Page 88 of Chaos at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 2)
“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.
“We will,” Vic says, nodding briskly, eyes tracking Principal Vaughn. He’s kept his distance from us. In fact, he hasn’t even looked our way since he got back. I wonder how long he thinks this careful dance is going to last? Everyone knows that once the requiem is over, the mourners leave the cemetery. “Actually, Callum and I have a special present planned for their crew. We’ll drop it off tonight.” He lights up a cigarette, passing it my way after a drag. Our eyes meet and something dark travels through me. I’d call it a shooting star, but it’s much more wicked than that. Still, it streaks through the endless blackness of my soul before disappearing into the infinite depths of the universe.
Hael catches up to us next, but he isn’t smiling.
“I’m going with Brittany today to talk to her dad,” he says, raking his fingers through his hair. “Oh, and she wants us to take care of a Fuller High football player that she fucked while we were at the lake house.”
Vic raises both brows, glancing over at his friend as I smoke my cigarette. Aaron finally tears his gaze from mine to look at Hael.
“The one she cheated on you with before school started?” Vic clarifies, and seeing someone as built and beautiful as him say something so inane twists up my sense of reality. He’s too muscular, too big, too brutal to be a high school student. At least he’ll be eighteen soon.
“Nope,” Hael grinds out, lighting up a cigarette of his own. The boys disabled the smoke alarm in this hallway on the first day of school. I know, because after I called Havoc, I saw them later that day fucking around with it and, like everyone else at Prescott High, I pretended like I didn’t notice. “That was the quarterback, the one Cal nailed in the face with hot coffee. Brittany says he, uh,”—and here Hael stops to give a bitter laugh and a shake of his head—“didn’t even come while he was inside of her. And she used a condom. The only other possible father for this kid is the fullback, some douche named Rich Pratt.”
“You learned this all last night?” Vic asks, and Hael turns away. Clearly, he’s been holding onto this information for the last ten days. There’s hurt pride in his face that makes me wonder if he ever really cared for Brittany. If she’s truly carrying his child, are they going to make a go of it? I could see that happening, based on Hael’s white-knight complex.
