“Thank you for letting me stay here,” I tell him, trying not to think too hard about our sordid past. And yet, there it is, burning like black fire in the recesses of my brain. As soon as I fall asleep, I'll dream about it, I just know I will.
“Havoc sticks together,” he says, pulling his arm from my grip and heading down the hallway. I watch after him until he disappears, and then turn back to a bedroom I haven't seen in a long, long time.
It's like a time warp in here.
My breath catches as I sit on the edge of Aaron's bed, and put my face in my hands.
I don't cry, but I remember.
Oh, I remember well.
Three years earlier …
I’m standing at Aaron’s side in the rain, looking at a single casket, as black and shiny as the hearse that drove it here. My hand reaches down for his, the only other mourner in the cemetery besides myself. Aaron’s parents weren’t well-liked. Well, his father wasn’t well-liked anyway. And his mother was terrified of him.
“She didn’t come home last night,” he says, glancing my way, pleading with his eyes for a million things I can’t give him. Stability. Warmth. Security. “I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“Don’t say that,” I tell him, but I wonder … there were clothes missing from his mother’s closet, socks and underwear strewn across the floor. And then there was the way she looked at me when I stepped onto the front porch and saw her hastily climbing into a cab.
She isn’t coming back.
“What about my sister?” he asks, giving my hand a squeeze. “What about my cousin?”
We both know the story of my brief stint in foster care. Aaron’s sweet girls, they wouldn’t survive a week. Their spirits would break along with their bodies. My eyes close, and I hang my head, blond hair sticking to the sides of my face. The wetness hides the tears, but I don’t know how to help. That happens sometimes, when one broken person tries to lean on another. We’re too rickety to keep the other standing. All it would take is a strong wind to blow us both over …
“I’m afraid, Bernie,” he says finally, lifting his chin up and staring across the freshly dug hole in the ground. His father’s funeral won’t go unnoticed by his creditors. He had a coke and vodka habit to accompany his partying and gambling problems, and shit doesn’t come cheap. They’ll start looking for his mother, and if they find her … And on the other side of the coin, if the state finds out a fifteen-year-old is living alone with his five-year-old sister, and two-year-old cousin, they’re all screwed six ways to Sunday.
“You’ll figure a way out of this,” I tell him, glancing over, watching droplets of rain bead on his full lower lip. “You always do.” We’re both survivors, me and Aaron. We have that in common. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him, that maybe I have been for years. Young love might be fluffy and fleeting, but at least there’s a purity to it that doesn’t stain like everything else in my life.
“I wish I could take care of us all,” Aaron says, squeezing my hand, his green-gold eyes boring into mine. “I wish I was strong enough.”
His expression says that one day, maybe he will be.
No matter what that sort of strength costs.
No matter if he has to sell his soul to get it.
Aaron doesn't bother to wake me up in the morning. Instead, I find myself jolting out of sleep with a gasp, sweat-soaked sheets tangled around my legs, and an unfamiliar room surrounding me.
The sweet scent of maple and bacon fills my nostrils, and I exhale.
He's going to be down there, shirtless, covered in tattoos and cooking breakfast for his little sister and cousin. My heart starts to race at the thought, at just the idea of seeing him in low-slung sweats, being all domestic and shit.
Jesus.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, dress myself in jeans and a white wifebeater, and head downstairs.
“Bernie!” Kara shouts, turning and spotting me from her seat on one of the stools that lines the kitchen peninsula. She hops down and races over to throw her arms around me. Her cousin, Ashley, sticks a bite of pancake in her mouth and watches me warily. We've only met once, maybe twice. And she's younger than Kara by several years. Of course she doesn't remember me.
I return Kara’s hug, and then lift my eyes to her brother. He won't look at me, flipping pancakes with one hand and using a spatula on some bacon with the other.
My nostrils flare.
It's like he's angry at me when he's the one that betrayed me, when he pushed me aside and shifted from my most beautiful dream into my worst nightmare. Back in freshman year, I used to fantasize that we'd get married one day, me and Aaron. And then when his dad died and his mom left, I thought maybe we'd raise my sister, his sister, and his cousin together.
What a joke.
I approach the counter and then pause when he plates some food and passes it over to me, finally turning those beautiful eyes to my face. Brown-haired, green-eyed, tattooed Aaron Fadler. My breath catches when he looks at me, but that fairy-tale boy I fantasized about years ago is not the same person looking back at me now.
He's hard, dark, different.
“Breakfast, then I'm taking the girls to a playdate. Vic wants us back at his place after I drop them off.”
I nod, but I don't know what to say to this boy. And other than threatening me or trying to get me to run away, I don't think he knows what to say either.
“I missed you, Bernie,” Kara says, sitting back down on her stool and smiling up at me with a missing tooth. “Where'd you go?”
I have to think about that question for a long time before I come up with an answer, noticing Aaron's dark gaze swing back to me. Our eyes meet as I stab a piece of pancake with my fork.
My first instinct is to say, “Aaron didn't want me here anymore, so I went away.” But she won't understand that, and I'm angry with her brother, not with her.
“To tell you the truth, I don't even remember,” I say with a smile, turning back to face her. “But don't worry, because this time, I'm here to stay.”
If Aaron slams the next pancake down on the plate hard enough to crack it, we all pretend not to notice.
Vic and his boys are sitting in the front yard when we show up, parking next to Hael's muscle car in Aaron's mother's minivan. It looks ridiculous beside the other guys' rides, but it's practical, and it works, and it belonged to his mom, so I know it means a lot to him.
“Everything okay here after we left last night?” Aaron asks as Callum flips his hood back. He nods, so I figure he, at least, must have stayed the night with Vic.
“All fine,” Vic says, smoking a cigarette and watching me. I can feel his gaze, this dark, sweet, heat that sweeps over me and makes me want to do bad things. Very bad things. He's clearly studying me and my interactions with Aaron, like he's looking for something in particular. I give him nothing but a dark stare in return, and he grins. “Did you make me a list yet?” he asks, and I nod.
This morning, while Aaron was taking the girls into their playdate—a totally weird thing to see a tattooed teenager doing—I sat in his van and used an old envelope to write down some names.
1. the stepdad
2. the best friend
3. the social worker
4. the ex-boyfriend
5. the principal
6. the foster brother
7. the mom
There are no names there, just titles, because whoever these people used to be to me, they're not people anymore. Just letters on a list.
I hand it over to Vic, and he takes it, reading it carefully before tucking it into his pocket.
“Stepdad spends a lot of time at the morgue, huh?” he asks, which is sort of a creepy, fucked-up question coming from him.
“His name is Neil Pence, and yeah, his best friend works at the morgue, so he’s always over there, probably destroying evidence or some shit,” I say, feeling my insides twist into a painful knot as my eyes close. That piece of garbage raped my sister, and he never paid for it. She was just an 'accuser', not a victim. Just an attention-hungry little girl who shouldn't have worn that skirt or drank those drinks. My jaw clenches tight, and I have to work hard to control my breathing. “Why?”
Victor lifts his head up to look at me.
“I know why all these names are on here,” he says, tilting his head to one side, studying me in that way of his. “Except for this one.” He points to the fourth name on the list, and I frown. Hard.
“Is that part of the bargain, what it takes to recruit Havoc? Because as I recall, you don't really care what the reasons behind the request are.”
“It's not a part of every bargain,” Vic says, rising to his feet and towering over me. Maybe he thinks he's intimidating? He's not. I'm not scared of him. “But it is a part of yours. You're a Havoc Girl now, and we don't keep secrets from each other.”
“Why don't we go to this luncheon thing first, and I'll tell you after?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I'm not exactly looking forward to either of these events, but honestly, dealing with Victor's psycho mother is the least bad.
I don't want to talk about Don.
Not today anyway.
Victor takes a final drag on his cigarette, chuckles, and then steps past me to put it out in an ashtray on the arm of Hael's chair.
“Come inside and get showered. Ivy will be here in thirty to do your hair and makeup.”
“Ivy Hightower?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. That junkie bitch and I used to attend the same free-for-poor-kids summer camp, before we both got kicked out (just after Aaron did, coincidentally). Maybe our blow-out brawl the last day of camp last year was what really did it for both of us? “Why her?”
“Because she works for weed, and she's got a big mouth on her. She'll spread our blessed news all over the school. Hell, all over the city. She gets around, that chick.” Vic shakes his head and moves into the house, leaving the door open as he goes.