“Don’t do that to me,” I groan, trying to pull away and finding myself captured in his orbit, like always. He has but to snap his fingers and command my heart; I’m a soldier for him in so many ways. The only thing that makes that fact bearable is that I know the reverse is true: Victor Channing has always been mine.
“Don’t do what?” he asks, sliding an arm around my waist and bringing my body close. “Apologize? Why? Are you allergic to feelings, Mrs. Channing? If I fuck up, I say sorry. Anybody who lacks the ability to do that should get their head checked. Being wrong isn’t the end of the world; we all make mistakes.”
“And this apology is for what, exactly?” I ask as his eyes soften in just such a way that I feel my heart breaking all over again. He has no right to show me his vulnerable side and make me love him even more. No right.
“For handling the Trinity thing the way I did. In the end, all I did was hurt you and it didn’t matter a goddamn bit. You were right: I should’ve let my obsession for you guide the way. I always have.” He leans down, like he might kiss me, but pauses at the last second and turns his head away. The nearness of his mouth infuriates me, and I dig my nails into the back of his head, probably making his scalp bleed. He doesn’t seem to give two fucks either way. “For once, I thought maybe I could prove my love wasn’t selfish.” Vic glances back at me, and our noses brush. It’s like, he wants to keep talking, but the magnetic pull of his mouth to mine is making it hard to keep any distance. “I’m not too proud to admit my mistakes.”
He releases me and then, much to my surprise, gets down on his fucking knees.
I just stare at him, heart thundering in the quiet space of the old house, the smell of must and long-buried memories present in every breath that I take.
“What are you doing?” I ask as Vic looks up at me, a tattooed god prostrating himself for my benefit and mine alone. I’d bet you every dollar of that inheritance that he’s never done this for another woman. Shit, I bet he’s never done this for any of the other boys either.
“I know sometimes it seems like I know exactly what I’m doing at all times, but I don’t. Despite everything, I’m just eighteen years old and I’m figuring it out as I go.” Victor blinks up at me, settling back on his heels. “I’m not too proud to admit that.” He pauses again, like he’s waiting for something from me.
“Then let’s figure it out together,” I tell him, cupping the side of his face and loving the way his eyes close almost involuntarily, like my touch is a drug, one that he’d happily OD on like I’m sure a dozen former Prescott residents have before in this very house. It’s not a pretty metaphor, but there’s not a lot that’s pretty in our world. That is, unless, as Callum suggested, pain becomes pretty to those who have too much of it. “Don’t push me aside because your emotions are too intense, or you don’t know what to do, or you’re scared.”
Vic snorts and lowers his head. When he looks up, I can see it there in his face: that’s the truth of it. I terrify him in a way he’s never feared for anything before. I understand that emotion because I feel it, too, this almost inevitable descent into tragedy. Everything about us feels tragic, really, like one of those old fairy tales with a not so happy ending.
“The last time I was afraid like this, I was five years old. It was the day Ophelia and my father discussed who had to take care of me. The reason I was so fucking scared that day was because I was worried that it would be her, that she would take my hand and drag me away from my abusive, alcoholic father, and the nightmare of south Prescott. Because, despite all of those things, she was the worse of the two.” Victor’s lids drop over his dark eyes, like he’s carried away in thought. “I …” he starts, but then it’s like whatever he wants to say gets caught on his mouth on the way out, an ugly truth that bleeds. “Before that …”
My heart stutters and gets caught in my throat, and then I just know that I can’t stay standing anymore. I kneel down in front of him so that we’re facing each other, just two teenagers with old souls and a mountain of cards stacked against them.
But that’s the fun part, you know. Seeing the underdog pull through. That’s what I want, some proof that justice and vengeance both exist, that bad people can be punished, that good people can win—even if it’s a rare and distant sort of thing. Hope, right. The thing with feathers …
“She touched you, didn’t she?” I ask, because it’s the one thing I never expected from Vic’s past. He’s such a careful man; he hides his pain so well. He disguises it with his dominance. But he’s only just now becoming an adult, and he hasn’t left all of that childhood pain and trauma behind the way he thinks he does.
“Her …” he breathes, looking into my face with an earnest sort of expression that betrays all of that long-suffering fear. “Her friends. At the fancy parties …” He trails off and wets his lips, closing his eyes for a moment and scrubbing both hands down his face. He leaves them there for a long moment before dropping them to his lap and looking at me with an expression made of obsidian eyes and a mouth as sharp and dangerous as a knife. “This thing, this … perversion, it’s been running in Springfield for a long time. This isn’t new. None of it is.”
I sit there for a moment, fingers twitching in my lap. My head is filled with the white noise of rage. It’s something I’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But, as Victor has warned me on multiple occasions, I need to control it and throw it at the right target at the right time.
“And then they took my baby …” he growls, and I close my eyes, my body breaking out in goose bumps. “They took my fucking baby from me.” A gasp slips from me as he wraps his arms around me and drags me into him. Somehow, I’m already anticipating the move, throwing my own arms around his neck and squeezing him like the fate of the universe depends on it.
Since he just so happens to be the center of mine, I guess it really fucking does.
Stacey’s girls are willing to meet me at the nail art place down the block. And by nail art place, I mean that girl whose aunt will do your nails for like fifteen bucks and make it look like you paid three hundred at the stuffy Oak Park place with the weird French name.
“RIP, my love,” one of the girls says, eyeing her coffin-tipped pink nails with a frown and watery eyes. “Shit, I’m sorry.” She dashes her hand across her face and shakes her head. “The nails are fly, girl. I just … it’s been hard without Stacey, you know?”
“It was all my fault,” one of the other girls says, her face swollen and mottled with bruises. Clearly, at some point recently, she got the shit kicked out of her. Worse than me, even. I’m guessing this is the girl that Stacey’s crew got back alive. “I picked the john. I … and I’m the one that told those GMP motherfuckers that I worked for Havoc.” She glances away sharply, braided hair swinging with the motion. “You sure you aren’t here to kill me?”
“I’m here to tell you that we want you in our crew,” I say, and several of the girls exchange glances with one another. They don’t seem nearly as surprised as I might’ve thought. I look up at the woman across from me, some gorgeous thirty-something that shapes my ragged ass nails into a feast for the eyes. Matte black, coffin-tips, each nail hand-painted with a filigreed letter pertaining to HAVOC and blessed with a jewel of some sort. On my right pointer finger, she pierces a hole through the tip of the nail and puts a ring on it that matches the ones I wear in my belly button.
“No surprise,” one of the others says, checking her purple nails over and tossing me a look that’s split between animosity and curiosity. As if she can’t help herself, her gaze strays over to Hael Harbin, sitting in a chair behind me and watching the proceedings with curiosity, like he’s never been around a bunch of Prescott bitches getting their nails did before. It’s sort of a thing in this neighborhood. “What else would you do? Considering you failed to keep Stacey safe. I thought Havoc was supposed to be our avenging angel, huh? Well, prove it.”
“Don’t talk to them like that, Tiff,” the first girl says, the one who was crying over Stacey. “They saved our asses. You think we all wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for Havoc? Besides, we’re the ones who robbed the GMP.” This girl turns to me, nodding her head, like she’s already made a decision. I vaguely recognize her as the chick that was grinding on that boy in the cafeteria that day, the day that Stacey officially dropped her Havoc request. “You got a plan, don’t you, Havoc Girl?”
“Maybe you need help working all that yummy Havoc dick?” another one of them asks. In total, there are almost a dozen girls crammed into this little apartment, watching me. And this is just the upper echelon of Stacey’s organization. Like I said, queen bee of Prescott High. With that title open and available, I know I have to step up and seize the crown. “How do you do it anyway, keep all five of those boys satisfied?”
I glance back to find Hael grinning at me. He folds his hands together behind his head and cocks an eyebrow. We’re only about three houses down from the place we’re staying, but I’ve got an entourage anyway. Victor is downstairs, a bit too … primal and male to fit into this crowd. It might be mixed race up in here—we have girls in every color of the human rainbow—but it is a distinctly feminine atmosphere. They might like to fuck Prescott boys, but they sure as shit won’t take any orders from them.
“With a wet pussy and a smile?” I suggest, and the girls howl with laughter.
“Bitch, you’re legendary,” Crying Girl says, nodding her head again. Her red hair has been shaved close to her head in mourning, but her nails are fucking fabulous. “I’m Vera, by the way. I’ll speak to the other girls, but I can’t see any of them turning down your offer. We have to have each other’s backs here in Prescott; you know that Stacey always had yours.”