron.

  It’s Oscar, stoic, immovable Oscar, who looks like he might actually come for my mother. The only thing that stops him as he starts forward is a swift look from Victor, one that demands perfect obedience.

  “Pamela Pence!” a voice calls out, and then my mother is being hauled off of me. She’s screaming at me, but I can’t hear a word she’s saying. I think I’ve learned over the years how to filter out her toxicity. I roll over in the grass and push myself up to my knees.

  That’s how I’m going to win this war.

  Cramping from a miscarriage and shaking from old hurts and raw anger.

  I glance back to see Sara Young, Detective Constantine, and the uniformed officers from the squad car across the street.

  Bingo, bitch.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asks as Oscar moves over to stand beside her, his face so pinched you’d think he just swallowed a fucking lemon. Police Girl is crouched down next to me, one hand on my shoulder, but her eyes are on the blood between my legs. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “The GMP did this to me,” I whisper back at her, and I don’t have to fake the way my voice quavers. I’m furious. At Pamela. At Ophelia. At this gang war. At the entire world. Justice is never meted out the way it should. I don’t believe in karma or otherworldly punishments. Only I can carve out my pound of flesh. “They took the choice away from me.”

  Because that’s what I believe in: choice. My body, my choice. And they fucking took that from me. I shove up to my feet and stumble into Oscar. He catches me easily, and then holds me much closer and much tighter than I expected.

  “It’s just a bad period, she’ll be fine,” Oscar says smoothly as I close my eyes and lean into him. “What are you going to do with Pamela?”

  “Well, first off, I’m going to add assault and battery to her list of charges.” Sara pauses, and I glance over to find her expression bewildered. I’ve managed to confuse her. Again. She has no idea what to think of me.

  See, look, my boys didn’t react to that violence. They are stable. They don’t hurt people just for hurting me.

  “She killed Neil, didn’t she?” I ask, my voice grim as I try to stand up. Oscar won’t let me go, however. Instead, he keeps me clutched in his inked arms like I’ll drown if he doesn’t keep me afloat.

  “I can’t speak on an open case,” Sara says, but there’s a strange lilt to her voice that tells me all that I need to know. “Bernadette, I’d like to speak with you again. I’m afraid you’re not safe here. The Grand Murder Party isn’t another high school gang to trade insults with. They’ve wiped out their entire crew here in Springfield.”

  My eyes widen slightly. Don’t have to fake that one. Well, shit, that helps explain the shooting. Kill Stacey and her girls for the robbery. Get rid of the rest of the Charter Crew so there’s nobody left to squeal. Destroy Havoc.

  Only … I once described Havoc as a five-headed hydra. You cannot destroy something that is legendary.

  “We’re going to move to a safe house,” I tell her, pushing away from Oscar and then throwing my arms around the detective. It’s a risky move. The cops in South Prescott have been known to shoot you for less. But I go for it and then whisper in her ear. “I’ll send you the address; I’m afraid, Sara.”

  I let go of her and sniffle, cringing as I look down and realize how much I’m bleeding. I need to get inside, clean up, empty my cup. This is annoying to me already.

  “You need to see a doctor, Bernadette,” Sara stresses, flicking her eyes to Oscar and then past him, toward the house. All of the boys are waiting outside—even Callum. As soon as she sees him, Sara’s face tightens. “I see you’ve found Mr. Park.”

  “They tried to kill him,” I tell her, and this time, I don’t have to glance back at Vic or Oscar to figure out what I’m supposed to be saying. I’m queen here. I live and breathe south Prescott. Havoc is mine. I know what I’m doing. “He ran and hid. One guy had a garrote.”

  Sara’s nostrils flare as she notices the scabbed-over gash on Cal’s neck.

  “That would be Russ Bauer,” she says, and I’m not sure why she’s telling me this or if she’s even supposed to say as much. “He’s an enforcer for the Grand Murder Party. Bernadette, if they’re sending him after you then you really are in danger. You should be in protective custody.”

  “We handle our own in the southside, police girl,” Oscar says, his tone dismissive and cold. “Why don’t you do your job, and we’ll do ours?”

  “Which is what? Playing at being gangbangers? I don’t think you understand what you’re up against,” Sara says, her cool façade cracking around the edges. She’s wearing black pants and a very familiar looking blue jacket. Bet ya it says FBI in yellow on the back.

  “Did you see the carnage at Prescott High?” I ask, shaking my head. “It’s not a crime to defend ourselves which we will do if pushed.”

  Sara just stares at me like I’m a puzzle she’s desperate to put together. She wants to understand me, but she can’t. We’re from different worlds. Doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. We want the same thing: for the bad guys to be punished.

  “There must be a reason you and your partner were hanging around here,” Oscar deadpans, turning his attention over to Detective Constantine. Shit, I have no idea why I keep calling him ‘detective’. He’s obviously with the VGTF as well. I think about when we first met, and he was questioning me over Danny Ensbrook. Because of the GMP.

  The FBI thinks the GMP took out the entire Charter Crew.

  This could be a good turn of luck for us.

  “We’re expecting the GMP to hit you hard-and-fast,” Sara explains, glancing over at the squad car with Pamela in the back seat. Nailing her for Neil’s murder … That’s such a Havoc move right there. What was it that Victor said to me at the boutique? “Poetic justice, personal choice, and wrongs made right.”

  Perfection.

  “We could protect you, Bernadette. All of you. If you wanted,” she continues when I don’t respond to her previous statement. She’s grooming me to be a snitch. Baiting me. I refuse to rise to the occasion, staring wordlessly back at her until she shakes her head and turns toward Callum instead. “Mr. Park, a word?” she asks, and he complies, moving over to speak to her on the driveway.

  Me? I barely make it into the house before my head starts to spin and I get so dizzy that I can’t find my feet.

  Surprisingly, it’s Oscar motherfucking Montauk who picks me up and carries me upstairs to the shower.

  “You are in so much fucking trouble for making me watch that,” Vic growls out as we pass by, but I know he doesn’t mean it. I killed that. Pamela is in custody. Sara knows the GMP caused my miscarriage.

  Oscar is … being nice?

  We might just win this after all.

  Stranger things have obviously happened.

  Oscar Montauk

  I put Bernadette in the bathtub and then crouch down beside it, laying my forearms along the side and resting my chin atop them. On the outside, I’m nothing if not calm, stoic even. On the inside, I’m shattering and cracking into a million tiny splinters. And every single one of them is aimed at the heart of the GMP.

  How dare they do this to her, of all people … How dare they?! HOW FUCKING DARE THEY?!

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Bernadette asks as I blink at her, still unmoving, my muscles locked and tense. God help
the first person to cross me that isn’t family.

  “Are you upset?” I ask, my voice like a stone wall. Why anyone would want to breach it is beyond me. But … I’ve said it before myself: blood in, blood out. There are certain things that cannot be undone.

  Especially this, Oscar Montauk, you fool. Especially this.

  My left hand twitches with the need to touch the side of her face, but I can’t quite seem to get myself to move. Maybe I’m afraid that if that happens, I won’t be able to control myself. What if my fingertips brush her soft face and I feel her sadness swirl through me like a storm? Then I’ll take as many guns as I can carry and do something that we’ll all regret.

  My control is not absolute. You should ask fucking Victor for advice.

  I pinch my mouth, and it occurs to me that Bernadette cannot read my goddamn thoughts. I scowl and spit and sneer, and that’s all she sees. She doesn’t know what goes on inside, how fucking conflicted I am. How twisted.

  “Upset?” Bernie asks, taking off her grass-stained shirt with some long-gone fascist that used to be president on it. I abhor politics, one of the few remaining facets of modern-day life where common sense means nothing. The whole world is stupid as far as I’m concerned. All I want is this, me and Bernadette Savannah Blackbird and an eternity of quietly whispered things, fingertips tracing flesh, and sweet mouths. “About what?”

  Her bloodied shorts come off next. She tosses them at me, and I catch them. Glancing down, I see ruby red color staining my fingertips. When I lift my gaze up, I see her scoot forward and turn the shower on, letting the hot water run over her as she sits naked in the bathtub.

  It’s a moment like before, when she was on the toilet last night telling us about the pregnancy. I did nothing then. How could I? I have no idea what to do or how to behave in these sorts of situations. For fuck’s sake, my mother used to dye my hair as a child so that her husband wouldn’t suspect I wasn’t his biological kid; I’ve never stopped. Clearly, I have issues. More than anyone else in this fucked-up little family I’d imagine.

  I raise a single brow. It’s the most expression I usually show that isn’t somehow related to disdain, carnal delight, or sarcasm.

  “Don’t make me state the obvious,” I purr back, turning away so Bernadette can clean and reinsert her menstrual cup. She doesn’t seem to give a shit that I’m in here, watching with eyes that have already seen too much. My father might not have been the biological contributor to my DNA, but he certainly left his mark on me. He molded me into the monster I am, right at about the same time he put his gun to his temple and took his own life.

  Sometimes, I swear to god I can hear the sound of his body hitting the ground. Thump. Over and over and over. Thump, thump, thump. I blink again and force my lips to smile. Bernadette is just staring right back at me, like she’s waiting for something.

  “The miscarriage.” I start with that because it’s the most obvious and most pressing point. But what about the rest of it? What about the way her face changed before Pamela slapped her? What about the way her hands shook? “Your mother. How do you feel about that?”

  “Do you think we can talk freely in here? Because I have theories about the GMP.” Bernie grabs that damned peach soap of hers and my hand snaps out, long, inked fingers curling around her wrist. It’s such a strange sight, to see my hand touching someone else’s skin. I can feel her pulse thundering in my hand, and I rub my thumb along the dancing heat of it.

  A small, sharp gasp escapes Bernie’s throat, and I close my eyes in pleasure. When I bring her wrist to my mouth, she lets me take it. Carefully, gently, I uncurl some of my fingers, exposing an inked portion of her wrist.

  There’s a small book tattooed here with a quill pin twirling above it. My mouth curves up sharply at one side. Ah, the clichéd tattoo of a dreamer. Nothing has ever looked so beautiful to me before. The thing with dreamers like this, they sometimes get the silly idea that they’re ordinary.

  In reality, I’m drawn to this girl as a shooting star is drawn across the sky.

  Some things cannot be undone.

  This is one of them.

  “Take, O take those lips away,” I whisper, kissing her pulse again. She tries to draw her arm away and my fingers wrap tight again, nails digging into her flesh. “That so sweetly were forsworn.”

  “I think I care more for the miniscule cluster of cells I just lost than my mother ever did for me.” Bernadette stops talking and this time, when she tries to pull her arm away, I let her. I stand up. That old, familiar panic surges through me, but I tamp down on it; Bernadette is more important than any fear or hesitation that I might feel.

  Four months ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve walked away, left her in here to cry. Or worse: not cry. Because emotions that stick around inside of you for too long, they rot. Trust me, I know better than anyone.

  Two years ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve whispered awful things in her ear and I would’ve delighted in seeing her face darken with anger. Because that meant this strange hold we have on one another, this attraction that never goes away, that it could be broken somehow. Or at the very least, stretched. She might’ve walked away and known a life of ignorance and bliss.

  But this … it’s nothing but passion and poison.

  I reach over my shoulder and grab a fistful of my shirt, lifting it over my head and tossing it aside. I reach my right hand back and flick off the lights. Every movement that I make hurts; there is no part of me that isn’t terrified right now. Yet, I’ve been letting this one fear above all others consume me, and I can’t let it do that anymore. Not when Bernadette needs me the way she does.

  “What are you doing?” Bernie asks as I strip off my pants and step into the tub, sliding my naked body around hers. I’ve always wondered what the point of these oversized tubs was. Now I know. “Oscar …” she starts, reaching down and curling her fingers through mine. I hiss at the sensation, but I don’t pull away. The heat of her is incinerating.

  “I have no idea,” I say, my lips pressed against the side of her neck. There’s a hickey there. I stare at the shape of it and imagine that it feels familiar. I left that there. I lift my eyes up to the faucet as it drips into the tub. She’s finally put the plug in, and it’s filling with water that feels lukewarm in comparison to her skin. “This is all new to me. You seem to be okay with it though. Why don’t you tell me?”

  She stays where she is for a minute and then leans back into me.

  After a minute, I swear I can feel her smiling. I can certainly hear it when she speaks.

  “And those eyes, the break of day,” she murmurs, the peach soap floating in the tub and bumping up against my hand as it stays banded across her belly. “Lights that do mislead the morn.”

  My own mouth tilts into an uncomfortable sort of smile.

  We should not be smiling.

  Our school was shot up.

  This girl is suffering.

  We could very well die before we graduate.

  It’s something that I’ve always feared. In that moment, I swear I can feel it, this pall that falls over us both like the shadow of something morbid creeping its way in. My eyes close and I squeeze her even tighter.

  That’s why I’m smiling.

  Because you’ll only know true regret when it’s too late. I want to smile now, just in case. Just in case one of us doesn’t make it out of this. Just in case neither of us does.

  “Do you think broken people fit together just right sometimes?” she asks absently, her hair tickling my bare chest. My cock is rock-solid, but that’s mostly irritating to me. I can’t help the blood that rushes to it every time I see Bernadette, but now is definitely not the time. She needs rest and respect, not a man with so little self-control that he was afraid to fuck because he might kill. “Like, their jagged edges fit together so they don’t feel so broken anymore?”

  I pause, listening to her swirl her finger in the water.

  “At least whe
n I’m with you, I don’t crave death the way I do when I’m alone.” I stroke my fingers gently down her belly, wondering absently what I would think if she were still pregnant. Mostly, I think, I would feel sorry for her. Because she doesn’t want a baby. She shouldn’t want any of us. But she’s got us. And I, I would be inappropriately thrilled, almost to the point of being obscene. It’s why I always ask about it. Because I want to know. Because I’m desperate to do something awful and embrace my selfishness. Only I don’t. Not to Bernadette. “You don’t deserve the burden, but there it is. I’ll try my best to lighten the load.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a burden to me.” Bernadette lifts my hand to her lips and kisses my wet knuckles. I shudder, my skin prickling with goose bumps, but that delicious heat swirls through me and I close my eyes again, savoring the feel of it.

  “Then you have stronger shoulders than most.” I lift my hand up and cup her chin, using the feel of her to see when my eyes can make out only the deepest shadows of the bathroom. My mouth finds hers easily, even in the pitch-black. It may as well be drawn there. I couldn’t be anymore enamored than if I’d been summoned, an awful demon from the ugliest depths of the world. And here I am, in all my hideous glory. “But my kisses bring again,” I whisper against her mouth, pushing her face back just a bit when she tries to kiss me. “Bring again—” I move our lips together but only enough to burn; there’s no relief in that kiss. It just turns our desperation for one another up to dangerous levels. “Seals of love, but seal’d in vain.” Another sweetly agonizing brush of lips. It almost hurts now. I’m trembling. “Seal’d in vain.”

  I kiss her again, letting my tongue delve deep, my fingers tighten on her chin. She makes a noise that’s caught somewhere between pleasure and pain. I’m kissing her just right, but I’m holding her too hard. And I can’t seem to make myself stop.

  After a moment, I pull back and simultaneously release her so roughly that she cries out. I stand up out of the bath and step onto the mat, dripping water everywhere. You’re being too subtle, Oscar. She can’t read your mind, remember? Be a fucking man and spell it out so that she’ll know, so that she’ll always understand the truth behind everything you do.