Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,214

now, papered with textured wallpaper that I picked out and applied myself because even with Ruby’s money now safely in Victor’s hands where it was always meant to be, I don’t like paying people to do things for me. And even if putting the wallpaper up was a pain in the ass, it was worth it because every time I look at it, my chest swells with pride and I remember that with a little gumption and a whole lot of determination, you can do anything you put your mind to.

You can raise three little girls even when you’re just barely past the little girl stage yourself. You can fall in love with five beautifully broken boys. You can wreak havoc and make chaos, chase mayhem and incite anarchy, and in the end, you can find your own sort of victory. Whether that means putting up wallpaper or running an underground that functions in the dark without being consumed by it.

There are still drugs in Springfield; there are still prostitutes; there are still murders.

But Havoc is always there, always watching. The hammer of justice is in our hands, and we’re not afraid to use it. There are no children being sold and no girls disappearing down the I-5 corridor. There are no cops whose hands are not tied to justice or Havoc or both.

Prescott High has been renovated, and it’s full of laptops and iPads and teachers with degrees who don’t beckon girls into selling their bodies on webcams. There’s a dance studio where Callum teaches little kids who can’t afford to pay for expensive classes in any of the Oak neighborhoods but whose hearts are so full and so ready to learn that they find themselves with scholarships to places far and wide.

“Bernadette?” Heather says, waving a hand in front of my face. Both she and Aaron are staring at me, waiting for me to come out of my reverie and remember that my little sister, the one I worked so hard to save, is graduating high school next week. Going to prom this week. She’s going to college in New York and I’m both sad and excited all at the same time. “You’re not writing poems in your head again, are you?” she asks, but I just give her a wry smile.

“Where’s Kara?” I ask instead, because I’m not ready to explain the full feeling in my heart just now. It’s bursting and overflowing and the only reason I’m not frightened by the intensity of it is because I’ve gotten used to feeling this way over the last ten years. Shit, the Havoc Boys—who now, really, can only truly be called Havoc Men—make me feel this way every goddamn day.

“Right here!” Kara says, coming down the stairs in a dress that’s black and sultry and much more like something I would’ve worn in high school than what Heather’s got on. She’s dressed in pink and sparkles, and I can’t help but wonder if, like her body spray, the dress is an ode to a sister that she doesn’t remember nearly as well as I do but misses all the same.

I smoke my cigarette as Kara bounces over and presses a kiss on my cheek, her floppy, curly chestnut hair piled into a bun but with tendrils that escape and spring against her cheeks and forehead in a way that reminds me of Aaron.

My eyes turn his direction as Kara offers him a kiss as well, clearly also attempting to make the great escape before the other boys find us. Only … it’s too late.

“I told them you two were trying to get out of here before they could grill your dates,” Ashley says in that smug fifteen-year-old way of hers, like she knows fucking everywhere. Heather and Kara both give her death glares, but Ashley doesn’t care. She’s so enamored with my boys that she slips up sometimes and calls them her dads in conversations with other people. She’s a bit of a snitch, too, when it comes to tattling on Kara and Heather, but we’re working on that.

“Not a chance in fucking hell,” Vic says, cigarette dangling from his lips. Ever year, I’m certain that he can’t possibly get more beautiful, that I’ll never be able to find him more handsome than I did the year before. And yet, year after fucking year, he proves me so wrong I could cry when I look at him. My husband. My boss. My protector. My emotional clone.

A knock sounds