Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,40

going for the tea instead.

Hah. Tea. Like anybody in this house ever drinks tea besides Oscar. You should’ve seen that motherfucker’s face when Hael tried to put a cup of tap water into the microwave. I thought he might whip out his revolver and blow his friend’s head clean off. I’ve never heard someone say something as inane as “there’s a kettle in the cupboard” and have it sound like “I’m going to fucking murder you.” Impressive, I must say.

The taste of this particular tea—one of Oscar’s choices, obviously—is deep and earthy, like wet leaves on a warm summer morning after a rain. And there I go again with the metaphors and shit. I can’t help it. Language is just too much fun to play with.

“Special order Makaibari Estate green tea,” Oscar explains, as if his glasses give him enough focus to read my mind. It feels like he could, like he could read my heart, my mind, and my soul with a single glance. I meet his gaze and take another sip. Briefly, I wonder if the pregnancy I just lost could’ve been his. Really, it could’ve been any of them. That’s what you get when you let your five boyfriends run a train on you, am I right?

“He’ll want the girl to come to him,” Vic says finally, as if he’s been mulling my words over in the ensuing silence. “Although, considering his reputation, it’s possible that he’d venture out after fresh prey. Question is: how do we get him to hire one of Stacey’s girls after the whole robbery fiasco?” Vic pauses and clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth in frustration for a moment.

“Well, first off, I think we should officially bring Stacey’s girls into Havoc.” I look at Oscar and, finally, after about ten seconds of dead silence, he nods his chin almost imperceptibly. “We get one of them to talk to Maxwell, to apologize for the oversight of what they did to that John. Then, we have her offer up a girl but on the condition that Mason meets her somewhere public, like a hotel. If they refuse the gift, so what? They’re already after blood. If not, that gives us a chance to deal with him.”

“I’ll kill him,” Cal offers, lifting up his joint in solidarity with the plan. “Just give me a vent or an accessible exterior window.” He takes another drag and then reaches out to grab the ash tray off the coffee table.

“You need to rest,” I tell him when he glances back up at me, wearing a fresh black hoodie that hides all his wounds from prying eyes. “Somebody else can do it. We’re all capable of getting blood on our hands.” I pause for a moment, that old, familiar anxiety rushing through me. But Kali’s ghost doesn’t appear, and I don’t summon her. I don’t need that shit in my life. I need to move forward, and there’s only one way to do that: down the rockiest fucking path possible.

Because nothing worth having is ever easy to get.

“Oh, come on, Bernie,” Cal says with a dark chuckle, cringing slightly and putting his fingers to his throat. I can only imagine what it’d be like to have a garrote wrapped around your neck—especially one made of piano wire. Without those whip-fast dancer reactions of his, I doubt he’d have been able to escape. “You know there’s no rest for the wicked; I need to redeem myself.”

I give him a look, but I don’t plan on letting him out of my sight until he’s had a few days of downtime—and a hospital visit. Like, I’m not done harping on that shit. Fucker needs antibiotics whether he likes it or not.

“Whatever the details,” I say, exhaling and closing my eyes as another cramp rips through me like a slash to the belly. I swear, I can feel my insides tumbling out onto the floor. When I open my eyes, they’re all looking at me again. “We have one thing the GMP doesn’t. That is, us. We have hot, angry Prescott blood. That has to account for something.”

“For now, we need to move,” Vic says, mumbling around a cigarette that’s clenched between his teeth. “To the safe house. The feds are an okay deterrent, but we killed Maxwell’s son. He’s coming for us, sooner or later. It’s inevitable.”

Vic stands up and moves over to the front window, throwing open the drapes to reveal the cop car parked across the street. I glance over