Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,46

hand touching someone else’s skin. I can feel her pulse thundering in my hand, and I rub my thumb along the dancing heat of it.

A small, sharp gasp escapes Bernie’s throat, and I close my eyes in pleasure. When I bring her wrist to my mouth, she lets me take it. Carefully, gently, I uncurl some of my fingers, exposing an inked portion of her wrist.

There’s a small book tattooed here with a quill pin twirling above it. My mouth curves up sharply at one side. Ah, the clichéd tattoo of a dreamer. Nothing has ever looked so beautiful to me before. The thing with dreamers like this, they sometimes get the silly idea that they’re ordinary.

In reality, I’m drawn to this girl as a shooting star is drawn across the sky.

Some things cannot be undone.

This is one of them.

“Take, O take those lips away,” I whisper, kissing her pulse again. She tries to draw her arm away and my fingers wrap tight again, nails digging into her flesh. “That so sweetly were forsworn.”

“I think I care more for the miniscule cluster of cells I just lost than my mother ever did for me.” Bernadette stops talking and this time, when she tries to pull her arm away, I let her. I stand up. That old, familiar panic surges through me, but I tamp down on it; Bernadette is more important than any fear or hesitation that I might feel.

Four months ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve walked away, left her in here to cry. Or worse: not cry. Because emotions that stick around inside of you for too long, they rot. Trust me, I know better than anyone.

Two years ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve whispered awful things in her ear and I would’ve delighted in seeing her face darken with anger. Because that meant this strange hold we have on one another, this attraction that never goes away, that it could be broken somehow. Or at the very least, stretched. She might’ve walked away and known a life of ignorance and bliss.

But this … it’s nothing but passion and poison.

I reach over my shoulder and grab a fistful of my shirt, lifting it over my head and tossing it aside. I reach my right hand back and flick off the lights. Every movement that I make hurts; there is no part of me that isn’t terrified right now. Yet, I’ve been letting this one fear above all others consume me, and I can’t let it do that anymore. Not when Bernadette needs me the way she does.

“What are you doing?” Bernie asks as I strip off my pants and step into the tub, sliding my naked body around hers. I’ve always wondered what the point of these oversized tubs was. Now I know. “Oscar …” she starts, reaching down and curling her fingers through mine. I hiss at the sensation, but I don’t pull away. The heat of her is incinerating.

“I have no idea,” I say, my lips pressed against the side of her neck. There’s a hickey there. I stare at the shape of it and imagine that it feels familiar. I left that there. I lift my eyes up to the faucet as it drips into the tub. She’s finally put the plug in, and it’s filling with water that feels lukewarm in comparison to her skin. “This is all new to me. You seem to be okay with it though. Why don’t you tell me?”

She stays where she is for a minute and then leans back into me.

After a minute, I swear I can feel her smiling. I can certainly hear it when she speaks.

“And those eyes, the break of day,” she murmurs, the peach soap floating in the tub and bumping up against my hand as it stays banded across her belly. “Lights that do mislead the morn.”

My own mouth tilts into an uncomfortable sort of smile.

We should not be smiling.

Our school was shot up.

This girl is suffering.

We could very well die before we graduate.

It’s something that I’ve always feared. In that moment, I swear I can feel it, this pall that falls over us both like the shadow of something morbid creeping its way in. My eyes close and I squeeze her even tighter.

That’s why I’m smiling.

Because you’ll only know true regret when it’s too late. I want to smile now, just in case. Just in case one of us doesn’t make it out of this. Just