Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,164

He wants me to go, to make friends. I can tell all of that in his one-word response, just the way Vera could with mine. “We’ll make sure you stay safe.”

Victor lets go of me and heads back to the table with the boys as I glance back over at Vera to find her giving me a long, studying sort of look.

“You are cock-whipped,” she tells me, and I scoff.

“I am fucking not,” I growl back because I’ve totally kicked bitch’s asses for less. But then Vera just laughs, and I shake my head. “I am not cock-whipped. If anything, they are the ones that are pussy-whipped.”

“Ah, right,” she says, standing up from her chair as I clean my fingers off with the napkin and then pick up my garbage to chuck in the bin on the way past. “Victor motherfucking Channing is pussy-whipped as he orders your ass around.”

“He actively encourages me to fuck four other dudes,” I remind her as we step outside into the warm afternoon sunshine. Vera thinks about that for a moment and then sighs.

“Okay, okay, you’ve got me with that one. Now, you spoiled ass Oak Valley Prep ho, come with me and get your southside on for the love of god. Spend too much time at that palace and you’ll forget your roots.”

I let Vera lead me down the sidewalk with the boys following behind. What I don’t tell her is that I could never forget my roots. The origins of my story are wrapped around my heart in thorns, briars that make me bleed even as I make new memories and roses bloom. No, forgetting is not nor ever will be an option.

Some people have material things to fill the endless void in their hearts; in Prescott, we make bonds. That’s how we fill that dark void up until it’s overflowing.

When we get to Tiff’s house and look back, I see all five boys slip into skeleton masks and my mouth quirks into a smile. How they do shit like that, coordinated like a group of dancers, I’ll never quite understand.

Vera grabs my hand and drags me into the tiny rundown shotgun house at the edge of the train tracks.

That night, I experience the most normal teenage Prescott party that I have ever been to in my life. No GMP members, no shootings, no dead teens, no stranglings, no bodies buried alive. Just … alcohol and weed and loud music from tinny speakers and dancing with five interchangeable boys in skeleton masks.

At the end of the night, one of them slips a mask on my face, carries my tired ass out to the car and drives me home. I only wake up once more, when I’ve been tucked carefully into bed and surrounded by five warm, hard bodies.

That’s when I finally grab onto and hold something I’ve always wanted: normalcy.

And we are close. We are so motherfucking close, I can taste it.

The thing is, someone—Aaron, actually—once told me this: you chose to dig in deep, just for a little taste of vengeance. It won't be as sweet as you think, cupcake. In fact … you'll find it leaves the taste of ash in your mouth; it's almost obscene.

Ash … That isn’t what I’m actually tasting, is it?

Because things can never be too rosy for too long, a few weeks after Tiff’s party, I’m sitting in the living room with Aaron while the two of us try to puzzle out some of our homework together. We could ask Vic or Oscar or even Cal for help—and we probably will—but not yet. We’re both too stubborn to give in that easily.

Instead, we’ve been sitting here for almost two hours working on the same set of math problems. At least we have that in common, me and Aaron, our shitty ass remedial math course. Also, since neither of us is used to all this fancy ass iPad learning and shit, we try writing the problems down on a piece of paper like a proper 90s kid and actually manage to solve a few.

Hael lounges across from us, reading on his phone. He and Aaron think they’re slick, that I haven’t noticed that they’ve both downloaded some reverse harem novels to dig into. And by reverse harem, I mean books that feature one main female chick with at least three dedicated dudes.

Basically, my life.

Although I’m not sure how many readers would want to jump into this shit-filled pond—even with all the hot-ass man candy and the