the now defunct sign as he begins to climb, shimmying his way up to the top. Once there, he makes quick work of the clown face, replacing it with one simple word.
That one word you definitely don’t utter at Prescott High.
Not unless you want them to own you. Destroy you. Consume you.
Not unless you want their love to obliterate you, to burn away your inhibitions like a moth drifting too close to the precarious twist of an orange-red flame.
Havoc.
“You did well tonight, Bernadette.” Oscar toys with the tray of food beside him, the tray he ordered much to my surprise. After a moment, he sits up straight and unwraps a burger, staring down at it with an intensity that would scare the shit out of me if, you know, I was the hamburger in question.
“Don’t act so shocked,” I say, sitting up fully and swinging my feet, heels bumping against the side of the Caddy. It fits in well here, with all these poor kids and classic cars and nostalgia. “I’m more than just a slippery cunt, you know.”
“As if I’ve ever treated you that way,” Oscar retorts and then, after another agonizing moment of staring at his food, he takes a bite of the burger. Good boy. He really is human after all.
“You’re right, you’re right,” I say, slicking my tongue around the ice cream cone in a way that really isn’t fair to poor Aaron. “You never treated me like a piece of ass—just a thorn in your side.” I wink at him to soften the blow, but it’s hard to stay mad at the guy when he’s got just the slightest bit of ketchup at the edge of his sharp mouth. He swipes it away with a quick flick of his tongue and I shiver. “But we’re all better now, aren’t we?”
“How could I mistreat you now?” he queries back, taking another bite of his food and closing his eyes for a moment while he chews. He opens them again, directing his attention back to me. “After what happened with the …” Oscar trails off for a moment, setting the remainder of his food down on the wrapper and meticulously cleaning his fingers with a napkin. It always throws me off when he’s wearing anything but a suit. Right now, of course, he’s got on the same matching black hoodie and black jeans as the others, but he’s the only one of the Havoc boys with a bit of white shirtsleeve peeking out against his tattooed wrists. “Miscarriage.”
“Ah, that,” I say, finally giving up on my sexual exploration of the ice cream and biting off the edge of the cone with a crunch. My eyes drift back to Cal as he slides down the pole of the sign just in time for Sara Young to glance his way. I swear, I can visibly see her sighing inside the Subaru. After a moment of what looks like arguing with Constantine, she starts the car and the two of them leave.
Guess they’ve had enough of watching us fuck and eat and chat like normal teenagers. Nothing to see here, folks. We totally didn’t just murder a nasty fucked-up pervert named Mason Miller. I have to say, I most definitely will not be seeing his ghost or James Barrasso’s ghost now or ever. I’ve got absolutely zero guilt about their metaphorical blood tainting my fingers.
“That,” Victor repeats with a long sigh, finally turning back to me. That stark possession in his gaze makes me shiver all over, and I know that when we get back to the hideous refuge of our safe house, I’ll probably spread my legs for him and submit beneath the wild, primal thrusting of his hips. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It wasn’t even really a miscarriage,” I start, but that’s sort of a cop-out thing to say. “It was a chemical pregnancy—meaning the egg is fertilized but it never fully implants in the uterus. If they hadn’t drawn my blood at the hospital, I might not even have realized …”
“Don’t downplay that shit to me,” Victor says, and his words are rough and very close to the cadence of his usual orders. But there’s pain there, too, and I have to remember that I wasn’t the only person that experienced that. It hurt him, and if it hurt him then it hurt me, too. I give him an apologetic look and he sighs. “But I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay,” Aaron says as Callum