but I can’t deny that it was incredible, too.
The question here is: what the hell is Oscar so freaked out about?
I decide I don’t care. But I am pissed. Royally fucking pissed.
He’s going to owe me for this, big time.
Only a total dick fucks a girl on her period and then doesn’t help clean up. I spend another hour scrubbing the couch cushions before Vic finally comes out of his room to stare at me.
“Jesus,” he murmurs, lighting up a cigarette before heading outside the sliding glass door to smoke.
“Thanks for the help,” I snap out through gritted teeth. That gets his attention, and he comes back in to look at me, leaning his big body against the inside of the sliding glass door.
“If you think I’m cleaning up a mess you made while fucking another guy, then you’ve seriously missed the boat on my personality. Who do you think I am, Bernadette?” I ignore Vic, but I know he’s right. Doesn’t rankle any less. “By the way, isn’t it like Thanksgiving next week or some shit?”
I pause in my scrubbing and then glance back at him in surprise.
Oh. Crap. It is, isn’t it? Well, in like a week and a half or something.
We’ve been so busy this month that I spaced it completely.
Victor doesn’t want me to go home anymore. I agree with that, but it also means that the danger level is amping up. My mother isn’t going to take this lying down. The Thing most definitely won’t. He loves to pick at me from across a dinner table—even more so on holidays. He laps my pain and anger up like a lizard sticking its long tongue to a fly.
“It’s on the twenty-eighth,” I say, but I don’t really care. It’s an okay holiday, and I get the modern meaning of it, but there’s also just a wee bit of genocide in there, too. Heather, though, she might get upset if we don’t do anything at all. I put my forehead on my arm, the fingers of my right hand still curled around the sponge.
I cannot believe I had sex with Oscar Montauk this morning.
At this point, I’ve screwed every Havoc Boy but for Callum. I’m sure we’ll get there soon, I think, and then sigh. Not because I don’t want to see what Cal might be like in bed, but because I hate holidays and all their stupid rituals.
“The girls will want to do something,” I say as Vic comes over to sit in the armchair on my left. I lay my cheek against my arm and turn my face to look at him. He stares at me with equal parts possessiveness and tender adoration. I’m not sure he’s even aware of the latter bit. “But I’m not sure I have the energy.”
Victor nods, sweeping his palm over his purple-dark hair. He doesn’t like me sleeping in Aaron’s bed, but I keep doing it anyway because I have a feeling that after the wedding, I’ll rarely be out of Vic’s wicked fingers.
“Hael can make tacos with that ground turkey meat shit you like. How does that sound?” Vic lights up a joint, the smoke drifting toward the open sliding door. “Gobble motherfucking gobble.”
I smile, but I don’t have the energy to laugh.
“Tacos and Havoc Boys. This might be my most exciting Thanksgiving yet.” I sit up and plop the sponge into the bucket of pinkish water. Victor and I don’t talk about me screwing the other guys, not really. It’s implied that I stay within Havoc. I’m dead certain that if I fucked a guy outside of this circle, he would kill him, and I would most certainly suffer.
Not saying our relationship is healthy or hashtag-goals or anything like that, but it is what it is.
And I revel in it.
“The day after, can we get a Christmas tree?” I ask, and Victor gives me a weird look as I push to my feet.
“You’re one of those people, huh? A sentimental asshole with a need for dead pine trees and lights.”
I glare at him as I climb to my feet, swiping a hand across my forehead. When I reach out for the joint, he passes it my way and then yanks me into his lap. Victor’s lips brush my ear, and my entire body flashes white-hot before relaxing into a desperate sort of cool, like a dip in a pool after getting a sunburn.
“Why do you have to mess with me like this?” he continues, and it takes