Vic clenches his jaw and looks away, but Aaron doesn’t. His eyes are boring directly into mine.

“All of them,” Vic says, sighing deeply. “Everything. I want her to have everything.” He glances my way, but I can’t turn away from Aaron, not when he’s making me bleed in such a delicious sort of way. My bones hurt, my skin hurts, but the injection of ink into my flesh is like an orgasm, taking over me, marking me. It’s just with ink instead of cum, I guess. “Aaron was right. Is right. I’m sorry about the Kevlar, too.”

There’s a long pause as everyone in that garage waits with bated breath to hear what I have to say.

“It takes big balls to admit when you’re wrong,” I say, nodding, but still looking at Aaron. Lost. Trapped. Mesmerized. “You’re all forgiven.” A feeling of relief seems to ripple through them. Hael moves off to continue working on the car, Callum lifts the rusted bumper up to move it, and Oscar finds a seat on a plastic chair. “But if you do it again, there won’t be a second chance.”

“Understood,” Vic says, but he doesn’t press. This moment isn’t about him. It’s about me.

Aaron finishes my tattoo and cleans me up, covering the newly inscribed wounds on my knuckles with a plastic wrap made specifically for this purpose. I then grab his hand, dragging him around the side of the garage and to the back of the building. It’s shaded, the long grass waving in the wind as I encourage him to lean back against the corrugated metal wall.

“What?” he asks, looking down at me, my hand shaking and bloodied by my side. The wrap will keep it from leaking—which, grossly enough, tattoos are wont to do. “I didn’t fuck it up, did I? I’ll punish myself forever if I marred your perfect skin.”

My lips twitch slightly, but I don’t know how to say what I want to say without sounding … lovestruck. You finally did it. You stood up for me, against Victor. It was no big thing, but it didn’t need to be. Love isn’t about sweeping grand gestures, it’s about doing little things each day to keep each other happy, little personal sacrifices instead of showy acts.

“I just wanted to say …” I start, stepping forward and putting my hands on his lower belly. Aaron doesn’t argue with me about not finishing my sentence, not when I drop down to my knees and free his cock from his pants.

The fingers of my right hand curl around the base as I slip my blue-painted lips over the tip, sucking him deep and taking my time with it.

When he walk back around the building and into the garage, I’m still dabbing at the corners of my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket. There’s not much I can do about the smears of blue though.

“Go home to your sister,” Vic says when he sees me, scowling like he has any right to judge. I don’t hesitate, walking right up to him and leaning up on my tiptoes to give him a messy blue kiss, right on the cheek. He looks dumbstruck over it. The guy knows how to mate like a lion, but he can’t handle a cheek kiss?

We have serious issues to work on here.

“On it,” I agree, happy to climb into Aaron’s Bronco with him.

Maybe I suck him off on the way back, maybe I don’t.

Either way, there’s plenty of room in the SUV for it.

When Kali finally started showing up to class at the beginning of the week, her face was bruised beyond recognition, and her eyes burned with a seething hatred that made my skin itch. At some point, there’s going to be a confrontation between us, and it isn’t going to end well.

At least now she has something real to hate me for. I did just bash in her face in. But before that, what did I ever do to her? We haven’t got any sort of relationship where I might be able to ask her why. Why did you do those things to me? Why did you steal my essay? Why did you call Havoc?

It never escaped my attention that Kali had eyes for Aaron. I always knew that, but it never bothered me because I knew he was truly and wholly mine. Still is, I think. I mean, he spent years not fucking any other girls because of me. I don’t care much about words—people lie, after all—but actions, now that’s another story.

And Aaron, well, he’s told me all he needs to with his celibacy.

By Friday, I’m certain that I’m right about both things: Aaron is still mine … and Kali still wants him.

I’m standing outside the doors to the cafeteria, waiting for the boys, my knuckles throbbing from the fresh ink. I’ve taken good care of my new tattoo, washing it with Dial soap and rubbing it with Aquaphor, but ouch, the knuckles are a hard place to take the needle.

“How’s it healing?” Aaron asks, pausing to stand beside me. I glance his way, and my breath catches in my throat. How can he do that to me, leave me breathless and aching? We were always star-crossed lovers, too sweet to find a happily-ever-after, destined for some bittersweet ending that stings the tongue. Yet here we are, freshly fucked, and gazing at one another like we’d rather be naked and alone somewhere.

“The bruise you left on my hip?” I ask, pressing my hand against my pelvic bone and smirking. “Or the tattoo?”

“Well, since you brought it up,” Aaron starts, eyes sparkling with surprise. With the exception of Wednesday at the garage, I’ve been avoiding him a bit, and he knows it. Unlike Vic however, he’s giving me space to breathe. I’m not sure if I love that or hate it. Mostly, I just want him to touch me. “Feel free to discuss either.” He tosses back his cherry coke and then leans down to put his lips near mine. “But I’m more interested in hearing about your sexual battle scars.” He pauses, licking his lips, smelling like roses and sandalwood, his breath sweet with cherry soda.

“In that case, my ass still hurts, and I have finger-shaped bruises on my thighs,” I whisper back, wondering if I should touch him, curl my arm around his neck, kiss him.

As Aaron’s leaning over me, I spot Kali standing down the hall, staring at the two of us from her bruised and swollen face. She’s got Billie, Ivy, and a few of their trashy friends standing at her side, but she doesn’t approach us. Obviously, there’s been no sign of Danny, and the tension in Prescott High is ratcheting up to dangerous levels, but despite their poking and prodding against Havoc, we haven’t moved on the Charter Crew.

Yet.

The way Kali is looking at me … I can sense something beyond her usual hatred, a longing, a reaching, a silent pleading. After all, she’s known Aaron about as long as I have. I remember her in junior high, twirling her hair around her finger and watching him from across the grassy area in front of the school.

“He’s the kind of boy you want to marry,” she’d told me in her thirteen-year-old voice, like she knew the secrets of the entire world.

Vic appears before I can decide what to do, and Aaron pulls back slightly. But not out of fear—out of respect. He hates Victor, but he respects the hell out of him. That, and he desperately wants his approval.

“We need to do something about Kali,” I say as she turns away abruptly, heading for the front entrance of the school with her girls in tow. Stacey Langford watches them carefully from the vicinity of her locker, eyes narrowed. In general, it’s her job to deal with girl drama at Prescott. Kali and Billie are ruining her carefully crafted empire, one that shines, even with Havoc’s shadow cast over it.