There she is, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and her face wet with tears. She doesn’t look at me when I step in and close the door behind me.

“What’s the matter, Mrs. Channing?” I murmur, squatting down and putting my hands on her knees. It’s too dark in here for us to see more than the faintest hint of shadows, but I know where she is. I can feel her heat, smell her smell, hear her heart thundering in her chest.

“I feel like I should know what I’m doing here.” She lets out a scathing laugh as I lean in and press my lips to her forehead. “This is what I’m good at, being tough, riding things out, surviving against the odds.” Another self-deprecating laugh follows. “So why do I feel so out of place? Why can’t I just accept that you pretending to go along with Ophelia’s plan is the only thing that makes sense? Why can’t I just stop feeling bad about other people and all the horrible things they do? If I don’t fit into Havoc, Victor, then I don’t fit anywhere.”

I pause for a moment, letting her words sink in.

“Bernadette,” I begin, scooting into the corner and dragging her into my lap. My hands automatically go to her hips, and I know she can feel my cock through my jeans as she straddles me. Why is she wearing this ridiculous fucking skirt? I think, wetting my lips with my tongue and trying to hold myself together. “You don’t need to fit into Havoc. You are the reason for Havoc. Everything we do, we do for you.”

“I know that,” she says, sounding temporarily seventeen. Like, this is a girl who speaks like a thirty-year-old. It’s like that for all of us. Some people think age is a determination of time; it’s about experience. We’ve crammed in so much shit in our lives that we’re aging at the speed of light. I wish the only things Bernie needed to care about were grades and gossip. I wish that for all of us. But then, there’s the world we wish we live in, and the world we actually live in. Sometimes it hurts to acknowledge that. “I just want to be worthy of that. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. You say you’ve been waiting for me all this time? Well, I’ve been waiting for you, too.” She rests her forehead against my shoulder and wiggles her hips.

A growl escapes before I can control myself.

“Goddamn it, Bernadette …” I start, but I’m not mad and we both know it.

“Sorry, it was getting too serious in here,” she whispers, but we both know that even if she jokes about it, even she makes out like it’s nothing, it means everything. This moment means everything, and if we don’t follow through with it, we’ll have missed an opportunity that was given to us despite the awfulness of the world. No matter what’s going on around us, if the world burns, if the people spoil, if there’s no point to anything else … we have this.

We always have this.

“I don’t want to lose what I’ve worked so hard to gain.” Bernadette pauses again, like she’s truly considering her words. “I told myself all along that I was doing this for my sister, but I’m selfish. Victor, I can’t help it, but I want this. I want to be with you; I’d follow you to the grave.”

I shudder beneath her, my hands making their way to her ass. I can’t help myself; I end up squeezing it so hard that she yelps. I relax my grip, and she bites me in the ear.

“Stop that,” she murmurs, but her voice has changed. She can feel it as well as I can, this obsessive pull between our bodies. We were basically made to fuck each other.

“Listen to me, princess,” I tell her, taking her chin in my hand, even if I can’t see her face. I hold her there, and I swear to fuck, I can feel her gaze burning me up from the inside, setting me on fire and tearing me apart, all at the same time. “You hesitated to kill Kali because there’s still a shred of innocence in you. You are living proof that the world can try its hardest to crush a person’s soul and still fail. You are second chances and beautiful beginnings, Bernadette. You hesitated because you wanted to make sure you gave that girl every chance in the world. If you have to believe a lie, believing that other people are inherently good is one you might as well stick with.”

I pull her face forward, so that our lips are touching. She tastes like tears when I lick her mouth, but that’s okay. Those tears belong to me as much as her smile or her laughter. When you accept a person for who they are, you don’t choose bits and pieces. You accept every part of them, right down to the rotten bits. Because everybody wants somebody to love their rottenness.

Even me.

“Do you understand?” I ask her, and she hesitates just enough that I’m forced to squeeze her chin again to get her attention. “Is Kali here?” I ask, and she nods. I hate that she’s seeing things, that I promised I could protect her all by myself when I knew that was a lie. She has to be a part of this as wholly and completely as anyone else; Bernadette has to protect herself.

Because she might not know it, but she’s the final name on her own list. Every mistake she’s ever made, every bad memory, every misstep, she lets those things haunt her. She’s that now, in the form of Kali Rose.

“She won’t leave me alone,” Bernadette hisses, like she’s both furious and afraid, all at the same time. “And I can’t handle it anymore, all the stress and the fear and the frustration. I just want to revel in my own glory, my own pain. All of it.” I smile a little, but she can’t see me so I make sure to kiss her until she can’t breathe.

“Bernie, the only person who can get rid of Kali is you. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, learn from them, and take my hand so we can move onto the next big thing. If life isn’t always moving forward, then it’s stuck in place and sinking. You are my queen; you deserve that fucking crown; Kali doesn’t matter. None of them did. Not Coraleigh, not even Neil. Shit, Trinity Jade is nothing. They’re all just obstacles for us to get past. Do you understand?”

She hesitates for a moment, but when she nods, I can feel the movement against my face.

“I’m going to fuck you now, recruit,” I say, and she shivers as I grab her ass again. “This time, are you going to follow my goddamn orders?” There’s a long pause there before I slap her ass and she lets out a gasp of pleasure.

“I prefer Aaron’s spankings,” she murmurs, and I growl, surging to my feet and slamming her back against the wall of the closet. Bernadette’s arms go around me as our mouths meet, my tongue obliterating hers, punishing her into submission. At the same time, I rock my hips against her so hard that I’m sure her ass is putting a dent into the goddamn drywall.

“You only prefer Aaron’s spankings because you know he isn’t serious about them,” I snarl, licking the side of her neck. If she thinks I don’t notice every new hickey, every new finger-shaped bruise that the other boys leave on her skin, then she’s got another thing coming. I’ve memorized them, a pattern that I have to repeat, to redo, to control. “And you know that I most definitely am.”

I reach between us and free my cock from my jeans, pushing her panties aside with two fingers and finding her so goddamn wet that she’s soaked her thighs. The scalding heat of her body triggers my most basic instincts in a way that breaks the definitive control in which I live my life. My hips drive forward, my cock filling her up as she cries out and clings to me, letting me have my way with her in the closet where she was once my prisoner.