Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #1) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,27

nearby. Clearly, the guys felt this was the safest place to bring me. Doubt any of them live in much better situations than I do.

Aaron … is the exception.

I open the door, dragging my backpack with me. I'd have rather slept at Vic's place, in his bed. An all-over shiver takes hold, and I have to bite my lip to keep my hands from shaking.

Aaron is already at the door when we walk up the front path, leaning in the doorjamb with no shirt on, wicked fingers tapping a rhythm on the wood.

He doesn't say anything as Hael hands over my backpack, just turns and pads into the dark house.

“Sleep tight,” Hael says, giving me a pat on the back before he disappears around the corner of the garage and climbs back in his Camaro.

Fuck.

With a deep breath, I move in and close the door behind me, making sure it's locked. Aaron is halfway up the stairs, so I follow after him to the second floor.

“The girls are sleeping,” he says, tossing my backpack onto his bed. “Try not to wake them up. I'll be on the couch.” He starts to leave the room, and I reach out, curling my fingers around his upper arm. Aaron smells amazing, his dark hair wet from a shower. I rest my forehead against his arm, forgetting for the briefest of moments that I’m supposed to hate him.

“Thank you for letting me stay here,” I tell him, trying not to think too hard about our sordid past. And yet, there it is, burning like black fire in the recesses of my brain. As soon as I fall asleep, I'll dream about it, I just know I will.

“Havoc sticks together,” he says, pulling his arm from my grip and heading down the hallway. I watch after him until he disappears, and then turn back to a bedroom I haven't seen in a long, long time.

It's like a time warp in here.

My breath catches as I sit on the edge of Aaron's bed, and put my face in my hands.

I don't cry, but I remember.

Oh, I remember well.

Three years earlier …

I’m standing at Aaron’s side in the rain, looking at a single casket, as black and shiny as the hearse that drove it here. My hand reaches down for his, the only other mourner in the cemetery besides myself. Aaron’s parents weren’t well-liked. Well, his father wasn’t well-liked anyway. And his mother was terrified of him.

“She didn’t come home last night,” he says, glancing my way, pleading with his eyes for a million things I can’t give him. Stability. Warmth. Security. “I don’t think she’s coming back.”

“Don’t say that,” I tell him, but I wonder … there were clothes missing from his mother’s closet, socks and underwear strewn across the floor. And then there was the way she looked at me when I stepped onto the front porch and saw her hastily climbing into a cab.

She isn’t coming back.

“What about my sister?” he asks, giving my hand a squeeze. “What about my cousin?”

We both know the story of my brief stint in foster care. Aaron’s sweet girls, they wouldn’t survive a week. Their spirits would break along with their bodies. My eyes close, and I hang my head, blond hair sticking to the sides of my face. The wetness hides the tears, but I don’t know how to help. That happens sometimes, when one broken person tries to lean on another. We’re too rickety to keep the other standing. All it would take is a strong wind to blow us both over …

“I’m afraid, Bernie,” he says finally, lifting his chin up and staring across the freshly dug hole in the ground. His father’s funeral won’t go unnoticed by his creditors. He had a coke and vodka habit to accompany his partying and gambling problems, and shit doesn’t come cheap. They’ll start looking for his mother, and if they find her … And on the other side of the coin, if the state finds out a fifteen-year-old is living alone with his five-year-old sister, and two-year-old cousin, they’re all screwed six ways to Sunday.

“You’ll figure a way out of this,” I tell him, glancing over, watching droplets of rain bead on his full lower lip. “You always do.” We’re both survivors, me and Aaron. We have that in common. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him, that maybe I have been for years. Young love might be fluffy and fleeting, but at least there’s a