Mayhem at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “My apologies, boss,” Oscar says, his voice like dark chocolate over old bones. It looks okay at first, but you would never eat that. “Sometimes Hael’s diminished intellect infuriates me which, of course, is unfair since he can’t help being born that way.”

  Hael smashes the wine bottle on the floor, spattering the linen-white furniture with droplets of red wine. Oh, I bet Leigh will love that.

  “You better be playin’ with me because if you ain’t playin’ with me, I’m gonna kick your ass.” Hael kicks over a side table with his boot and a glass lamp shatters. “Well? I’m waiting for your apology. Or maybe I should tell Bernie that you were a—”

  “Shut your fucking face,” Oscar hisses, standing up from the sofa. The two boys face off against one another, chest to chest, their jaws clenched, eyes hard. “If you don’t want to be ridiculed for saying ridiculous things then stop. saying. them.”

  “Still doesn’t sound like an apology to me,” Hael replies, his voice weirdly cold and smooth. Not like his usual cocksureness at all. I set my wine down and step between the two of them, putting my palms up on either of their chests. For a second there, it seems like neither of them is going to acknowledge me.

  Oscar's hand comes up out of nowhere, whip-sharp and blazingly fast, snatching my wrist and making me cry out as he jerks me aside and then grabs my other arm with the same hand, pinning them together. As he does, he steps back and tugs me along with him. His tattooed hand ends up on my throat for the briefest of seconds, the pressure just this side of scary.

  “Do not defend him to me,” he purrs, his mouth far too close to mine. His cinnamon scent surrounds me, and my body reacts in a violent and disturbing way. “I'm in a mood, and I can't stand it.”

  “Oscar, I will put you in the fucking ground,” Vic roars, but Oscar is only looking at me. His thumb strokes my pulse point as he leans in ever closer to my face.

  “When I let you pin me before, I was being nice. Never forget that.” He releases me and I suck in a gasp of air, putting my own hands over my throat. I wasn't actually cut off from breathing in any way, shape, or form, but it's just the idea of it.

  Oscar moves quick, much quicker than I thought.

  He stalks off and Vic throws a wine bottle at him. It smashes into the wall beside Oscar's head. He pauses for a brief moment to glance back at us.

  “You're going to regret doing that,” Victor warns, but Oscar just nods once and then continues off down the hall.

  “What the … fuck?” Hael asks, blinking like he's just waking up from a dream. “The hell was that about?”

  “You okay?” Aaron asks, but I nod. My fingers are still at my throat, but not because I didn't like it. But because some fucked-up part of me did. To be fair, when I fantasize about Oscar, I usually fantasize about one or the other of us with their hands around someone's throat.

  I grit my teeth.

  “Fine.” I look back to find Callum on the back of the couch, still crouching, but somehow moved from the counter to this new spot. His face says, if Oscar went any further, I was here. I shiver and move back over to my bottle of wine, lifting it up in a salute. Victor is seething, Aaron is pissed, Hael is reeling, Callum … I think he's just observing for now. “To our wedding.”

  “To our wedding,” Aaron says, and nobody misses the way he emphasizes the word our in that statement.

  I throw back that bottle like a champ, wipe my lips on the hoodie sleeve again, and accept a baseball bat from Cal's outstretched hand. Well, shit, it really is signed by Babe Ruth. Sorry, man. I flip the hood up on my borrowed Aaron hoodie, climb on top of the counter, and heft the bat in both hands.

  “Fuck you, Coraleigh Vincent!” I shout, slamming it down on a glass cookie jar in the shape of a mermaid. Porcelain shards explode outward, ricocheting off the backsplash, off my legs, the side of the refrigerator.

  “Fuck you,” Hael agrees, popping the top on another bottle of wine. He chugs as much of it as he can, wine dribbling down the sides of his mouth, and then exhales sharply. “Fuck Oscar. Praise the fatherhood of Brittany's spawn—that is, praise the fact that he isn't me.” Hael chucks the bottle on the floor again, letting it shatter and soak a very expensive looking rug.

  I hop from the kitchen island to another counter, swinging the bat and smashing a framed photo of Leigh and her husband, all cuddled up in a casino and holding a fan of green bills in their hand. I mean, come on? Come the fuck on? Once the glass is broken, I tear the picture from the wall and throw it.

  Callum just laughs and laughs as Aaron lights up a cigarette and then puts it out on the fancy linen couch, marking the fabric with a permanent black scorch. He lights up again, takes a drag, and then does it again. When he's done with that, he parks the smoke between his lips, and takes out the knife that he wielded on Ophelia from his back pocket.

  When he stabs the sofa and fluffing comes out, I start laughing, too.

  Victor just watches us all with a dark gaze, sipping his wine and enjoying the mayhem.

  “Oh come on, boss,” Cal urges, grabbing a floor lamp and ripping off the shade. He hefts the metal length of it up and offers it to Vic like a weapon. Victor accepts as Cal moves over to a small concrete statue of a turtle, lifting it up and chucking it against the kitchen island. It hits the stone countertop, cracking it and knocking off a substantial piece.

  Vic pulls back with the metal lamp, as if it were a baseball bat, but pauses when Oscar comes back into the room, looking slightly mollified. His eyes flick to mine as I kick a ceramic crock full of spatulas onto the floor and break it.

  “Come not within the measure of my wrath,” Oscar says, quoting Shakespeare again before he grabs a lamp from a side table and throws it against the wall. We're all very careful not to break the front windows. I mean, we couldn't really hang out in here the rest of the break if we did, right?

  We smash the place to pieces, and then we drag the Vincents downstairs to look at it all.

  “Do you see what you've done?” Oscar hisses, grabbing Coraleigh's chin in tight fingers and making her look at the destruction. True tears roll down her face, and I almost expect Oscar to lick one off. Instead, he shoves her face away and rises to his feet. “Where is the wine?” he asks, and Hael bounces off to comply, holding up a bottle from a laundry basket that he's filled full of them.

  “How about this one?” he asks, turning the bottle over to check the label. “Screaming Eagle, it's called. I Googled it and it says it's worth about twenty-eight hundred bucks.”

  “Smash it,” Oscar says, taking over the interaction with the Vincents as I sit on top of the counter, hood still up, baseball bat lying across my knees.

  “Wait, wait,” Marcus says as Leigh just quietly cries, her brunette hair stuck to the sides of her face. “We can work this out. There's room for all of us in this thing. We can split our takes with you guys. Half and half. Fifty-fifty.”

  “You can be rich,” Leigh pleads as Hael chucks the wine bottle into the big apron sink. It breaks, of course. “Think about it,” she continues, licking her lips as Hael pulls out another bottle.

  “This one's in German, so I'm not even gonna try to read it. Aaron?” Hael calls out to my ex-now-current, uh, boyfriend? Anyway, he grins down at his phone before looking up.

  “Worth about thirteen and a half thousand bucks, my friend.”

  Hael takes it by the neck and slams the end of the bottle into the counter, flooding the floor with liquid.

  “No!” Leigh screams, struggling violently in her chair. Isn't it incredible how attached some people are to things? So much so that they'd trade others' lives for more? “Listen to me. You can be out of South Prescott within the month. Alyssa is worth a lot of money. You—you—you—” she stutters as Hael takes out a black bottle and frowns at it.

  “This is the cognac,” he says, glancing up at Aaron. “Cost?”

  “That one …” Aaron starts, looking it up on his phone as Callum hops up to sit next to me on the counter. “Wo
w. Thirty-five K.”

  “Thirty-five thousand dollars for alcohol?!” Hael chokes out, snorting a laugh. “Well fuck me, we drinkin’ this one, my friends.”

  “That was a gift!” Leigh cries out as Hael pulls the glass top off and takes a swig. “Put it down!”

  “Damn, that's smooth,” Hael purrs, passing the bottle to Cal. He takes a drink before leaning toward me. It takes me a second to realize what he wants, but as soon as I do, I feel my face flush. My eyes flick to Victor, but he just stares back at me as Leigh screams. My attention shifts to the endless blue of Callum's eyes as I lean in and tilt my head to the side.

  The heat of his perfect pink mouth finds mine, but when I lift my fingers to touch his chest and neck, I can feel the roughness of his scars. Perfectly imperfect, I think as he gently parts my lips, stinging my mouth with the burn of the cognac and the heat of his tongue.

  We lean into each other as someone tugs the bottle from my hands. I'm too focused in on Callum to notice or care. Oh, shit. Maybe he thought I didn't notice him all these years, that he could sit across from me in that cafeteria and act like he didn't know my name. All of those things are lies.

  You square danced with me that day I cried in elementary school. You found me during the eighth-grade dinner dance and encouraged me to join you on the floor. The only reason I remember that day is because of you.

  “Bernie,” Cal murmurs, pulling back slightly and touching his forehead to mine. That's a big thing with these boys, all of this touching. I don't think any of us has ever been hugged or cuddled or loved enough. “I told you we'd make them pay, didn't I?”

  He leans back enough that I get lost in the blue of his eyes, and then hops down to the floor.

  “Give me the knife,” Cal says, gesturing for Aaron to hand it over. Without hesitation, he does. Callum approaches the Vincents and pauses behind them. He then starts to hack their perfect hair off, pressing the blade dangerously close to their skulls. They both scream, like something's actually hurting them, but it's all bullshit.

  Callum doesn't shed a single drop of blood.

  “Get the girls and let's go swimming,” he says, handing the knife back to Aaron as soon as he's done. “And when we're finished, we'll drown the Vincents and dispose of their bodies.” Callum is bluffing, obviously, but his whispered words do the trick. The couple starts to scream as Hael and Aaron drag them back up the steps so we can lock them in their room again. Cal glances my way, and I swear to fuck, my lips tingle in response to his dark look.

  It isn't dark with violence though; I've seen that expression on his Disney prince face plenty of times in the past.

  No, this time, his expression is carved of hunger and lust and things unsaid that are better left in the dark. He has secrets, I bet, Callum does. Since Havoc isn't supposed to have any, if I asked, do you think he'd tell me?

  I wet my lips with my tongue.

  “For real though,” Cal says, letting out a husky laugh. “I'm dying to see you in a swimsuit, Bernie. Hope you don't mind my saying that.” He winks at me, picks up the lamp, and smashes the sofa table, with it, the muscles in his arms rippling with the power needed for such a move.

  Meanwhile, I just hide inside of Aaron's sweatshirt, soaked between the thighs at the sight and holding a baseball bat worth more than most people's cars.

  “It's what I've always wanted: Bernadette.”

  I swing the baseball bat at a vase of dried flowers and try not to think too hard about that statement. Not yet, not today. Because Victor needs time, and this dangerous dance of beautiful boys … I'm not sure I know the choreography just yet.

  The Vincents don't have a turkey in that massive fridge of theirs—we go out on holidays, so says Coraleigh—but that's okay because the couple is really into Keto right now and their deep freezer is chock-full of ground turkey.

  “Jennie-O for the motherfucking win,” Hael says, praising the brand of meat and spinning a knife around his fingers in a very impressive sort of way. “Tacos, it is.”

  “Tell me …” I start, sliding my butt onto one of the still-intact stools at the kitchen peninsula. See, it's like a landscape in here: an island, a peninsula, a frozen tundra of mini-freezers beneath the countertops. It's also totally and completely destroyed. I mean, it's functional enough but Heather's eyes nearly fell out of her face when she saw it.

  “You are not getting your security deposit back after this, Bernie,” she told me with all due seriousness. So fucking cute and naïve. I pop a bit of brownie into my mouth and hope that Callum's guess on how special this special brownie really is, is accurate. That, or I'm going to be so stoned I don't remember my very first Havoc Thanksgiving.

  “Tell you what?” Hael asks, adding oil to a saucepan and dropping the seasoned meat into it. He's swaying a bit with the music, bobbing his head and mouthing the lyrics. Not sure how someone so dangerous can be so cute. But there you go. I like him even better now that I know he isn't going to be a dad to someone else's baby.

  I bite my lip.

  “Tell me how it is that you know how to cook?” I ask and Hael laughs. Always fucking laughing, him and Callum. But while Cal, oddly enough, reminds me of the Joker, Hael is just … fun. His laughter is just that, a way to lighten the mood.

  “Ma mère m'a appris à cuisiner, cher,” he purrs in French with a little Cajun touch, giving me this saucy ass shit-eating little smirk that both pisses me off and makes me want to fuck him on the cracked countertop. I lean forward and park my elbows on it instead, acting like I don't feel Victor watching us from the living room. Most of the debris has been swept into a pile, so we can still sorta lounge around in the detritus.

  “That means … something about your mom?” I ask, putting my chin in my palm.

  “En fait c'était à propos de ta mère mais tu n'as pas compris la blague, n'est-ce pas?” he asks me, cocking a brow as he stirs the meat with the spatula. I pick off a piece of the broken counter and chuck it at his face. He catches it, which annoys me to no end, and then flings it over his shoulder. It lands perfectly in the tiny prep sink. “My mother taught me how to cook,” Hael adds finally, face falling slightly. The song on his phone shifts to “My House” by Flo Rida and his lips twitch into a small grin. He loves this stupid ass song and, as much as I hate it, I can't help but feel something when I see him start to mouth the lyrics. “She didn't teach me to cook no turkey fucking tacos, but once you've got the skillset down …” Hael trails off as Callum appears, holding an apron.

  “Let me put it on for you honey,” Cal murmurs in his beautiful voice. It's more than just gravelly or husky or broken, it's transcendent. When Cal speaks, his words carry emotion the way his dance moves do; he's just full of feeling.

  “Why, thank you, sweet husband,” Hael chortles as Cal tosses the apron around his neck and then hugs his midsection.

  “We should get freaky afterward, with you in such a skimpy little thing.” Callum slaps Hael on the ass and then, in one single motion, he hops onto the counter and crouches beside me. He stares at me as he grabs a cluster of purple grapes from the bag next to my arm and very carefully and purposely crushes one between his teeth. “I loved your swimsuit, by the way.”

  Victor snorts from behind me, and I turn a glare on him.

  “That wasn't a swimsuit; it was a husband's worst nightmare. Like some prologue to a porn shoot.”

  “Hey, fuck you!” I snap at him, chucking some grapes his direction. He actually manages to catch one in his mouth as I glare. “If I want to swim naked, I will.”

  “Just so long as you wax that bush,” Oscar chimes in, but he doesn't look up from the magazine on his lap. Hot heat fills me from my head down to my toes, like a kettle of boiling water. Would not be surprised if steam came out of my fucking ears.

  “I'm going to literally kill you,” I grind out, and, without my even meaning to, my fingers find my throat. Oscar looks up then and our gazes lock, stealing my breath away and making me dizzy. “When I let you pin me b
efore, I was being nice. Never forget that.”

  “Why the fuck would you ridicule a girl for having hair where the devil put it?” Victor asks, giving Oscar a nasty look. “You've already infringed on the last of my nerves today. Next time you put hands on my wife, I'll crack your face open.”

  “Besides,” I quip, loving the way both Vic's and Oscar's gazes swing over to me. “It gets chafed down there if you fuck as much as I do and leave it bare.”' I smile meanly. “I keep myself looking fly, I trim that shit. Maybe you should consider doing the same?”

  “Shots fired!” Hael howls as Callum chuckles. Aaron pauses halfway down the stairs, hand on the banister, as he tries to figure out what we're playing at down here. “Tu es une putain de dure à cuire, Blackbird. One tough bitch.”

  Oscar's eyes narrow, but apparently, he doesn't want to talk about the fact that he went balls-deep while I was bleeding and vulnerable underneath him. He doesn't care. He's just a sociopath with a pretty face.

  “The kids are situated; the Vincents are secure,” Aaron says, coming over to stand beside me. When he comes close, I can feel him, like there's a charge in the air, some electrical connection between us that buzzes pleasantly against my skin. “I told them we could eat and then swim again.”

  “Almost done,” Hael says, putting the top on the sizzling pan of meat before returning back to the avocado he was slicing up. “Did you know cartels control most of the avocado production in Mexico? We should get in on that shit.”

  “Fucking cartels,” Victor murmurs, but he's also rubbing his chin, so clearly he's thinking about something. “Any word on how the Charter Crew did making up that twenty-grand in product?”

  Oscar makes a sound of annoyance and then sneers, tossing the magazine aside. Pretty sure he wasn't even looking at it—what use would Oscar Montauk have for modern décor in a contemporary world.

  “Since Mitch Charter is driving a new car, I would say they aren't hurting at all. They either have sources of income I don't know about, or else someone big is backing them.” Oscar pauses, narrowing his gray eyes on the floor as he spirals into his thoughts.