Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,150

a night to be barefoot, doesn’t it?

Glancing up, I see cobwebs and dust, crumbling plaster, and a ceiling medallion that I already know I’m going to try to save. Poetry might be my artistic medium, but once an artist, always an artist. If you can find beauty in decay, then you’ve just learned what it means to be human. The meaning of life, in so many words.

Love. Art. Compassion. Empathy.

I’m not sure why people act like that’s such a difficult question. The meaning of life is obvious. It’s to fucking live it.

“It’s so creepy in here,” Aaron murmurs, pushing chestnut curls back from his forehead as my heart seizes painfully in my chest. That’s a trigger for me, seeing him touch those goddamn curls. I want to fucking eat them they’re so beautiful. He gives me mad schema.

“You don’t sound like you think that’s entirely a bad thing,” I murmur as Callum crouches beside me, setting the bag of takeout in the center of what’s shaping up to be a circle. Hael sits next to him, then Victor, Oscar, and right back to Aaron. A circle. A sphere. A shape with no beginning and no end.

I reach for the food and find my box of pad Thai sitting on the top.

“A little creepy now and again can be a good thing,” Aaron says, giving Cal a look. For his part, Callum just chuckles and lifts a single shoulder in faux apology.

“I can’t help myself,” he murmurs, passing out white boxes to the other boys until he finds his own food. “It’s just too much fun to scare people—particularly the ones that deserve it.” He steals a plastic fork from the bag and digs in while I study the fireplace behind Victor’s head, the one with the stones tumbling out of it. To fix that, we’re going to need, like, a mason or something—that is, if it’s at all savable.

We eat for a few moments in silence, Hael’s eyes flicking up to me every now and again until he finally sets his food down in his lap and gives me a look.

“You sure this is what you want to be doing right now?” he asks as the candles flicker and jump around us, casting strange shadows on the walls. There’s always a possibility that the GMP could’ve followed us here, that even now, they could be working their way through the woods at the back of the house, out of sight from the two police officers, as they get ready to strike.

But I don’t think so.

Ophelia wants that money. Maxwell probably does want to kill us, but he’ll be careful with his plans. As careful as we’re being. Because if he comes for us again and makes another mistake the way he did at the school, he’ll never live it down. His men won’t trust him. The feds will definitely try for RICO charges—that’s when you get the leader of an organization tried and convicted based on the things his underlings have done.

For now, I feel like we’re relatively safe.

It won’t last, obviously. Nothing this nice ever does. Or at least, it requires sacrifice, and I feel like we haven’t made any big ones just yet.

“This is what I want to be doing,” I confirm, adjusting myself so that I’m situated in a small nest of blankets. If I seem calm, it’s all bullshit. Because I’m not. I’m not calm because Pamela took away my power over her. By killing herself, she’s removed my last chance at reaping justice for Penelope. Now, Pam is dead, and she’s no longer suffering, and the world just keeps on turning, as if it isn’t a tragic loss that the woman never really paid for her crimes.

I poke at my food for a while, glancing up only briefly to make sure that Oscar is eating. He is. He’s been eating a lot more lately, so much so that he’s put on a bit more muscle mass. It ripples in his arms when he dresses in a tank top for bed. It shows in the valleys of his abdominal muscles and the way his dress shirt stretches across his shoulders after he takes off his jacket and loosens his tie.

A ghost of a smile teases my lips before it falls away again.

“Get the whisky,” I command, and it’s Victor who grabs it, unscrewing the top and taking a huge swig before he passes it down the line. When it’s my turn, I drink as much as