Aaron hooks his arm through mine, leaning over to give me a kiss on the forehead. His signature scent surrounds me, calming my nerves and blocking out the wet stink of rotten floorboards and crumbling plaster ceilings.

I’ve chosen to walk down the aisle to the tune of Numb Without You by The Maine, but the orchestral version, not the one with lyrics. For some reason, when I first heard it, I thought of me and Vic. If couples truly have their own songs, then this one is most definitely ours.

Callum slips back outside, waiting by the doors until Aaron and I give the knock to indicate that we’re ready. I can just barely see the altar through the grimy windows that flank the double front doors. An arch of pink roses soars above Victor’s purple-dark hair, Oscar centered beneath them, our sadistic little wedding officiant.

“Fuck, I’m scared,” I murmur, and Aaron laughs softly. I glance briefly in his direction.

“I’d be worried if you weren’t,” he tells me, putting his hand over mine. His touch comforts me, and I close my eyes for a moment, just to catch my breath. “But as much as I hate Vic sometimes, I trust him with my life.” Aaron pauses a moment, and I open my eyes to look at him. He’s staring at the floor and not at me, but his expression isn’t unpleasant. Actually, he looks a little surprised. “I trust him with the love of my life, too, apparently.” He scoffs a harsh laugh and then glances back at me.

All I can do at that point is smile.

My stomach is a mess of black butterflies, reminding me that I am, in fact, still human.

I’m a seventeen-year-old girl who’s about to get married.

Of all the things that I am, that I’ve become, that one is definitely the strangest.

Without another word, I reach up and rap my knuckles against the wood.

Deep breath, Bernie, deep breath.

Callum opens the doors for me and Aaron and then steps aside, pressing play on his phone and sending spirals of beautiful music out of the speakers placed on either side of the porch. It takes a second for me to adjust to the sight of a wedding, a real wedding, before I can force myself to start walking.

Victor is waiting, his best man by his side. Hael Harbin grins at me and winks, giving me a little salute with his inked fingers. In his gaze, I can read so many things that have been left unsaid. It’s not my baby; I feel free; I want to move on with you, Bernie. He said as much before, when we had sex on the hood of his Camaro.

I glance at the white folding chairs on either side of the walkway. There are only a half-dozen in total, and I smile when I spot Kara and Ashley in the front row. Kara grins over her shoulder at her brother and gives us a thumbs-up, but Ashley just buries her head in the puffy sleeve of her cousin’s dress.

Heather stands in front of me, holding a basket of pink rose petals. She smiles at me, but I know that when she told me that she shipped me and Aaron, and not me and Victor, she was serious. I don’t know how to explain to her that I don’t intend on keeping just one for myself.

The breeze picks up around us, making the trees shiver and shaking off whatever leaves they have left. Heather takes that as her cue to turn around and start walking, dropping rose petals in her wake.

I follow after, nice and slow, my combat boots comfortable beneath the voluminous magic of my dress. With my left arm, I hold onto Aaron. My right, I tuck into the pocket on the dress, fingering the old, wrinkled envelope that contains my list.

Victor’s mother, Ophelia, is here, glaring at us. So is her sleazy car salesman-like boyfriend, Todd. I’m surprised to see that Vic’s dad is in attendance, too, and I just suddenly miss my own so much it hurts.

If he hadn’t died, things would’ve been different. Penelope would probably still be alive. But then, would I have met the Havoc Boys? Can I quantify my love for my sister and my love for the guys enough to compare them?

No, fuck that.

You can’t change the past, but you sure as hell can dictate your own future.

I start walking, my dress trailing in the patchy grass, Aaron by my side. I wonder if, like Callum mentioned, I smell like leather and peaches to him the way he smells like rose and sandalwood to me.

Ophelia wrinkles her nose at me as I walk past, her obsidian eyes so much like her son’s that it’s scary. She made Victor Channing. She’s just like him. We should be, if not afraid of her, then at least wary. Because she’s coming, I just know she is.

I do my best to ignore her, climbing the steps of the small dais under the trees. Aaron gives me one, last kiss on the cheek and moves to the side with Cal beside him, like they’re my bridesmaids or some shit.

“Welcome, friends,” Oscar says, the word friends dripping from his lips like a poisonous joke. We all know that this wedding is as much an attack on Vic’s mom as it is a union.

I turn to look at Victor, his face filled with tenderness and dark, possessive domineering, all at the same time. My breath catches.

We didn’t need a wedding to become one; we always have been.

He reaches out his hands to take mine, our HAVOC painted fingers curling together on either side.

“Marriage is a dark and desperate sort of union,” Oscar begins, the words of the ceremony penned by his own elegant fingers and promptly memorized. I notice that, for once, he doesn’t have his iPad by his side. “It’s one person begetting the soul, the love, and the sins of the other. It’s about forging a bond in legality that tries its very best to adhere to the age-old adage: blood in, blood out.”

Vic grins at me, and I grin back. Meanwhile, Hael snickers with laughter and the tree branches above us fill with a murder of crows.

How ominous.

“My only question to you today is,” Oscar continues, reaching up to adjust his glasses as he looks between us. “Are you willing to bleed for each other?” Callum steps forward to hand the wedding bands to us. They’re artfully tied to a black rose, using silken ribbons that remind me of Cal’s ballerina tattoo. “Victor, please repeat after me. I, Victor Channing, am an asshole who in no way deserves Bernadette Blackbird, but who, through some strange fault of the universe, will be marrying her today. I will bleed for her; I will die for her. I agree to marry her.”

Victor laughs, even as his mother’s cursing drifts over the fading sounds of the music.

“This isn’t some sort of sick joke! Who does he think he is, Tom? Huh? Who?”

But there is no law that says that your dick of a friend can’t make up whatever vows he wants.

Speaking of …

Vic takes the wedding band and then leans in toward me, putting his lips up against my ear.

“I have vows for you, but I’m not about to read them in front of my mother. But tonight, I want to tell you everything. And then I’m going to tear that wedding dress off and fuck you until you’re mine.” I scoff at Vic’s words, but how can I respond to that now, up here in front of my sister?

Instead, I wait for Vic to lean back and repeat Oscar’s words back to me as he slips the simple wedding band on my finger, joining it to his grandmother’s ring. Oscar repeats the vows and asks me to recite them, and I do.

I do.

When Vic cups the back of my head and kisses me, destroying me with that hot slice of sin he calls a tongue, I am lost.

Forever trapped in Havoc.

We walk down the aisle together and head straight for his Harley.