“Seriously,” Heather says as Vic stands up straight and frowns at her. Kara and Ashley come down the stairs just a moment later, and my sister wastes no time in asking them their opinion. “You guys agree, right?” she says, cocking her hip out like she’s sixteen instead of eight-going-on-nine. Holy fuck, I’m going to have trouble with her as a teenager I bet. “You ship Aaron and Bernie?”

Kara looks nervously at Vic as he stands behind me, looming over everything like he always does.

“I don’t want to be rude …” she starts, proving that she has most definitely been raised by Aaron and not by me. Look at Heather: you can tell it’s in our blood to be bitchy. “But I think Aaron and Bernadette are meant to be together.” She glances down at Ashley who, shockingly enough, actually decides that today is the day she’s no longer afraid of me.

I must truly be a part of the family now.

“I ship Bernie and Callum,” she says, and he snorts from behind me, perched on the edge of the counter as he taps his heels against the lower cabinets.

“So two votes for me, one for Callum, and zero for any of you assholes,” Aaron clarifies, pointing at Oscar, Hael, and Vic. “I’ll take it.”

“From the mouths of babes,” I murmur, grabbing the black veil I laid out on the counter and tucking the comb-part of it in my hair. It hangs over my face like I’m attending a funeral. Gross. I take it off and chuck it across the peninsula, deciding that I’d rather have my face bare anyway. I want to actually see Vic when I marry him, not hide behind a mosquito net while I walk down the aisle.

“Yeah, well, from the mouth of the boss, you’re marring me regardless of who they ‘ship’,” Vic growls, snatching an apple and flipping the girls backs off as they run up the stairs. They don’t see him do it, but it’s honestly funny as shit. “You ready for tomorrow?”

I nod.

Because the wedding is not the hard part, the courthouse bit is.

After school, we’re meeting Pamela so she can sign the papers of our marriage license.

I’d rather give myself an enema with battery acid.

“Not really,” I reply, because out of all the people on my list, Pamela is the one who holds the most weight.

Neil, arguably, is my most hated … but Pam? She was supposed to be my mom. There’s no bigger betrayal than that.

“Too bad,” Vic says, grinning around a bite of apple. “Because it’s happening, whether that bitch mother of yours likes it or not.” He pauses to look down at the piece of fruit in his hand, like it’s Snow White’s poisoned apple or something. “I hope for her sake that she cooperates. She wouldn’t want to see the extent of my temper if she doesn’t.”

I’m quite literally shaking as I stand on the courthouse steps in the sexy white dress that Havoc picked out for me inside of Billie Charter’s trailer. When I put it on after school and looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself.

To clarify: I didn’t recognize myself in a good way.

I do not look seventeen. The dress clings to my curves and the back dips low, showing off a pale arch of spine and what little there is left of me that isn’t inked. The ends of my hair are dyed a fresh pink, and the blond waves are hanging loose around my shoulders.

To be fair, I haven’t looked my age for a long time. Pain and loss and violence, those things worm their way into your eyes; they change a person. So if someone were to look at me, they could see in the emerald green of my irises that I’m an old soul.

Today, it’s my makeup, and my body, and my tattoos that tell a different story.

“The combat boots were a hideous choice, really,” Oscar says, checking the time on his iPad and frowning hard. Pamela is late and he doesn’t like it. Sorry to tell him, but she hasn’t shown up on time to an appointment in her damn life. We might be waiting awhile.

“Shut your face, Oscar Montauk,” I grind out, shivering, my teeth chattering against the frigid frost of late fall. “Have you ever stood on cement in heels? It hurts. I wasn’t about to wander around the courthouse in them.”

Oscar just purses his lips and pretends like he doesn’t care what I have to say. My argument to that would be … why did you bareback fuck me on my period? I mean, come on, man. He can’t fool me anymore. He literally confessed to being in love with me. Did he think I was just going to forget that happened?

“I suppose this wouldn’t be a good time to offer you up the birth control pills that we stole?” he asks in just such a way that I know he’s needling me on purpose. “You’ll most definitely need them for the honeymoon though.”

“As soon as this is over,” I say, gesturing at him with the bouquet of white roses in my hand, “I’m going to beat the snot out of you, do you understand that?”

“So you don’t want the pills then?” Oscar asks, lifting his head up to look at me. Something he said the night we went after Donald pops into my head at random, and I feel my cheeks flush with heat. “I'm a master of knots.” Is he really, though? I’d be curious to find out.

“I’ll take them,” I snarl and Vic laughs.

“Or not,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. I ignore him, which is actually a pretty difficult thing to do, seeing as he’s wearing the tux he bought for the wedding. Since today is more casual though, he didn’t bother with the pink tie I picked out.

Pink, of course, for Penelope.

The only reason we’re dressed up at all is because getting the license is the important part. After this, all that has to happen is we sign and date and mail that shit in on Saturday. The rest of this operation is just for show.

Plus, I knew it would piss Pamela off. She’ll recognize this dress as designer, recognize the value of the ring on my hand, recognize that I’ve moved past her and her shit.

“There she is,” Hael says, pointing across the street at a curvy blond in a short, red dress.

Hah.

That’s Pamela for you, trying to outshine me, even on a day like this.

She notices the Havoc Boys before she even finishes crossing the street. No surprise there. You’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss these assholes. Not only are they handsome, but they’re covered in tattoos, and they look at the whole world like they’re on the verge of taking control of it.

“Bernadette,” Pamela says as she pauses near the courthouse steps. The wind tousles her hair around her pretty face. Her green eyes scan me from head to toe, evaluating, sizing me up, judging me. I can tell the moment she decides I’m prettier because she scowls. Everything is a competition to this woman. “Do you have the money?”

Callum tosses the Burberry bag full of cash at my mother’s face, smiling as she scrambles like a rat to catch it and checks inside to verify its contents.

“Don’t worry, Mother, my dowry is all there.” I clench my teeth together as she pretends to count the bills inside. There are far too many, and she’s far too dumb to count to a high enough number to actually verify that there’s ten grand worth of bills there.

She looks up at me again, like she’s never seen me before, like she has no idea who I am.

I don’t suppose that she ever has though, so it’s not surprising.