Page 35 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
He doesn’t like what he had to do to Kali. We’ve been going to school with her for years. Plus, she was pregnant. With Heather’s half-sister no less. I sigh again and reach my fingers up to fluff my hair. I gave him that look; I did that to him, added darkness to his already dimming gaze.
“Because you’re a coward,” Kali’s ghost hisses at me. I ignore her. Eventually, the drugs the hospital gave me will wear off and she’ll disappear. Like I said, one day, I bet I’ll wake up and her name will be the faintest wisp of a memory, something so fragile a light breeze could take it away forever.
“If ridding the world of my demons was supposed to make me happy,” I start, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the center of the table. “Then why do I feel so goddamn empty?” I pause for a moment, eyes flicking toward the sliding glass doors. Aaron, understandably, doesn’t like anyone to smoke inside the house.
“Fuck it,” he growls, reaching out to take the pack from me. He withdraws two cigarettes, lights one up, and then slips the other between my lips. I watch him, mesmerized, as he leans forward and uses the burning tip of his smoke to light mine. I couldn’t look away if a hurricane tore the roof off the house and whipped my hair around my head in gale force winds. “We almost died. We get to play around a little, right?” Aaron laughs, the sound dry and caustic. He can’t know that even such an awful sound makes my heart soar.
I sit back, drawing in two happy lungfuls of nicotine.
Surprisingly, it’s Hael who answers my question, instead of Aaron.
“Because whatever it is that was haunting you, has yet to be exorcised.” Hael rises to his feet, taking off the stupid apron he was wearing and chucking it across the surface of the counter. Aaron and I exchange a look as he disappears up the stairs and slams the bedroom door behind him.
In the corner, Kali’s ghost howls with laughter.Aaron and I take a nap on the couch together, curled in one another’s arms. When I wake up, it’s to perfect darkness and the distant murmur of male voices. I sit up, groaning at the pulling in my stitches and pausing when I hear Aaron chuckle from behind me.
“Look at us,” he whispers, sitting up and then glancing down at the cast on his hand with a scowl. “A pair of useless cripples.”
“Oh stop,” I whisper back, trying not to break the warm quiet of dark. Heather and the girls should be back by now. Hael promised he’d pick them up in the Bronco if I didn’t wake up in time. Based on the state of the house—buttoned up, dark as pitch, and silent but for the whir of the fridge—I know I most definitely did not wake in time. “We’re soldiers, wounded in battle.” I grab another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and light up.
Aaron watches me for a moment, sitting up and putting his elbows on his knees. The way he’s staring at me, I can’t help but stop and turn to look at him. He’s pretty in the dark, even prettier in the light. Whenever his chestnut hair catches a bit of moonlight, it shimmers a different color. Brown, red, gold. Just like his little sister. Shit, even his cousin Ashley wears the family’s DNA in her hair color.
I bet we have a kid together someday, with hair the color of fall leaves and green-gold eyes.
“Bernie,” he starts, glancing away for a moment. I can feel the tension in him, desperate to be broken but too fragile to come at with a sledgehammer. I wonder if I couldn’t find another way to break it? I adjust myself, feeling a certain slickness between my thighs that promises I was not dreaming of sugar plums and sweet things. Carnal nightmares, more like. Aaron turns back to stare at me, and I can feel his gaze like an arrow through the heart. “When my mind got really dark, you know what helped more than anything?”
I can’t speak. My mouth just feels too dry. Sometimes life is like that. You want to wear glossy lips and a smile, but you’re cursed with a tongue like sand and a mouth that’s cracked and bleeding.
“What?” I ask, my voice husky and strange. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’ve always sounded that way, like some sort of wannabe porn star who’s trying too hard. I take another drag on the cigarette, certain that they’re stolen, positive that they taste better because they were obtained with crafty fingers and tomfoolery. I assume that about literally everything though, don’t I? That it’s stolen. Because nice things are not given to you; they must be taken.
