Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,203

Somehow, we failed. Somehow, in the end, it didn’t matter because she was willing to sacrifice herself to save any one of us. Hael blames himself, but it wouldn’t have mattered who it was because Bernadette knew what she wanted—or maybe even felt she needed—to do.

The pair of swinging doors opposite the waiting area open, and the surgeon we met with earlier walks out. She pulls her mask down, and I swear that I can tell everything that’s happened based on the expression on her face.

Please no. Please, please, please. Dark god or goddess or benevolent universal energy, please don’t take my first and only love from me. Please. We’ll all break. Havoc will cease to exist. It’ll be the end of everything good and true in our lives.

“Victor Channing?” she calls out, because Victor is Bernadette’s legal husband. That’ll kill me if that’s how we end it all, with his ring on her finger and the rest of us waiting with bated breath. I want her to know that she doesn’t have to choose, that she never has to choose. Because we’re blood in, blood out. Havoc. Forever. Always.

Vic stands up from the chair, the wood creaking as he lifts his heavy body. I don’t turn back to look at him, waiting for the rubber squeak of his boots against the linoleum. He pauses beside me, on my right. Hael is on my left. Oscar and Callum wait behind us.

“I’m Vic Channing,” is all he manages to get out. His hands are shaking by his sides. The unshakeable Victor Channing. He’s trembling so badly that I wonder if he doesn’t need medical attention. My eyes slide closed, and I struggle to breathe.

If Bernadette is dead …

Then Havoc is dead.

The letter of her name might not be in the acronym, but she is Havoc. She always has been. We live and die by the cadence of her breath. We exist as rhythm and pulse to her heartbeat.

“Mr. Channing …” the surgeon begins.

Tick, tock.

I can hear the old-fashioned clock on the wall.

It swallows up the words that follow, and I tumble into an emotional rabbit hole.

Down, down, down, and even deeper still until I was down too deep to swim, and the water filled my lungs, and then … I had my epiphany.

Two months later …

Getting three little girls dressed for a birthday party is a skill I never imagined I’d have in my wheelhouse.

“My hair looks weird,” Heather tells me, standing in front of a mirror with a fine pink mist covering her slicked-back brunette hair. “In a good way. I like it.” She turns around to grin at me as I plant my hands on my hips and smile down at her.

Not bad for an eighteen-year-old guy, huh?

“I do my fucking best,” I say, shaking my head as I glance over at Kara. She’s stacking bracelets on her left arm, a rainbow of rubber ones that she’s collected from various school events and charity donations. Anytime she sees an offering near a checkout counter, she makes me donate the dollar or whatever so she can get one. Or so she says. Secretly, I think she just likes the idea of helping people. “Let’s hurry up. These Oak River people are nuts.”

Not sure how I feel about the girls going to some fancy-ass mansion in Oak Park for a party, but I guess I’ll be there as a chaperone, so it doesn’t matter. We’ll stay for a few hours and then GTFO.

“Do my hair like Bernie’s,” Ashley says, handing me a can of red hair dye. It’s the spray-on kind that only lasts for like, a day, but the girls are obsessed with it. My heart skips a beat at the sound of Bernie’s name, and my throat gets all tight and hot the way it does when I think about her. That’s how it’s always been for me, that physical manifestation of being separated.

I felt like this during sophomore year when I betrayed the love of my life, my best friend, and my favorite person in the whole goddamn world for all the right reasons. To give her a chance. To send her away from Prescott. From Havoc and all of our fucking violence.

And, like in the most fucked-up and horrible way possible, my prophecies and my fears and my worries all came true.

I take the end of Ashley’s chestnut-colored hair and lay it over the back of the chair she’s sitting on. There’s a towel covering the chair,