Page 185 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“Roger that,” Hael says, slipping back outside to the smell of weed. It’s our own strain—Havoc at Prescott High—and it’s fucking delicious. I’d smoke some if I wasn’t about to drive three little girls to a party.
My mouth softens, thinking about Bernadette in her pink and white Cadillac Eldorado, hair billowing in the wind. I exhale sharply just before the back door opens and Hael reemerges with Victor, Callum, and Oscar at his back.
“If you’re all going to Wesley’s, then I’m going,” is what Vic says as he breezes past, and I sigh. We’re out of the woods as far as the GMP goes—at least that’s how it appears with their infighting and power struggles up in Portland—and we’re not being tailed by the VGTF anymore, but Vic is a good leader and he keeps us on our toes, reminds us that we need caution around every corner.
Especially after what happened to Bernie.
Pain seizes me, and I have to brace myself on the table to remember how to breathe. Bernie, lying prone on the ground, bloody bubbles at her lips, the surgeon coming out and removing the mask from her face …
I look back up as Ashley grabs onto my arm.
“Let’s go!” she whines as Oscar gives her a patronizing look and Cal shrugs into a hoodie. Even if Vic is taking his bike, we’ll need at least the Bronco and the Camaro. Or, I guess, we could take the Caddy …
“Alright, alright.” I encourage Kara and Ashley out the front door and then pause beside Heather as she checks her hair in the mirror one last time. A smile teases the edges of my mouth, made out of bitterness mixed with joy. How can things be so bad one minute, and then so good the next? How could Bernadette have been shot? How could she have died?
I exhale again, squeezing my hands into fists at my sides and then forcing myself to relax them.
“You ready now?” I ask as Heather finally turns back to me. She nods, and I shoo her ass right out the door, too, heading up the stairs to open the door to my bedroom—a place so inextricably entwined with memories of Bernadette that I could never see it and not think of her.
Never.
Not in a million years …Bernadette BlackbirdGraduation day …There are so many ways to end a story like mine. If I were to try, I would do it like this.Born of vengeance and hardened by hate
Every act of revenge a cry for love
Desperate to keep believing
Kisses that scorch my skin and leave forever marks
A desperate sort of havoc, a broken chaos, a mayhem that crawls beneath your skin and makes you bleed
Anarchy that ensues inside a twisted heart
Only true victory comes with acceptance and mournful goodbyes
Only true victory comes with loveI die that day. I do. Hard for me to believe it, too. Especially the peaceful part. Because after everything I’ve been through, I assumed that when I finally lost control of my body, I would find myself on a rapid descent to some sort of hellish existence. Instead, all I feel is joy because I made those last few moments count. I smile because I know my boys are there with me. It seems too soon to say goodbye, but some part of me understands that I’ll see them again, somewhere, sometime, someplace.
Because love like ours doesn’t die along with a body.
You really think Havoc’s love is so fragile?
Fuck no.
So when the doctors—this beyond brilliant group of women at Joseph General that I never gave proper credit to—get my heart to start beating properly again, I come to with a sharp shock of recognition. This, Bernadette, this is where you’re meant to be right now.
My eyes roll in my head, and the people around me are blurry enough that they may as well be angels.
“We’ve got a fucking pulse!” one of them screams, which is just about the most Prescott thing you could ever say in an ER. That’s the last thing I remember before I fall back asleep. Not sure if my lips are smiling for real, or if I’m just smiling in my soul.
But it’s there.
And it’s painted in the bright red color of victory.Aaron FadlerTwo months after graduation day … again.Lying there on my bed, earbuds tucked in, her phone on her belly, is Bernadette Savannah Blackbird.
A smile teases the edges of my mouth, and I close my eyes, remembering the words that fell from that surgeon’s lips like a miracle I felt beyond unworthy to receive, like a supplicant at the feet of an all-powerful god.
“Mr. Channing, she’s alive.”
Of course, the surgeon said many other things after that, but I got caught on that word and couldn’t seem to pull myself away from it. Alive. She’s alive.
Bernie pulls out the left earbud and glances over at me with a brow raised. Even though the master bedroom technically belongs to all of us—her and Vic most of all maybe, but still—if she needs to think or she needs a moment, Bernadette always comes up here.
