All of this shit, this adrenaline, these dangerous boys that smell like spice and passion, how was I supposed to walk away from this? It’s quite literally in my blood. Violence is in my blood. The need to win against an enemy that I can see, smell, and touch. More often than not, our worst enemies are intangible.
Self-doubt. Fear. Ignorance.
Aaron opens the passenger side door, holding out his recently broken hand. It’s a little early for his cast to be off, but I can understand why he took it off. Vulnerability hurts, especially if it means you might not be able to help the ones you love the most.
I take his outstretched fingers and let him help me down from the Bronco. Our bodies fall together, and I look up into his green-gold eyes, flecks of color swirling like dancers as cold winter sunshine falls across his face. The air is so crisp that even though I just got out of the warm car, my lips feel frozen and dry as they part in wonder.
How it’s possible for Aaron to look like an angel when he wears the ink of the devil, I will never be able to understand.
“One day,” he says, wetting his lips and looking up and over my head. I imagine that he’s staring into the open door of the Bronco and over to Hael on the driver’s side. Aaron tilts his head back to look at me. We don’t have to hurry or hide the fact that we’re here. The reason that we’re here is that this is heavy Havoc territory. There are crew members in every building.
This is where we hunker down, deep in the darkness and the filth of our own nest.
Six blocks down, Prescott High sits, surrounded by reporters and filled with cops. Who knows if, after the investigation winds down, if there will even be a Prescott High anymore.
“One day?” I query, squeezing my fingers around his. He drops his lips to mine, tasting our shared memories on my mouth. He never wanted anyone but me, and in that desperation, he forgot that he should let himself relax every now and again, let his guard down. He doesn’t know how to do that anymore, paint my face with frosting while we laugh until we cry like we did on a Christmas Eve three years ago.
But, as soon as those words leave my lips, I see something shift in his face. His worst fears are coming true, and he has no choice but to face them. In doing that, some of his careful shell cracks around the edges, and he’s a seventeen-year-old boy with too many responsibilities all over again.
“One day, we’ll either have a baby or we won’t. But I want you to decide when that is. Not Victor. Or me. Most especially not the GMP …” He trails off and then lifts a hand up to cup my face. Sandalwood and roses. That familiar scent makes my nostrils flare, and I close my eyes briefly as the wind picks up, ruffling my hair.
Aaron takes my fingers, twisting our hands together. He winces slightly, but he doesn’t pull away. That broken hand of his probably still hurts like fucking hell. That one time, when I crushed my finger in the garage door, it hurt for months longer than the doctor told me it would. That’s pain for you. Persistent. Relentless. A demon with reaching claws.
I realize then that it isn’t that Aaron Fadler thinks he still shits rainbows and fairy glitter; he just doesn’t relish the fact that he’s gone over to the dark side. He exists here because he has to. And now that he’s wrapped up in Havoc’s shadowed arms, he may as well have been dragged beneath the sea by a kraken.
There is no escape for Aaron.
I push my palms up against his, inked digits tangling together.
“Sometimes, I wonder if it wasn’t you that should’ve gone to Nantucket,” I say, wondering if I could’ve saved Aaron all those years ago. What if I’d marched up to Vic and looked him in the eye, refused to let him look away until he acknowledged that we could never let each other go. What if I’d told him that I belonged to Havoc and Havoc belonged to me? Would Aaron have been able to walk then?
His smile softens, and his eyes blaze with stark intent. It isn’t difficult to guess what he might say.
“Not without you there,” he assures me, giving my hands a squeeze and then releasing them.
Hael is waiting on the other side of the car, shoulder propped up against a telephone pole. It feels safe here somehow, being surrounded by Havoc. In every building, on every floor, there’s at least one member of our crew. And if we do have a rat, well, I guess we’ll deal with that when it comes.
But we’re not running.
Not from the Grand Murder Party or the police, not even the feds.
“You two done getting all Gone with the Wind over there?” Hael asks with a cocky chuckle, turning and heading up a narrow walkway toward a derelict front porch. Victor is already there, unlocking the door with a key and letting it swing inward on rusted hinges.
“Have you ever actually read or seen Gone with the Wind?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow. “It has absolutely nothing to do with our romance.”
“We’re more like …” Aaron begins, lighting up a cigarette as he steps onto the soft, damp wood of the porch. “My Girl or Bridge to Terabithia.” I give him a sharp look, but he just laughs, pushing chestnut curls away from his forehead. “What? That’s how all childhood romances end—in tragedy.”
“Hilarious,” I say with a roll of my eyes, stepping into the front entry of a house that, once upon a time, was probably very nice. As of now, the old Victorian is smashed between two brick apartment buildings built in the early seventies, rotting away and forgotten in the darkest part of the city.
“Looks like shit, don’t it?” Victor quips, moving into the damp, wet mustiness of the house as I wrinkle my nose. Oscar and Callum are at Joseph General together which both worries me and makes me feel better all at the same time. Cal most definitely needed medical treatment, but at the same time, I don’t like the idea of us being separated.
We are strongest together.
“It’s … barely livable,” I admit, and Vic chuckles, shaking his head as he goes for the stairs and Aaron and Hael fan out to secure the house on either side of me. I decide to follow Vic up, past threadbare sofas and peeling wallpaper. There’s a TV at one end of the living room that looks like it was probably purchased in the late eighties.
I slide my hand up the banister, finding myself in a hallway that stretches out on either side. There are half a dozen doors up here, most of them shut tight. Vic is in the doorway to the bathroom, peering at the toilet and the shower with a frown.
“Fuck, this is rough—even for Prescott.” He snorts a laugh and steps into the room, testing the toilet to make sure it flushes. “We won’t stay here for long, don’t worry. Just a week or two.”
“You’re not actually considering sending us all to Oak Valley, are you?” I ask, because I’m having a hard time getting that out of my head. The rich are just as monstrous as the poor, only they have resources to fund their dark ambitions.
“Whatever it takes, wife,” Vic tells me, turning the tap in the shower on and standing up with a frown as the water spurts like a freshman during his first time and then craps out completely. The sound of old pipes echoes in the walls and then the shower coughs up some steamy water. Victor turns his head to look back at me, an apology resting somewhere in his face that I don’t quite understand. “You and Aaron will be able to see the girls, we’ll have round the clock security, and there is no way in fuck the GMP will storm Oak Valley. Too many risky politics involved. Half the students’ parents are paying customers with private militia.”
Victor turns back around to look at me, but it’s hard to argue with that logic.
“We broke in pretty goddamn easily,” I repeat, but I’ve already had this discussion with Aaron. I scrub both hands over my face as Vic approaches me, grabbing the water bottle from my pants and sliding it out in a way that’s far more intense and sexually charged than it ought to be.
“Look at me, Bernadette,” he says, putting both of his big hands on my neck, one on either side. His palms are warm, his touch bringing to life all the winter-dead parts of me, a searing summer day that chases away the cold. I keep my focus on his face, reaching up to place my hands over the tops of his. “If you don’t think the Oak Valley idea is a good one: tell me. I trust your judgement.”
“Do you?” I ask, and he smiles, but it’s a tad lopsided.
“On most things. When it comes to putting yourself in danger, nah, I don’t trust that at all. You’re the queen, but I’m still the boss.” He presses a kiss to my mouth that tastes like dangerous promises and violent heat, of all the horrible things he’d like to do to me in the dark of this abandoned house. “So, what do you think we should do, Bernie? What’s your next move?”
“I say we retaliate hard-and-fast—in the way we do best.” I wet my lips, thinking about all the things I suffered at the hands of the ones I loved the most. “Havoc’s specialty is inflicting pain without leaving any marks. When you locked me in that closet”—and here Vic at least has the common decency to cringe—“you tore me apart in ways that hurt to the very core of my soul. And yet, there was no evidence of it. Nobody would ever know by looking at me who put the darkness in my gaze and the vengeance in my smile, right?”
“Little poet princess,” Vic grumbles, giving my neck a slight squeeze before he drops his hands to his sides. “Go on.”
“We do the same here and now. We retaliate but in ways that make it looks like we’re not doing anything at all. Starting with Mason Miller.” I exhale as I lay my palms flat against Vic’s chest, the diamond ring on my finger catching a stray bit of sunlight from the leaky skylight above my head. “Let me talk to Stacey’s girls. They deserve to know they’re under our protection—whether they agree to this plan or not.”
Vic nods, watching as my hands creep up his chest and curl around his shoulders.
“That works for me, provided you meet with them someplace secure.” His jaw works a bit as his dark eyes sweep me. “And for what it’s worth: I’m sorry, Bernadette.”