Page 114 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
A quick glance at my phone shows a few old messages from Sara Young asking me to call her. Since we already had a conversation today, I delete them and don’t think anything of it. I don’t ask how high when a cop tells me to jump. I’ve also got a few texts from Vera, describing in great detail her newest conquest’s cock. Actually, there’s a picture that goes along with her anecdotes. Guess we’re ride or die bitches now. I suppose helping us murder a well-known gang member kind of sealed the deal on that one.
“Why the fuck do you have a picture of some random guy’s dick on your phone?” Aaron asks, pausing behind me with shower-damp skin and a pair of pajama pants that should be illegal. They cling to his slender hips, showing off that sharp set of V-muscles and a light trail of chestnut hair that disappears under the waistband. Fuck.
I force my gaze away from him and back down to the dick on my phone. Honestly, it isn’t that great of a dick. The head is too flared, too purple for my liking, and the veins are just out of control. A few here and there are nice, but like, this one is spider-webbed with them.
“Vera sent it to me for examination. Frankly, I’m not impressed.” I tap out a message telling her so as Aaron snorts and comes around to sit on the sofa with me, his eyes taking in the apartment with a mixture of excitement and distaste that I full well understand. Like, this place is nice, and it feels safe, but it’s also foreign and excessive and cold.
“I don’t like you getting pictures of random cocks on your phone,” Vic says from the direction of the kitchen, unloading a bag of groceries that he had delivered to the front gate about an hour ago. The security guard collected the purchase, inspected the items, and then had a courier deliver it to our room. That’s how things work here, at Oak Valley Prep. There’s a servant for every menial task. The edge of my lip curls up in distaste.
“Well, you can just deal, Alpha-Dick.” I send the text to Vera and then set my phone aside, picking up the leather-bound journal from the table that Aaron got me for Christmas. He wrote a message on the inside that’s almost too sweet to repeat, something about how I should, like, chase my dreams or something. This is where I’m going to write my poems, now that I’m not in Mr. Darkwood’s class anymore. My English class here is … way different. We’re reading some shitty story called Bartleby, the Scrivener that makes my teeth hurt a little bit whenever I try to start it. It’s that terrible. “Vera is the only possible girlfriend candidate that I have right now, and I intend on keeping her around.”
Vic snorts at me, but he really isn’t all that bad as he appears. He’s an alpha male, sure, but he isn’t a controlling misogynistic twat-waffle.
Aaron watches me poise my pen above the page and I lift my eyes to his, feeling that same warm brush of heat in my chest that I always get when we look at each other.
“I wish the girls could stay here with us,” he says, glancing back at the apartment. There’s plenty of space here. In fact, there are three bedrooms in total. We could probably finagle a way to get the girls moved into the space, but the whole point of them coming here under aliases was so that the GMP didn’t know they were here in the first place. If they don’t know where Kara, Ashley, and Heather are, they can’t come looking for them.
And if the GMP does come looking for us … the girls won’t be around to see the bloody aftermath.
“Me, too.” I set the journal down and lean into Aaron, closing my eyes as he runs his fingers through my hair. Oscar, meanwhile, hangs near the front door with Hael, installing a series of locks that Callum’s chosen to keep us as safe as possible. I find the sight of a half-dozen locks comforting because it reminds me of Prescott, of home. That is, Aaron’s house and not the duplex I lived in with Pam.
Pam.
Shit.
A subject I’ve been avoiding for weeks now.
I use my toe to lift the cover of the journal, so that I can see the wrinkled and smudged piece of paper that contains my list. Only one name remains. The most damaging name of all. The one person who led me to the Thing, to Coraleigh, to the Kushners. All along, Pamela was involved in the very same human trafficking ring as Ophelia. Shit, Penelope and I were involved in that.
We were sold once upon a time.
