Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,127

falling into something even when you’re trying your very best to fly.

“Pamela,” I say, and it’s all I have to say because these boys know me so damn well that they can infer the million and one emotions that go along with that name.

Cal sits down on the sofa opposite me as I study that ballerina tattoo in earnest, and Aaron strokes my hair with strong, steady fingers. It occurs to me then that the GMP has not only taken our school from us, they’ve also stolen away Callum’s classes at the Southside Dreams Dance Company. There’s no way for him to go into town and teach safely. So, for now, even that fragment of his dream has been put on hold.

I tell myself it’ll all be better later, that once Vic gets his inheritance, Callum can build a dance studio and hire professionals and give little Prescott dancers a chance to cling onto dreams they’d never have thought possible in a million years. Because, even though Victor technically owes nothing to the rest of the Havoc Boys, I know that when he said we’d all have an equal share of the inheritance, he meant it.

“Do you want to see Pamela?” Callum asks finally, after giving me a moment to process. Hael joins him on the couch a few seconds later and lets his friend put his legs across his own. They’re cute together, Cal and Hael. “If you don’t, that’s okay. And if you do, that’s okay, too. My grandmother killed my mom. I still want to see her.”

“I …” The words get stuck in my throat. Do I want to see Pamela? It’s a question I haven’t let myself ask because I knew the answer would sicken me. Aaron’s fingers still in my hair and his breath catches, like he can sense the direction of my thoughts. “Frankly, I just wish she would die and disappear, so I never had to think of her again.”

And there it is, the reality of my strange relationship to a woman I hate so much that the very idea of her fills me with something sad and sick and broken. If she really did kill Penelope—and I feel like Sara Young is a far too careful hero to make a mistake like that—then I don’t ever want to see her again. She isn’t worth a single breath, a single sip of water or bite of food. The world would be instantly better off if she didn’t exist.

“We can make that happen,” Oscar says, pausing next to the couch in bare feet. Bare. Feet. Something about Oscar’s tattooed feet make me excited in a way that I can’t explain. Like, I’m damn near positive that not only was he a virgin before me, but also that nobody else has ever seen his feet like this, exposed and naked on the pale wood floors of our new apartment. “Is that what you want? You were right, about finding one of Stacey’s girls in the county jail that could help us out.”

I lift my eyes up to his, impossible to read behind the thick lenses of his glasses, too distant to interpret. But I have the power to bridge that gap, to see all the way down, into the twisted complexity that makes up one of the most beautifully damaged people I have ever known.

Victor joins us, his aura making the room seem impossibly small despite the fact that it’s fucking huge and almost disturbingly austere.

I sit up, but I stay close to Aaron. Being close to Aaron makes me feel vulnerable but strong, too, like I can take that vulnerability and wield it as a weapon in the same way that Victor wields his anger.

After a moment, Oscar moves away, and my heart seizes painfully in remembrance of his past fuckups, his fleeing, his leaving me alone in the cold and the dark with blood between my thighs … But he comes back quickly and puts a glass of chocolate milk on the table in front of me, complete with straw.

“It’s a biodegradable straw,” he tells me when I lift incredulous eyes up to his stoic face, his inked fingers brushing gently against the front of his tattooed neck. “Since I know you give a lot of fucks about that sort of thing.”

“Well, technically, I think that corporations should take responsibility for their packaging and that blaming the state of our planet on straws is an irresponsible—”

Oscar leans down and captures my mouth, his