I've left little spatters of blood in my wake, and my bare feet smear them as I continue down the hallway, not caring that I've left my shoes behind.
Regardless of where and how they got it, the Havoc Boys had that video.
They didn't tell me about it.
Worse, they let the Thing taint Aaron's house, ruin an already shitty Halloween, mock me.
They let him get a leg up, and I'm not sure if I can ever forgive them for that.
I’m soaking wet and my feet are killing me by the time I get back to Aaron's place, but I ran out of fucks to give a long time ago.
A rough hand grabs my wrist as I pass by an overgrown yard, and my fight-or-fight-harder instinct kicks in. I throw a hard punch with my left hand, but my attacker intercepts it, keeping me from killing him long enough for me to realize through my adrenaline-soaked haze that the person I'm fighting with is Victor Channing.
“Oh, great,” I snap, tearing my arm away from him and wishing it didn't feel like my skin was branded by his touch. “The absolute last person I want to see right now.” I look up into his ebon eyes and feel my rage begin to crack and burn around the edges of my vision. Vic is the leader. He's the one who's supposed to be in charge. Ultimately, this decision fell to him and he fucked it all up.
“How could you run off like that?” he asks, his voice dark and low and dangerous, his hair wet and hanging in his beautiful face. He's frowning at me, nostrils flared as he takes me in like a runaway kid who needs to be kept in line. So much for being a Havoc Girl, right? If I were, they'd have told me. “You're a Havoc Girl now, and we don't keep secrets from each other.” What a crock. “We're in the middle of a war, Bernadette. Do you understand that? You could've been killed.” He pauses for a brief moment before flicking those dark eyes away from mine. “Or worse.” Vic spits into the wet grass, and then pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket.
I say nothing.
I'm afraid to say something, the way I feel right now. Likely, it'd be something I'd very much regret.
Victor tries and fails to light a cigarette, the rain soaking his clothes and plastering them to his muscular body. My eyes find their way down to his chest, despite my reservations, despite my hatred. Part of me is an animal, and she still very much wants her alpha male. I grit my teeth against the impulse.
“You lied to me,” I say, the words coming out in a hiss. With everything that happened last night, I think I was in some sort of shock. Right now, the world seems crystal clear. “After all that bullshit about the one currency you can carry is truth.” I imitate Vic's voice, and he smirks at me, as if he has any right to look at me like that.
“Nobody lied to you, Bernadette. We have a lot of information; we're disseminating it on a need-to-know basis.” He reaches out to grab me again, but I take a step back, putting some much-needed space between us. Vic lets out a long sigh, and I swear, if I couldn't hear Heather laughing through an open window, I might have attacked him. “There are no secrets in Havoc; there are no lies.”
“Where did you get the video then?” I snap, taking note of Oscar as he moves halfway across the front yard, pausing with one arm over his chest, the elbow of the other resting in his palm. He cradles his chin in his hand and watches me, but I ignore him, too. If he wants his shattered iPad back, he can get it from Callum.
Vic sighs again and stares at the tip of his soggy cigarette. He holds it between two fingers and studies it carefully, like it holds all the answers he could ever need.
“Oscar,” he says, like that’s explanation enough. The rain stops and Vic gets out another cigarette, offering it up to me, but I’m not taking his metaphorical fucking olive branch. “For Christ’s sake, Bernadette, have you not noticed he’s got some skills with computer shit? He got them off of your stepfather’s laptop.”
“Why did you have Neil’s laptop?” I whisper, burning up on the inside. My eyes are narrowed on Vic, homed in