Mayhem At Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #3)(90)

Aaron gets onto his hands and knees and crawls over to me, my first love wrapped in ink and violence. But when he presses his forehead to mine, all I can feel is his compassion, his need to protect. On the day of his father’s funeral, Aaron told me that he wished he could take care of all of us, that he wished he were strong enough.

He’s spent years granting his own wish. He can and does take care of this family; he is strong, on the inside and the outside.

“Fill all of that emptiness with my love,” he whispers, eyes still closed. I want to close mine, too, because I’m crying so hard, but I love the way he looks on his hands and knees in front of me. Such a beautiful boy, and an even more handsome man. “We’re here to warm up that void, Bernadette. Get used to it.”

I smile, dropping the photo to my lap. Our faces rub together and then our mouths meet. Aaron kisses me properly, stealing my soul away through my mouth, making it his. In return, he gives me his own soul, and I accept it with greedy fingers and a desperate heart.

“You and me, we’re fucking fate,” he says, his mouth moving against mine as he speaks the words. My arms wrap around his neck as our tongues tangle. He takes great care to push the photos safely to the side and then climbs on top of me, encouraging me to lay back on his rug so he can ravage me with his lips. “You’re all there is for me, Bernadette. I live and breathe by your command.”

Aaron shoves my pants down my hips, breaking our kiss to drop his face between my thighs. He puts his mouth on me, lips hot and tongue greedy, tasting me and groaning with pleasure at the same time.

He takes his time with it, moving his lips to mine, and his cock to my opening only after he’s certain that I’ve been satisfied several times over. We don’t leave that room until it’s time to get the girls, and when we do, I make sure to take Penelope’s picture with me, so I can give it to Heather.

“Here,” I tell her when she climbs in the car, and the way her face lights up tells me that’s all she needed, a reminder that Pen was alive once, that was happy, that she was real.

I decide that later, when everyone else in the house is asleep, that I’m going to bury the journal in the backyard, and all of its dark, awful secrets with it.

The only memories I want to carry with me from now on are happy ones.





It’s obvious that Mitch is royally pissed off about what happened on Thursday night. That is, the fact that we didn’t spring his trap whatsoever. It’s hard for me to keep a straight face when I see Kali on Monday. I’ve only ever seen people get their mouths sewn shut in movies, but holy fuck, she looks like a monster.

The lower half of her face is puffy and misshapen, each hole where Stacy’s girls plunged the needle red and scabbed over. At this point, I bet she knows that Neil is dead. How could she not make the assumption? After all, the last thing she saw was him dragging me out of Prescott High in cuffs.

We work on poetry in Mr. Darkwood’s class, as per usual, but all I can think to write about are the boys.

I’m obsessed with them. I suppose they’re also obsessed with me, aren’t they? Based on everything they’ve told me, I wasn’t imagining it when I watched them from across the schoolyard and imagined they were mine. They were and they always have been.



Leather, lust, and lips.

My vision narrows to a single point; my breath quickens.

So many hands, so many mouths, cocks and friction and heat.

An endless eternity of darkness speckled with starlight.

Limitless possibilities edged in violence and romance.

Me, and you, and us.



I pause, roll my eyes at my own shitty poetry, and then draw a giant dick over the top of the words before I turn it in. Mr. Darkwood doesn’t bat an eye; he’s well-used to getting hand-drawn penises in his inbox. I drew ball hairs and veins on mine, so it’s nice and detailed.

“I like your lipstick,” I tell Kali, drawing my finger across my lips when I see her and Billie in the hall together. They glare at me, and I decide that, based on their facial expressions, they’re not properly cowed just yet.

Apparently, a drive-by and a dead friend weren’t enough to shake Billie Charter.

Apparently, sewn-together lips a dead possible baby daddy weren’t enough for Kali Rose-Kennedy.

We’ll have to correct that.

By Thursday, things seem to have settled a bit which freaks me out. Last time Mitch and his crew went quiet, they planned the Halloween attack.

“They’re going to hit us at the winter formal,” I say at lunch, before any of the boys can make the suggestion. I can feel it in the air, this strange buzzing sensation that makes my heart thunder.

“Who?” Oscar asks, like he hasn’t spent the week avoiding me. I’m getting sick of it, to be quite frank with you. Friday morning, I thought he might actually talk to me, but then I came out of Aaron’s room with those photos in hand and Oscar went right back to making spreadsheets on his iPad.

I saw some interesting data when I peeked over at it.

The risk factor for my mother was listed at seventy-nine percent.

How shitty.

Even Kali Rose-Kennedy was listed at seventy-five percent.

So what are we going to do to officially knock them off my list?

“The Charter Crew,” I say as we sit at our usual table in the cafeteria. If we’re not at school, or we choose not to eat in here, the table stays empty. Once, last year, a guy named Owen Tanaka sat there without Havoc’s permission, and they broke his fingers. “They hit us on Halloween; they’re going to come for us during the winter formal.”