Page 22 of Chaos at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 2)
“How could you run off like that?” he asks, his voice dark and low and dangerous, his hair wet and hanging in his beautiful face. He's frowning at me, nostrils flared as he takes me in like a runaway kid who needs to be kept in line. So much for being a Havoc Girl, right? If I were, they'd have told me. “You're a Havoc Girl now, and we don't keep secrets from each other.” What a crock. “We're in the middle of a war, Bernadette. Do you understand that? You could've been killed.” He pauses for a brief moment before flicking those dark eyes away from mine. “Or worse.” Vic spits into the wet grass, and then pulls a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket.
I say nothing.
I'm afraid to say something, the way I feel right now. Likely, it'd be something I'd very much regret.
Victor tries and fails to light a cigarette, the rain soaking his clothes and plastering them to his muscular body. My eyes find their way down to his chest, despite my reservations, despite my hatred. Part of me is an animal, and she still very much wants her alpha male. I grit my teeth against the impulse.
“You lied to me,” I say, the words coming out in a hiss. With everything that happened last night, I think I was in some sort of shock. Right now, the world seems crystal clear. “After all that bullshit about the one currency you can carry is truth.” I imitate Vic's voice, and he smirks at me, as if he has any right to look at me like that.
“Nobody lied to you, Bernadette. We have a lot of information; we're disseminating it on a need-to-know basis.” He reaches out to grab me again, but I take a step back, putting some much-needed space between us. Vic lets out a long sigh, and I swear, if I couldn't hear Heather laughing through an open window, I might have attacked him. “There are no secrets in Havoc; there are no lies.”
“Where did you get the video then?” I snap, taking note of Oscar as he moves halfway across the front yard, pausing with one arm over his chest, the elbow of the other resting in his palm. He cradles his chin in his hand and watches me, but I ignore him, too. If he wants his shattered iPad back, he can get it from Callum.
Vic sighs again and stares at the tip of his soggy cigarette. He holds it between two fingers and studies it carefully, like it holds all the answers he could ever need.
“Oscar,” he says, like that’s explanation enough. The rain stops and Vic gets out another cigarette, offering it up to me, but I’m not taking his metaphorical fucking olive branch. “For Christ’s sake, Bernadette, have you not noticed he’s got some skills with computer shit? He got them off of your stepfather’s laptop.”
“Why did you have Neil’s laptop?” I whisper, burning up on the inside. My eyes are narrowed on Vic, homed in on him like weapons. He’s just lucky that looks can’t actually kill.
“Because we were in your house,” Vic growls out, stepping close to me again. This time, when I take another step back, I can see in his face that he knows he fucked up. And it’s terrifying to him. Absolutely terrifying.
We’re toxic, Vic and me.
We’d be better off apart.
The thought kills me.
“We were in your house, to drag you out of bed, to send you scurrying through the woods like a little mouse.” There’s bite to his words, a rancid sort of anger that I can’t abide by. I slap him hard across the face, but he does nothing to stop it.
“All this time, you had that video …” I start, disbelief making me feel insane. When did I start thinking of these guys as allies? They’ve only ever been the enemy of my enemies. That’s it. What the actual fuck is wrong with me?
Callum killed Danny to protect you, Bernadette. That must count for something. It has to.
“What would seeing it have changed?” Vic retorts, smoking his cigarette. He doesn’t lift a hand to his cheek, even as it turns a warm pink color. “You knew what Neil was doing; you read Penelope’s journal. The only thing that video did was upset you,” Vic snarls, sneering as he turns his attention on Oscar.
The two of them maintain a long, terrifying sort of stare, one that says they’re long overdue to vent some frustration at each other. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that happens.
“Seeing it …” I start, images flashing in my mind that make me feel dizzy. Images that I never wanted to see, that I now can never unsee. My attention slides back to Oscar, and I can’t decide if I want to kill him more or less than Vic. Either way, they’re both dead to me. “Seeing it doesn’t matter. But you could’ve put him away with that video, saved me and Heather both. All these years, I’ve been fighting, and you could’ve ended it at any time.”
