“A good what?” Aaron asks, pausing beside us. He looks relieved to be home, but there's a different sort of tension in his eyes. He levels his gold-green gaze on Victor and waits to hear what we're talking about.

“Oscar's foster family,” Vic murmurs, looking Aaron up and down briefly before he locks eyes with him. “She wants to know about the Peters.”

Aaron glances over at me with a sympathetic sort of expression on his face.

“Maybe if you knew more about Oscar's family, you'd understand him better,” he says, and then he pauses for a long moment. “Doesn't excuse fucking any of his behavior, but it might help you figure out a way to accept him for what he is—a complete and total asshole.”

“Where is that complete and total asshole anyway?” I ask, my eyes drifting over to the slight pinkish stain on the couch. I almost cringe but manage to hold it together. No need to show all my emotional cards, right?

“At home, with the Peters,” Victor says with a frown as he checks his phone. “Speaking of, I have to go in a few myself.”

“What?” I ask, blinking stupidly at him. “You're leaving?”

The grin that stretches across that man's lips makes me want to stab him with the blade that's tucked into my boot. Fucker. He looks so damn pleased with himself as he scoops me into his arms and Aaron rolls his eyes.

I get the sense that the other boys are being patient … but also quickly losing that battle.

Victor must know that, right?

“In order to get my inheritance, I have to live with my dad until graduation. Legally, I can only spend two weeks away from the house before Ophelia can call that shit in. Trust me: she's watching.” Victor pauses, skimming his hands down my back and sighing in just such a way that his breath ruffles my hair. “With the days I slept here before the trip, and the trip itself, I cannot stay here with you tonight.”

I close my eyes against the sound of his voice. The way he's talking, you'd think we were going to be separated for eons, not one night.

“I'll take good care of her,” Aaron replies for me, snapping both me and Vic out of the obsessive bubble we're trapped in. I flick a glance over my shoulder as Vic scowls.

“Oh, I'm sure you'll try,” he tells him, looking Aaron right in the face. “But not in the way you're thinking.”

“No?” Aaron asks, taking a step forward. The tension in the room amps up, and I start choking on the extreme levels of testosterone. It takes like ash on my tongue. “We've all been nice, Vic. Way fucking nicer than we needed to be. Tell me: what's it to you if Bernie and I spend some time together while you're gone?”

Shit.

I look between Aaron and Vic, and I just know this is about to spiral out of control.

I wanted Aaron to stand up for me, and it looks like he just might.

But at what cost?

Victor is amped-up, hyper aggressive from the wedding …

“I'm going to shower, and then I'm going to curl up with a book,” I blurt out, because, let's be honest, I'm sore and I just spent two hours on the back of a motorcycle. My poor lady parts need a break. “Let's just … shelve this conversation for now, okay?”

“Pussy,” Hael calls out from the kitchen, chuckling at himself. “I mean, ball sack. Stop being a ball sack, Bernie, let 'em fight over you.” I flip him off, slipping past Callum and heading for the stairs.

I almost expect Vic or Aaron to stop me, but neither of them does. When I get to the top of the steps and look back, I can see it's because they're in a stalemate. If one of them had moved, the other would've, too, and a fight might've broken out.

Jesus.

I can almost hear Oscar's mocking tones ringing inside my head.

“We are not letting Bernadette break us apart.”

But he needn't have worried because Bernie won't let Bernie break Havoc apart.

This is all going to work out; it's just a matter of balance.

I slip into Aaron's room and lock the door behind me, putting my back to it and sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor. And then I start to laugh, and I don't stop until I'm in tears.

Happy tears, to be specific.

This is going to be fun.

Prescott High is in rare form when we roll up on Monday, parking the Camaro across the street and settling in for a moment to watch the mayhem unfold.

“Fuck,” Hael murmurs, folding his arms across the steering wheel and resting his chin atop them. Cal leans forward from the back seat and we all watch as uniformed police officers hassle students outside the front doors. “This is worse than usual.”

“It'd have to be, considering the nightmare we left before break,” Callum muses, flipping his hood up like armor. He's always been notorious for sneaking weapons in past security. I wonder if even he can get anything past these guys. Instead of the usual duo of derpy idiot cops that patrol campus, we have six officers whose faces seem carved of stone.

By now, they'll have found Neil's cruiser, flipped over and burnt. They'll have realized that he's missing. They'll have noticed that I've been gone.

Long. Deep. Breath.

We get out of the car.

Oscar, Aaron, and Vic are waiting for us on the sidewalk in front of the school steps. Not a single student passes by us without craning their heads around on their necks to stare. Mark Charlin is so busy gaping at us that he doesn’t notice the steps at the front entrance, beefs it, and ends up cracking a tooth and bleeding everywhere.

“Idiot,” Hael murmurs, lighting up a cigarette. Even now, with six police officers—I’m just assuming Havoc doesn’t have any of these guys in their pocket—the boys flaunt authority from moment one. “How do we do this, boss?”

“It’s a school day, like any other,” Vic says with a shrug. He heads right for the front steps without waiting to see if we’ll follow. He doesn’t need to, right? Because he knows we will.

I have to skip ahead to catch up with Victor, wearing my pretty pink Havoc jacket with pride.

The police officers stop us, frisking us from head to toe. I can feel the boys watching me to make sure I’m treated with respect, that hands don’t wander or squeeze where they shouldn’t. Either the officer that’s patting me down is one of the good ones or he can sense that he’s being watched by predators.

Once they release us, we go through the usual metal detector/drug dog bullshit that we do every morning. After that, it seems to be business as usual.

We step into the building with me and Vic at the head of our ‘V’ shaped formation, the other boys fanned out behind us. At the end of the hallway is Mitch Charter, his brother Logan, and the two remaining Ensbrook brothers. Kali and Billie are with them, watching us. They’re all watching us.

Someone near us is listening to the song “Start a War” by Klergy and Valerie Broussard. It seems appropriate as it drones out of their phone’s speaker. The owner of said phone is frozen, holding a pair of earbuds in his palm. Guess he just paused in the middle of turning on his Bluetooth. The music keeps playing as we start down the hallway, my heeled boots loud against the old linoleum floors.

Principal Vaughn is waiting about halfway down, his arm still in the sling, his eyes shifty and unfocused.