Victor doesn’t want me to go home anymore. I agree with that, but it also means that the danger level is amping up. My mother isn’t going to take this lying down. The Thing most definitely won’t. He loves to pick at me from across a dinner table—even more so on holidays. He laps my pain and anger up like a lizard sticking its long tongue to a fly.

“It’s on the twenty-eighth,” I say, but I don’t really care. It’s an okay holiday, and I get the modern meaning of it, but there’s also just a wee bit of genocide in there, too. Heather, though, she might get upset if we don’t do anything at all. I put my forehead on my arm, the fingers of my right hand still curled around the sponge.

I cannot believe I had sex with Oscar Montauk this morning.

At this point, I’ve screwed every Havoc Boy but for Callum. I’m sure we’ll get there soon, I think, and then sigh. Not because I don’t want to see what Cal might be like in bed, but because I hate holidays and all their stupid rituals.

“The girls will want to do something,” I say as Vic comes over to sit in the armchair on my left. I lay my cheek against my arm and turn my face to look at him. He stares at me with equal parts possessiveness and tender adoration. I’m not sure he’s even aware of the latter bit. “But I’m not sure I have the energy.”

Victor nods, sweeping his palm over his purple-dark hair. He doesn’t like me sleeping in Aaron’s bed, but I keep doing it anyway because I have a feeling that after the wedding, I’ll rarely be out of Vic’s wicked fingers.

“Hael can make tacos with that ground turkey meat shit you like. How does that sound?” Vic lights up a joint, the smoke drifting toward the open sliding door. “Gobble motherfucking gobble.”

I smile, but I don’t have the energy to laugh.

“Tacos and Havoc Boys. This might be my most exciting Thanksgiving yet.” I sit up and plop the sponge into the bucket of pinkish water. Victor and I don’t talk about me screwing the other guys, not really. It’s implied that I stay within Havoc. I’m dead certain that if I fucked a guy outside of this circle, he would kill him, and I would most certainly suffer.

Not saying our relationship is healthy or hashtag-goals or anything like that, but it is what it is.

And I revel in it.

“The day after, can we get a Christmas tree?” I ask, and Victor gives me a weird look as I push to my feet.

“You’re one of those people, huh? A sentimental asshole with a need for dead pine trees and lights.”

I glare at him as I climb to my feet, swiping a hand across my forehead. When I reach out for the joint, he passes it my way and then yanks me into his lap. Victor’s lips brush my ear, and my entire body flashes white-hot before relaxing into a desperate sort of cool, like a dip in a pool after getting a sunburn.

“Why do you have to mess with me like this?” he continues, and it takes me a second to realize he’s not talking about the Christmas tree. No, he’s talking about Oscar. “You know how I feel when I see you with another man, don’t you?”

“Grateful for a night off?” I joke, and his hold tightens on me. I pretend not to notice, smoking the joint with two, tattooed fingers. The A and the V from my Havoc tattoo stare back at me.

“Murderous,” he tells me, and then he takes the joint back and pushes me off of his lap just as Callum comes down the stairs.

“Off to the studio?” I ask, lifting the bucket. Cal shakes his head, coming over to take the bucket from me. I almost don’t let him. After all, he doesn’t know what the pinkish water in it means, but then I decide to just enjoy not having to dump the heavy thing in the sink.

“Not today,” he tells me, rinsing the bucket with the detachable sprayer on the sink. He looks ridiculously comfortable cleaning up blood. Not his first time at the rodeo, am I right? “I was going to climb onto the roof and watch the sun rise.”

I stare at him as goose bumps prickle across my arms. I’m wearing his hoodie again, drowning in fabric and the fresh smell of talc and laundry soap. Callum turns around and leans his ass against the sink. His hood is down, but he’s wearing a sweatshirt similar to mine, tucking his hands into the front pocket.

“My grandmother and I used to do that, every Sunday morning.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It is. It’s huge. I focus on his blue eyes and try not to get lost in the vibrancy of them, but it’s impossible, like falling into the ocean during a storm and praying that you don’t drown. “When she could still get around well-enough to do it, that is.” He ponders on that for a moment. “I might go home in a bit to check on her.”

Obviously, I knew each of the boys had a family and a backstory and all that crap, but I guess I’m just as much a narcissist as the next asshole because I never really let myself think about that. To me, they were always just … mine. My boys. My property. I would piss on them if I could.

All of these revelations, though, they’re rocking me.

Vic has a socialite for a mother and a drunk for a father; Hael’s dad is a murderer and his mom is broken; Callum only has a grandmother to his name. Of course, I know all about Aaron, but when it comes to Oscar? He’s an enigma. I wouldn’t know if he lived with snakes in a wild tangle in the woods.

“Do you mind if I join you on the roof?” I ask, feeling my heart stutter a bit. The animal side of me says, Bernie, you fucked four of your boys; get that last one. But I need some time to process what happened with Oscar, what’s happening with me.

My sexuality is opening like a dark lotus inside of me, and I need to at least say hi to her before I test her limits again.

Callum smiles at me, tilting his head just slightly to the side. The diffused gray of early morning light colors his hair, but all it does is turn it silver. It can’t diminish the shine of it.

“Of course you can,” he tells me, his voice as rough and beautiful as always, a tumble of dead and dark things that makes the wicked part of me happy in ways I can’t explain. His scars are silver, too, shiny in the strange light, marks of his past stamped into his skin much like his tattoos. As usual, the ballerina on his arm crouches over her legs and weeps, eternally broken. Until Callum is dead and rotting, she will always cry.

Cal pushes up off of the sink and leads the way upstairs, taking me into the room with the bunk beds. Oscar and Hael are still sleeping. The latter looks cute with his red hair all mussed up, one arm thrown across his forehead. The former … I climb on his bed and kick him as hard as I can, slamming the heel of my foot down on his chest.

The piece of shit catches me before I can make contact, opening his eyes and throwing me into a vivid memory of last night. His inked body above me. Blood hot between my thighs. Gray eyes watching, always watching.

I jerk my foot away from him and stumble off the edge of the bed and into Cal. He catches me easily, his fingers making me ache in all the places they touch. He sets me upright, and I flip Oscar off. It’s not my most distinguished moment, but I can’t help it. I’m annoyed. I’ve never had sex on my period before, especially not without a cup in. It was an intimate moment; it smacked of vulnerability.

And I just had to take that plunge with Oscar Montauk of all people.

“Is there a problem, Bernadette?” he asks, turning toward the wall. I notice he gets the queen-sized bed while Callum and Hael share the bunks. It’d be easy to see whose bed was whose, even without their presence. Oscar has silken gray sheets, and a matching comforter. He has one pillow, and a cup of water on the nightstand beside his glasses. Hael, on the other hand, sleeps in a tangle of mismatched children’s sheets with cartoon patterns on them. He also has a single pillow, but it’s not all perfect like Oscar’s. Instead, it’s folded up and ratty at the edges. Callum’s bunk is the top one, decorated with a blue threadbare blanket, a sleeveless hoodie draped over the safety railing.