Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,143

but Oscar just gives us a tight-lipped smile and keeps walking. Cal and I exchange a look and catch up to him, breaking apart from each other with great remorse. But now that we’re flanking Oscar, it’s much easier to see the frantic beat of his pulse in the side of his tattooed neck.

When I glance down, I can see the firm approval of his enjoyment in the hard bulge at the front of his slacks. He notices me looking and reaches over to tap my chin, drawing my gaze back up to his beautiful face.

“Enough of that, Bernadette Blackbird,” he chastises, pausing outside the door of the staff apartment building to swipe our keycard. The staff always glare at us like blights on the perfection of their indefectible school; it’s even worse in here, since we’re invading their living space, too.

Nobody here understands how we got in, how we get to live in an apartment together, how we get away with all the shit we do. But that’s okay. It’s none of their fucking business, now is it?

A brunette woman with sharp frown lines cut into the lower half of her face sniffs derisively as we pass by, and I mime giving a blowjob, pointing at the two boys with me and then hooking a thumbs-up.

“Should be a fantastic night!” I call out, giving her a little wave before I bounce into the elevator and watch Oscar press the button for our floor. He still won’t look at me, so I get in his face instead, peering close at him until he finally turns his attention over to me. “Just admit it: you were watching us and getting off on it.”

“O has a problem with intimacy,” Cal says matter-of-factly, earning himself a glare made of gravestones and dead things.

“My father threw me into a shallow hole with my dead mother’s arms wrapped around my neck; I’m allowed to have issues, Callum Park.”

A ripple of violence and despair washes through me as I think about baby Oscar, with his blond hair dyed, lying in the dirt with bruises on his neck. Let’s just say, his father made a good choice by putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger. If he were still alive, well, I’d be plotting to kill him the way I’m plotting to kill Hael’s dad.

You know, when we’re not being followed by cops—even ones that are now just there for our protection.

Sara Young could be playing a game with me. I don’t think so, but I did underestimate the bitch before and I’m not going to do it again. We have to be exceedingly careful with every move we make. One wrong step could tip us from the precipice of freedom to the depths of a jail cell.

The elevator doors open, and we make our way to the apartment, knocking in a special pattern and then waiting for one of the others to verify that it’s us through the peephole. The sound of locks being removed is a familiar tune for someone from south Prescott. Click, slide, twist. Aaron eventually opens the door, welcoming us back in.

Victor and Hael are waiting in the living room, not even bothering to hide the fact that they’re staring at me.

“Look, I’m …” Well, saying I’m fine would be a lie. I’m not fine. Nothing about this is fine. My mother killed my fucking sister. She killed her for the crime of, what? Standing up for herself? Trying to fight off a sick, twisted sexual predator? And now that I’ve spoken to Pamela, I realize that she’s so keen on hurting me that she’ll even take the secrets of her hatred to the grave. She won’t tell me about my dad. She won’t even say how she committed her greatest sin.

And I just have to learn to live with that.

“Processing?” Aaron suggests, and I nod, glancing briefly over at him. That’s a good word, processing. I like it.

“Processing,” I agree, feeling the sexual euphoria from outside dulling at the edges. It’s helpful, all those endorphins and shit, but it isn’t enough to erase the pain in my heart. Nothing ever will. I’m just going to have to let time work her magic, dulling my emotional wound at the edges until it’s nothing but a shiny, white scar that I can rub my fingers across. “But I’ll be okay. Don’t sit around and worry. Go get some of that fancy cafeteria food you like so much.”

“It ain’t bad,”