“Pamela,” I say, and it’s all I have to say because these boys know me so damn well that they can infer the million and one emotions that go along with that name.

Cal sits down on the sofa opposite me as I study that ballerina tattoo in earnest, and Aaron strokes my hair with strong, steady fingers. It occurs to me then that the GMP has not only taken our school from us, they’ve also stolen away Callum’s classes at the Southside Dreams Dance Company. There’s no way for him to go into town and teach safely. So, for now, even that fragment of his dream has been put on hold.

I tell myself it’ll all be better later, that once Vic gets his inheritance, Callum can build a dance studio and hire professionals and give little Prescott dancers a chance to cling onto dreams they’d never have thought possible in a million years. Because, even though Victor technically owes nothing to the rest of the Havoc Boys, I know that when he said we’d all have an equal share of the inheritance, he meant it.

“Do you want to see Pamela?” Callum asks finally, after giving me a moment to process. Hael joins him on the couch a few seconds later and lets his friend put his legs across his own. They’re cute together, Cal and Hael. “If you don’t, that’s okay. And if you do, that’s okay, too. My grandmother killed my mom. I still want to see her.”

“I …” The words get stuck in my throat. Do I want to see Pamela? It’s a question I haven’t let myself ask because I knew the answer would sicken me. Aaron’s fingers still in my hair and his breath catches, like he can sense the direction of my thoughts. “Frankly, I just wish she would die and disappear, so I never had to think of her again.”

And there it is, the reality of my strange relationship to a woman I hate so much that the very idea of her fills me with something sad and sick and broken. If she really did kill Penelope—and I feel like Sara Young is a far too careful hero to make a mistake like that—then I don’t ever want to see her again. She isn’t worth a single breath, a single sip of water or bite of food. The world would be instantly better off if she didn’t exist.

“We can make that happen,” Oscar says, pausing next to the couch in bare feet. Bare. Feet. Something about Oscar’s tattooed feet make me excited in a way that I can’t explain. Like, I’m damn near positive that not only was he a virgin before me, but also that nobody else has ever seen his feet like this, exposed and naked on the pale wood floors of our new apartment. “Is that what you want? You were right, about finding one of Stacey’s girls in the county jail that could help us out.”

I lift my eyes up to his, impossible to read behind the thick lenses of his glasses, too distant to interpret. But I have the power to bridge that gap, to see all the way down, into the twisted complexity that makes up one of the most beautifully damaged people I have ever known.

Victor joins us, his aura making the room seem impossibly small despite the fact that it’s fucking huge and almost disturbingly austere.

I sit up, but I stay close to Aaron. Being close to Aaron makes me feel vulnerable but strong, too, like I can take that vulnerability and wield it as a weapon in the same way that Victor wields his anger.

After a moment, Oscar moves away, and my heart seizes painfully in remembrance of his past fuckups, his fleeing, his leaving me alone in the cold and the dark with blood between my thighs … But he comes back quickly and puts a glass of chocolate milk on the table in front of me, complete with straw.

“It’s a biodegradable straw,” he tells me when I lift incredulous eyes up to his stoic face, his inked fingers brushing gently against the front of his tattooed neck. “Since I know you give a lot of fucks about that sort of thing.”

“Well, technically, I think that corporations should take responsibility for their packaging and that blaming the state of our planet on straws is an irresponsible—”

Oscar leans down and captures my mouth, his fingers firm and possessive on the bottom of my chin. It’s enough to make me forget that twenty fossil fuel companies contribute a third of all carbon emissions. Shit, if climate change is going to kill us all, at least I’ll have this moment seared on my tongue like a brand.

“Just say thank you, Oscar and that will suffice.” He takes the seat next to me, making my stomach flip-flop dangerously. Tonight is our first night in the apartment, our chance to practice those ‘sleeping arrangements’ that Callum brought up the other day. At the safe house, we all slept in the same room. The bed was small and shitty, so the guys took turns rotating through some sleeping bags on the floor.

Here … is different. There’s a king-size bed in all three rooms. Also, the master is large enough that we could, like, maybe push at least two of them together …

I bite my lower lip, and the tension in the room winds into something tight and virulent. That’s what you get when you’re dating five red-blooded men all at once. They look at you the way you look at them: like something naughty and delicious that deserves to be licked. Only, I get whatever I give them back five times over.

“I have to see Pamela. Just … not quite yet. But soon. Then I’ll decide what to do.”

The easiest thing would be to just forget about her, make her disappear, but some part of me knows that I can’t just yet. I want some answers; I have too many questions. The biggest one, I suppose, is this: will Pamela Pence answer any of them?

Guess we’ll have to wait and find out, now won’t we?

“Your wish is our command,” Hael says, touching his fingers to his chest and throwing me a shit-eating grin. “So, Havoc Girl, who do you wish to take to bed in that big-ass room tonight?”

A snort escapes me as I glance over at the wall of windows and the sparkling lights of Springfield in the distance. Hmm. My nails dig into the black fabric of my sweats as I consider.

“Do you think … I mean, it’d be safest if we all stayed in the same room for a while, right?”

Aaron lifts a brow as I lean down and grab my drink off the table, a slight flush coloring my cheeks as I slip the straw between my lips. Somehow, even as he proclaimed to hate me with every breath, Oscar watched me enough to notice how much I love chocolate milk with straws, that this was my go-to drink in the Prescott High cafeteria.

“Don’t talk in circles around us,” Victor says, and I have to snort because I know he’s referencing that first day in the library when I sat down across from these assholes and asked for their help in extracting vengeance from a cruel and vicious world. “We don’t like it.”

“We really don’t like it,” Oscar echoes, leaning back against the arm of the couch and the few decorative throw pillows there like some sort of obscenely beautiful boy-king, set to inherit the earth in his tattooed hands.

“Maybe we should all sleep in the master bedroom?” I start, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the room where Vic and I fucked this morning. “It doesn’t have to be forever, but why not for now? While we finish school, while we deal with the GMP …”

I trail off, and I realize then that I’m still doing it, that I’m still asking.

I stand up quickly, moving over to one of the duffel bags still sitting on the floor near the front door. I extract the crown that Victor got me and set it on my head, moving back into the living room as Hael and Callum chuckle and Aaron smiles softly. Vic looks contemplative, and Oscar looks … enraptured? Is that even possible?