Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,167

Martin struggles to sit up, blood pouring from numerous cuts on his cheeks and forehead, bits of mirrored glass in his hair. He coughs once and then groans, curling over to clutch at his side.

“If you’re going to do it, then do it,” Martin sneers, head still bowed in pain. “Fucking pussy.”

Hael’s finger tenses on the trigger, but if he pulls it, the cops will most assuredly hear a gunshot. There won’t be any getting out of this. And I’m not losing one of my boys to prison.

“Hael,” I breathe, tensing my fingers gently against his upper arm. He shivers and tries to pull away from me, but I follow him, refusing to let up on the light pressure of my fingertips against his sweat-slicked skin. His bloodred hair catches the spring sunshine and makes it glimmer like rubies. That fauxhawk of his always seemed so stupid to me before, like he was trying too hard to be cool. But now that I know Hael as intimately as I know myself, I understand that he just is cool. He doesn’t have to try; it’s in his blood. He wears his hair that way because he likes it. “I know you’re angry right now—”

He gives a caustic laugh, interrupting me.

“Nah, I’m not just angry, I am fed the fuck up.” He steps forward and grinds the end of the gun into his father’s forehead. “You just can’t stop hurting people, can you? Marie loves you. I don’t understand why. For the fucking life of me, I just …” He glances over at his mother like she’s an alien to him, like he loves her but could never understand her.

What I want to tell him but don’t, not at that moment, is that love is the most irrational thing there is. Everybody wants it, craves it; everybody chases it. Sometimes, they chase it so hard that they think they’ve found it when all they really have is something awful and broken and ugly. But you can’t convince someone out of love; they have to realize it for themselves.

And Marie … She’s collapsed to her knees now, her hands covering her face. The way Hael looks at her, I know that he’d do anything for her. He’d sacrifice the world to save his mother. Except … then his eyes shift to me and I know that I’m the exception to that rule. Me, and the Havoc Boys. His attention moves from me to Victor, to the other boys, back to Martin.

“She loves you, and you won’t stop hurting her. One day, you’re going to kill her.”

“You don’t understand a thing about us, you gangbanging fuck-up,” Martin snarls, shoving up to his feet and stumbling until he knocks his shoulder against the tumbledown fence at the rear of the property. He leans against it for support, panting, as Hael keeps the gun trained on him.

“You called me for help,” Hael tells his mom, and she starts off on him in French, yelling and screaming. “Why do you always call me for help if you’re not going to leave him? Why am I even here?”

“Hael,” Marie pleads even though it’s pretty obvious that she has no idea what she’s pleading for. Instead of turning to his mother, Hael’s eyes find mine again. This time, when I put my hand on the gun and push it so that he’s aiming at the ground instead of his father, he lets me. “He isn’t a bad man, he just … you know how he gets when he drinks.” She stops talking, letting her head hang, red hair waving around her shoulders. Her heavily accented voice is melodious, but her words are beyond sad. She can’t be much older than Pamela, just another young Prescott mom who never got to be a child herself. I feel so fucking bad for her.

“Are you going to kick him out?” Hael asks, turning to face his mom and slipping the gun back in his waistband. He curls his arm around my waist and drags me close, holding me to him like I’m his one and only lifeline in a storm. His eyes blaze as he stares his mother down. “You’re not, are you? You just wanted me to come and stop him from beating your ass, and then that’s it. I’m a referee and nothing more.”

“You are my son,” Marie whispers, and then she repeats it in French, “Tu es mon Fils.”

“Let me take you somewhere else,” Hael suggests, but this is