“O, don’t fuck this up for yourself,” Callum warns, and I glance back to see that he’s stood up and thrown his hood back. Once, right after it happened, I let Cal hug me. Just once. It lasted ten minutes, and then I never let anyone touch me again after that. But we both remember. He’s always been the closest friend I’ve had in Havoc. “Tell her why you’re struggling, tell her that you love her, and then stop fucking punishing yourself. I swear to god, I just had this same conversation with Bernadette.”

Callum pauses as the door opens and she appears as if summoned … wearing one of my fucking button-downs and a tie over my boxer shorts.

“Found some proper clothes,” she quips, wearing heels that are so tall they’re almost obscene. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, off to do some spying?” Cal whispers mischievously, pausing to give Bernadette a kiss on the cheek as he passes. “The place is secure; there aren’t a lot of people here who aren’t students. You should be pretty safe, but keep your eyes peeled and try not to get caught.” He slips into the room like a shadow, leaving me and Bernadette alone.

“I would hardly call that a proper outfit,” I quip, and she cocks a brow at me.

“I’d hardly call you a proper boyfriend. What was it you said to me? You asked for me, so you’ve got me.”

I visibly cringe, gritting my teeth and closing my eyes for a brief moment. What a socially maladroit thing to say. But I did say it. I meant it, too. What Bernadette doesn’t understand is that this is me trying. I have given myself to her. I’m surrendering, but it’s like the slow drip of ice from a glacier.

“Let’s go.” I turn and take off down the sweeping hall like I know where I’m going. Really, I’m just following the numbers of the doors until I get to the one I’m looking for. I dig the stolen skeleton key from my pocket, the one that Cal filched from the groundskeeper, and then I open the door.

It’s just an empty room, a bit larger and a bit nicer than the connecting suites we’ve got, but there’s nothing of interest in it. Yet. All I know is that this is where Trinity Jade will be somewhere in the next few hours.

“She’s meeting someone here?” Bernadette asks, but I don’t know, so I just shake my head.

“Her friend—” I start, and she interrupts me.

“Nose Job.”

“Whatever you want to call her,” I continue with a slight growl. Bernadette smiles when she sees that crack in my control, but I pretend like I don’t notice. “She said that Trinity couldn’t make some movie night thing in her room because she was going to be in this one. I don’t know what that means or what she’s doing, but we’re going to find out.”

The room consists of two parts, a small sitting area with a fireplace and a bar. Through a sliding barn door, I can see the bed, but I stay well away from that. With Bernadette wearing my shirt, and me in this mood …

I wish I’d packed my rope.

“Should we wait in the closet or something?” Bernie asks, moving around the room and letting her fingers trail across the back of the couch, a decorative side table, the top of the bar. I watch her like my gaze is spelled, like I couldn’t look away without cutting my eyes from my own skull.

“Depends on how fast you can find a hiding place,” I reply, opening up a large cabinet near the fireplace. There’s always the chance of being caught, no matter where you hide. But that’s also why I brought a knife. That, and a revolver.

I close the cabinet—there’s nothing in there but extra wood for the fireplace—while Bernadette opens a massive wardrobe, one that’s easily big enough for two people.

“This should work,” she says, and then she climbs in and leans against one wall. It’s a decent place to hide considering the nature of this game. Trinity already has a room, so she obviously won’t be staying in this one. Without needing to put away any clothes, why would she ever open the wardrobe?

I join Bernadette, taking up the opposite side of the space and closing the doors behind us. A thin bar of light cuts her shadowed face in half, but it’s about the only part of her that I can see.

“Reconnaissance is incredibly dull; it’s why we usually make our crew do these kinds of things.” I keep my voice low enough that if Trinity were to come into the room quickly, the sound of the door opening would muffle it completely.

“So let’s make it less dull,” she challenges, pushing up off the wall and coming toward me. I let her do it, too, let her push her body up against the front of mine. My cock stirs in my jeans, and my jaw clenches so hard that my teeth hurt. “Tell me why you’re so mean all the time.”

“Because, Bernadette,” I growl back at her, reaching up to grab her chin. She lets me dig inked fingers into her face and then she smiles in triumph because I’m now willingly touching her again. But I don’t stop. Instead, I curl my other arm around her waist. For a split-second, I just keep her there, reveling in the fact that I’m not as awful and wicked and disturbed as I think I am. Because I can hold a girl in my arms, and I can like it. Even as I choke on the words I need to say like I’m coughing up blood. “I’m broken. My father tried to strangle me, and then he wrapped my dead mother’s arms around me and pushed me into a dark hole.”

There’s a long stretch of silence that follows that statement, but there it is, a trauma that repeats in my head almost every day. It’s impossible to forget. I know that I could quite easily be diagnosed with all sorts of emotional disorders, and I’ve never cared about that until just now.

Until Bernadette.

“That’s why you were a virgin,” she repeats, and I cringe at that word again. Virgin. The sound of it makes me think of pure untouched snow and blushing young girls. Neither of those things has anything to do with me. It was purely out of survival instinct that I abstained, the instinct that if I went too far with one of those women, I might hurt them.

“Aren’t we over that yet?” I ask, but Bernadette gives me an incredulous look as I drop my hand from her face. “If it bothers you so much, I’ll go fuck somebody else, so I have more names to my roster. I’ll never be able to catch up to Hael though, so take his grand achievements for what they are.”

“Stop picking on him,” she chastises, reaching up to touch the side of my face with the palm of her hand. I cringe, but I let her do it. “I’m not mad that you were a virgin, I’m just surprised is all. I didn’t expect that.”

We stare at each other in the quiet dark for a moment until Bernadette steps back just a few inches and tucks some long hair behind one ear.

“Do you want me to keep touching you?” she asks as I struggle to keep my breathing controlled. It’s too dark and quiet in here; she’ll know if I have too strong a reaction. Or maybe she already fucking knows? Because normally, she wouldn’t ask to touch me; she’d just do it. She’d touch me until I felt like I was falling apart on the inside, rotting at my very core. And yet … this is her trying. This is Bernadette making an effort in an arena where I have, thus far, only managed to fail miserably. “Or do you want me to back off?”

“I want you to touch me,” I tell her, and even that comes out sounding like an insult.