Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,36

is why Havoc needed a Havoc Girl.

I look over at Vic and see that he’s waiting with his cigarette halfway to his mouth, like he actually cares what I have to say. I appreciate that. When he put that crown on my head, he wasn’t just posturing. He meant the gesture with the entirety of his inky black heart.

“Ophelia would never let them kill you because the money then defaults to charity, yes?” Vic gives a curt nod, and it occurs to me that his grandmother must’ve really seen something awful in her daughter to think up a stipulation like that. Likely, the reason she wanted him to live with his alcoholic father was to keep him away from Ophelia as well. Because even a drunk is better than a devil. “And they didn’t kill me when they had the chance either. There’s something to that.”

I remember James’ rage when he finally caught up to me. “Find the little bitch and put a bullet in her. I’m done playing games.” The question is: what game, exactly, were they playing to begin with?

Victor just stares back at me as Cal shuts the water off and I scramble to get him a towel. He takes it and then throws an arm around my shoulders to keep himself upright while he dries off, getting me wet in the process—just not in the way I’d normally like.

A rush of hot heat between my thighs is not the welcoming signal that it usually is. I look down to find blood on my shorts. Again.

“Bernadette Channing,” Vic warns, and I close my eyes for a moment against the penetrating depth of his stare.

Motherfucker.

I can’t hold onto this any longer, so I just … don’t.

I open my eyes.

“The hospital called to tell me I was pregnant,” I say, and I swear on the devil’s tits, you could hear a pin drop in that bathroom. Hael glances back at me from his place in the hallway as Aaron offers up a melancholic but encouraging smile from behind him. “Also … I’m … not pregnant anymore.” I gesture at my bloodied shorts for emphasis, forcing myself to meet Vic’s gaze.

“What?” Victor’s voice is so sharp that I almost cringe at the sound of it. Instead, I just keep staring down those obsidian eyes of his, watching as he tries to keep control of his temper and almost fails. Vic. The master of control. He’s fucking seething.

“Do we need to go to the hospital?” Oscar asks, his voice strangely calm, almost inflectionless. His emotions are locked away in a vault right now.

Hael, on the other hand, has braced his palm against the wall and is currently bent over, eyes squeezed shut. When he lifts his head and stares at me over Oscar’s shoulder, I feel a wave of exhaustion crash over me. I need sleep. Desperately so.

“No,” I say, because I’m not totally ignorant. Once, in tenth grade—just before she called Havoc on me, coincidentally—Kali thought she might be having a miscarriage. She’d slept with this boy, ugh, what was his name? That’s right Clarence. I remember thinking that no kid born after 1945 would be named Clarence. Anyway, she thought she was pregnant, and then she thought she was having a miscarriage. We looked it up. “There’s nothing they can do.”

“Bernie,” Vic says, his tone a warning. It’s thick with fear and upset and possessiveness. In short, it’s perfect. I ignore him, leaning down to flick open the lid of the toilet and then dropping my shorts as if I were Callum, as if I don’t care that all five of them are staring at me in that way of theirs, like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.

I sit down on the toilet and then take the cup out, turning the water ruby red. It’s a little weird that they’re all still watching me, but I don’t care. This is life. If we’re going to be together, they may as well see every facet of it, even the less pretty parts.

“Don’t,” I growl out, but Vic just raises an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t what?” he snaps, gritting his teeth and then exhaling sharply. He flicks his cigarette into the sink as Hael crowds between him and Oscar so that he can stand directly in front of me. Aaron moves up to fill the gap, and then they’re all just there, inches away from me in the relatively small space of the bathroom.

“Don’t get all overprotective and weird.