Page 106 of Mayhem At Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 3)
“Oh, Bernie,” Aaron murmurs, reaching out and brushing hair back from my face. I can hear in his words how much he hates to see me hurt. So even though parents are honking behind us, and we really should get moving, he unbuckles his seat belt so he can lean over and give me a hug that’s so tight it almost hurts.
That’s what I love most about him: he always has the emotional capacity to give when I’m feeling empty inside.
“Hey,” he says after a few minutes, when most of the other cars have zoomed around us cussing and screaming and flipping us off. No joke, parents of school-age kids are fucking cray. “I have something I want to give you.”
I look over at him, and I see on his face that this is something serious. It’s not like when Hael tells me he wants to ‘give me something’ and then flashes his dick. Which, I might add, he’s done twice in the last week.
“What?” I ask, but Aaron just shakes his head, running his fingers through his chestnut hair as he sits back in his seat and puts the Bronco in drive. It starts to rain on our way home, fat droplets that turn into hail about a half a block from the house.
The Harley and the Camaro are still parked out front which tells me everyone is still here.
I like that, the rain and the company and feeling cozy in Aaron’s house while Heather is safe at school.
I wipe my tears away with the sleeves of Cal’s sweatshirt, but as soon as Aaron and I walk through the front door, Oscar’s eyes snap to mine and I can tell he knows I’ve been crying. Dick-face, I think at him, because I just don’t have the energy to argue.
“You okay, Blackbird?” Hael asks as I pass by the kitchen and find him cooking eggs in nothing but his boxer shorts from last night. I nod, but I don’t bother to explain, intent on following Aaron up the stairs and into his bedroom.
He closes the door behind us as my breath quickens.
This is his room in this house, but it’s almost mine. Since we’ve officially gotten back together, if I sleep in here, he usually does, too. Before that, he either slept in the room with the bunk beds or on the floor in the girls’ room. Even when he was ignoring me and acting like I was an imposition in his life, he was being accommodating.
“You didn’t bring me all the way up here just to ask me to suck your dick, did you?” I joke, but Aaron just gives me a tight-lipped smile.
“Nope,” he says, opening his closet door and digging through the random shit that’s packed inside of it. There’s some old sports equipment, dirty clothes, action figures that he probably hasn’t touched since he was ten years old. I smile and cross my arms over my chest, leaning my shoulder against the wall next to the door.
Aaron clears the crap out of his way, uncovering a small shelving unit in the corner. It’s one of those plastic ones you can get at any department store, with little pull-out drawers stuffed with odds and ends. He opens the bottom one and extracts a small cardboard box.
“What is that?” I ask as he rises to his feet and turns to face me, holding the box close to his chest. Aaron closes his eyes for a moment, like he’s trying to prepare himself for what he’s about to do. My pulse starts to race, and I push up from the wall. “Aaron Atlas …” I warn as he finally opens his beautiful eyes up to look at me.
“We’ve been keeping these for years,” he says, still clutching the box. “I probably should’ve given them to you sooner, but I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. With all my heart, I truly wanted you to leave and make a life somewhere else, a life without blood and guns and dead bodies.” He hands the box over to me and our tattooed fingers tangle together into a very pretty picture. “But now that you’re here, I may as well give you the world—even if it’s not the exact one I had in mind.”
“What is this, Aaron?” I ask, feeling a drop of sweat slide down my spine. I’m afraid to open the box and see what’s inside.
“Just open it,” he commands me, and because I’m damn-near positive that whatever is in this box is going to shake me, I sit down on the floor. Aaron joins me, and I’m reminded of that one time we played spin the bottle with just the two us, so we’d have an excuse to kiss each other.
The box has a few cobwebs clinging to it that I swipe away with a shaking hand, carefully lifting the flaps so I can look inside.
