Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,215

at the door, but I’m not surprised. In order for their dates to get up to the front door at all, they had to pass through the gate, past security. I’ve known for the last several minutes that they were on their way.

“I’ll get it,” Hael says with a Cheshire cat grin, chuckling as Heather groans and Callum perches on the staircase, a cruel smile painting his fairy-tale mouth. Oscar waits nearby, a brand-new iPad in hand, watching the door open with eyes the color of the full moon and twice as mysterious. “Well, hello there,” Hael drawls, dragging both Kara’s date and Heather’s date into the room by their wrists. “You must be Brody and Bailey. Nice alliteration by the way, any relation?”

The poor teenagers look half-ready to shit themselves already, so I step forward and give Hael a friendly slap on the shoulder.

“You’re scaring the fuck out of them,” I say, gesturing with the cigarette and wishing I’d dressed up in something even remotely resembling like, what a mom might wear. Then again, that’s sort of fucked-up, right? To assume that having a kid requires a change of style. I imagine that when the boys and I do start breeding like rabbits the way they’ve all been dreaming about for the last ten years, I’m still going to want to wear sweats with pink bats on them or cigarette pants covered in jack-o-lanterns. Anyway, when you’re the queen of Havoc, you can’t dress in mom jeans and chunky sweaters with cowl necks, now can you? “Hi there, I’m Bernadette; this is Havoc. And you’ve got nothing to fear as long as you don’t mess with our girls.”

Heather groans again and Kara buries her face in her hands for a moment, but hey, it’s better than if the boys do the talking. Callum is casually playing with a knife while Oscar makes notes on his iPad in just such a way that making notes is just as menacing as playing with said knife.

Aaron and I take a few pictures and then let the kids get on their way. What we don’t tell them is that they’ve got Havoc Crew members on their asses all night, wearing skeleton masks and waiting in the shadows. But hey, anything to keep them safe. That’s been the point of everything I’ve done up until this point.

When I flop onto the black jacquard couch later, it’s with a sigh of such intense relief that I couldn’t even begin to explain it. It’s like … I’ve been on a very specific journey for an entire decade, and that decade is now coming to an end. Heather is graduating, and she’s moving to New York for school while Kara starts college life in the dorms at the local U.

It’s almost like … I’ve hit a finish line somehow.

Heather made it; she’s safe; she survived.

You’d be so fucking proud of me, Pen, I think as I spot her ghost standing in the corner, smiling at me and wearing the prettiest pink skirt and the brightest pink lipstick and beaming like the whole world is on fire and burning just for us. There is no end to the things that I can do, that I can accomplish.

“I’ve always been proud, Bernadette,” she tells me as I choke on tears and try to hide my reaction from the boys.

Of course, that’s never a thing, hiding from them. Because they always know. Not once in the last ten years have I not felt seen by them. I rub absently at one of the scars on my shoulder where Martin’s bullet tore through, and I smile sadly at Pen’s ghost until she fades away with a wave, leaving empty space in my heart that I have no choice but to fill with love.

“You okay, wife?” Victor asks me, offering up a scotch that I accept between grateful hands. The booze burns on its way down, tasting like fresh fruit, butterscotch, and oak. It’s far nicer than the crap we drank in high school. That is, except for the one exception of the fancy stuff we stole from Coraleigh’s beach house. Fuck, that feels like it happened a million years ago.

“I’m okay,” I promise, holding my glass in my left hand and grabbing my journal with the other. I’ve taken to keeping one, ever since Aaron got me that one for Christmas during senior year. This is where I write the first drafts of my poems. There’s just something so … visceral