In all the history of my boys and Prescott High, only once has any student ever broken their oath; nobody has ever made that mistake again.
I'm terrified for pretty, little Brittany Burr.
“I made them piss themselves,” Callum says with a smile, his blond hair open to the sky, reflecting back the rays of the sun like it's crafted of gold. “Not on purpose, obviously. I was trying to make our girls laugh.” He sips from a frosty Pepsi can that must've come from the vending machines near the restroom. When he offers it up to me, I take it.
“You managed that,” Hael says with a snarky laugh, closing his eyes against the sun. “But you're goddamn terrifying. Can you imagine what Eric must've thought when he saw you crouching on top of his car?”
Cal chuckles and glances out toward the ocean, where Aaron is shepherding three little girls around like he was born to do it. My heart stutters, and I feel some of that wild tension in me flee my body. This is my honeymoon; it's Thanksgiving break.
Neil Pence is dead.
He's dead.
The Thing is finally dead.
And yet … how come, when I look at my sister running across the sand in bare feet and a smile, I feel no peace? This isn't over, but I can't put my finger on exactly why I feel that way.
“I guess I'm scarier than I think I am?” Cal says, like he's posing a question. The way he holds his face, blue eyes lifted up toward the sky in thought, makes him sound so innocent. It's a sight to behold, like looking at a reflection of who Callum Park might've been if he hadn't had his dreams beaten out of him.
Oscar makes a low sound of annoyance and we all turn to look at him.
“We might have to adjust our plans slightly,” he says, looking at his tablet. “Our friends have arrived almost two hours early.”
“Friends?” I echo, glancing down the beach at the dune buggy rental place. It's nearly dead today; I don't hear any ATVs or buggies at all. “What friends?”
“Other half of your wedding present,” Hael says, sitting up suddenly and snapping his fingers at me. He bites his lip, honeyed eyes flicking in the direction of the girls. “We'll have to bail early though, or we'll miss our chance.”
“Our chance?” I ask, and Vic grunts.
“Alright, Bernie, go tell Aaron we're leaving.” Victor checks his phone briefly and then looks up at me. “He knows to keep the girls occupied until we’re ready for him to join us at the house.”
“What house?” I ask, trying to blink through my confusion. I love the idea of the guys getting me gifts, but last time they did this, I received my stepfather in a coffin in a very deep hole. A chance to emotionally prepare would be nice. Please just … don't let it be my mother that they've got in their wicked claws. Not yet.
“The Vincents’,” Victor tells me, flashing that signature wicked smile of his. He leans down to kiss me on the cheek, and goose bumps chase across my skin.
Shit.
Did not expect that.
The gentle kiss, I mean.
I totally expected the intrigue.
We're called Havoc for a reason, right?
#
The girls are all too short to legally ride in the dune buggies—not that legality is like, a big concern for us—but Aaron and I both figure that the height requirement is there for a reason. A bit of fun in the sand dunes isn't worth any potential risk to them. Hell, even a broken leg would require a hospital visit which could lead to questions of custody which could lead to Aaron losing his sister and cousin.
“I hate having the last birthday of us all,” he grumbles, sweeping his hair back from his face as he watches the girls make a sandcastle. Technically, he doesn't have the last birthday in Havoc: I do. But guess what? Getting married in Oregon makes you a legally emancipated motherfucking minor.
As is usually the case with Havoc, my marriage to Victor has served two purposes.
These boys do nothing without vicious intent.
“Don't stress,” I say, pausing beside him as Heather glares at me from her spot in the sand. The deal was that we would hang out together on the beach for an hour or two before we rented the dune buggies. But the Vincents have arrived early, and this plan that the boys have come up with relies on us being on the dunes at the same time as them. “We'll get you there.”
“I know,” Aaron says, exhaling and glancing my way with gold-green eyes. Does he know I feel like a charlatan saying that? The guys have fought for years to keep Aaron, Kara, and Ashley together. I'm just now joining in the fight, a fight that maybe I should've been in all along.
They may not have wanted me in Havoc, but I also wasn't strong back then. I'm not sure I could've handled any of this. Maybe the blame isn't so one-sided here, huh?
“We need to go,” Oscar says, annoying the fuck out of me. He's lucky I don't have any weapons on me right now. “If we're late, there's no point in this.”
Gritting my teeth, I give Aaron's arm one, last squeeze, hating myself for not having spoken to him about Oscar yet. It feels like cheating, and I don't like that. I mean, I know it's not, and we've just been busy as shit lately, but that doesn't make me feel any less bad about it.
“Period dick,” I snap at Oscar as I walk by him, flipping my hair into his face. Either I just can't hear his reaction over the waves or else he knows better than to talk back to me after just being scolded by Victor.
“Your ass, those shorts, holy motherfucker,” Hael murmurs, and when I glance back at him, I see him sucking on his lower lip. I give him a coy smile, ignoring Vic’s dark glare, and turn back around, making sure to toss and ruffle my hair with my fingers. My cheeks are most definitely hanging out of these shorts; my top is most definitely riding up to expose just a hint of my belly button. I learned a long time ago that monsters will hunt you and eat you, whether you wear trash bags or ho heels.
Besides, it’s my body. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with it. Victor … maybe needs to get the memo.
The guy who runs the dune buggy place takes one look at the group of us—inked, young, irreverent—and asks for double the usual security deposit.
“Money is not an issue,” Oscar lies, handing the guy a prepaid debit card. I'm not sure if the guys stole it, or if it actually belongs to them. Either way, it's likely untraceable. The employee takes the damn thing like it’s dirty, hands over a contract for Victor to sign, and scrutinizes his fake ID—it says his name is Craig Johansen—for a very painful, very silent three minutes.
“We should raise the driver's age to twenty-one, if you ask me,” the idiot grumbles, like he's either brain-dead or has lived such a charmed life that he can't recognize danger when it's staring him straight in the face. How are his instincts not picking up on Callum's unblinking stare?
He's just lucky that the Havoc Boys take no unnecessary risks.
“Fuck, I hate people like that,” Cal says, glancing over his shoulder as the employee dawdles off, leaving us with the keys and a six-seater Ranger Crew XP 1000. Basically, it's like a souped-up golf cart for fucking around in the sand. “Such a judgy asshole. If I had spare time, I'd hide in his closet and scare the shit out of him when he came home.”
“Goddamn, you're creepy,” Hael murmurs with a roll of his brown eyes. He can joke all he wants about Callum, but I've seen his face dark and shuttered from emotion. Even the way he looked at Vic at the garage, when he was telling him to apologize to me, that was terrifying. I mean, not to me. But I would've pissed myself if I were Vic. “Oh,” he starts, grinning as he glances over at Oscar and lifts up the keys for inspection. Hael jingles them around, like he's teasing an angry cat with a bell toy. “You know you aren't getting that security deposit back, right?”
“I'm fully aware of that,” Oscar retorts, completely deadpan. His face is a perfect porcelain mask, like some sort of obscure art piece, so clean and empty and smooth with a frame of wicked ink at his neck. The lenses of his glasses shine, as freakishly clean as usual. I actually have to clench my hands into fists at my sides to keep from stepping forward and smudging the fuck out of them. “Get in the buggy, Hael.”
“Somebody's cranky,” Hael chuckles, grabbing the helmet off the seat and shoving it over his red faux-hawk. He pushes the visor up, so he can give Oscar another look. “Do you need another dip in Bernadette's period blood, huh? Would that calm you down?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, get in the goddamn buggy and shut your fat mouth,” Vic snaps as the color drains from my face. I'd thought Hael was asleep when I confronted Oscar in the bedroom; I was sort of under the impression that Hael and Aaron didn't know about me and Oscar yet. Victor gives me a look, as if to say well, what did you expect, we're family. I bet he told Hael. Even considering the closeness that Havoc brings, he and Hael are besties for sure.
That means … Aaron is the only one that doesn't know.
Goddamn it.
“Wicked,” Callum snickers, but he's smiling when I glance back at him. He holds out a hand, as if the dune buggy is some sort of carriage led by white horses. I put my fingers in his and let him help me in, even though I could've easily gotten in myself.
“He gets to do chivalrous stuff, but I can't?” Hael jokes as I flip him off and use the hair-tie on my wrist to put my hair into a messy bun at the base of my neck.
“He isn't cocky about it,” I quip back as Callum takes the seat on my left while Vic grabs the one on my right. Oscar sits in the passenger seat while Hael cackles as he sticks the keys into the ignition.
“Babe, if you're waiting around for me to stop being cocky, you'll be prehistoric before that happens.” Hael flips his visor down as I grab my own helmet and put it on. I'd bet my ass that the guys would normally shirk the idea of safety for safety's sake, but then … the helmets offer an element of anonymity. That, and there's a bit of a creepy factor to them, the way they hide the eyes.