Page 50 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“What are you doing?” I ask as Vic looks up at me, a tattooed god prostrating himself for my benefit and mine alone. I’d bet you every dollar of that inheritance that he’s never done this for another woman. Shit, I bet he’s never done this for any of the other boys either.
“I know sometimes it seems like I know exactly what I’m doing at all times, but I don’t. Despite everything, I’m just eighteen years old and I’m figuring it out as I go.” Victor blinks up at me, settling back on his heels. “I’m not too proud to admit that.” He pauses again, like he’s waiting for something from me.
“Then let’s figure it out together,” I tell him, cupping the side of his face and loving the way his eyes close almost involuntarily, like my touch is a drug, one that he’d happily OD on like I’m sure a dozen former Prescott residents have before in this very house. It’s not a pretty metaphor, but there’s not a lot that’s pretty in our world. That is, unless, as Callum suggested, pain becomes pretty to those who have too much of it. “Don’t push me aside because your emotions are too intense, or you don’t know what to do, or you’re scared.”
Vic snorts and lowers his head. When he looks up, I can see it there in his face: that’s the truth of it. I terrify him in a way he’s never feared for anything before. I understand that emotion because I feel it, too, this almost inevitable descent into tragedy. Everything about us feels tragic, really, like one of those old fairy tales with a not so happy ending.
“The last time I was afraid like this, I was five years old. It was the day Ophelia and my father discussed who had to take care of me. The reason I was so fucking scared that day was because I was worried that it would be her, that she would take my hand and drag me away from my abusive, alcoholic father, and the nightmare of south Prescott. Because, despite all of those things, she was the worse of the two.” Victor’s lids drop over his dark eyes, like he’s carried away in thought. “I …” he starts, but then it’s like whatever he wants to say gets caught on his mouth on the way out, an ugly truth that bleeds. “Before that …”
My heart stutters and gets caught in my throat, and then I just know that I can’t stay standing anymore. I kneel down in front of him so that we’re facing each other, just two teenagers with old souls and a mountain of cards stacked against them.
But that’s the fun part, you know. Seeing the underdog pull through. That’s what I want, some proof that justice and vengeance both exist, that bad people can be punished, that good people can win—even if it’s a rare and distant sort of thing. Hope, right. The thing with feathers …
“She touched you, didn’t she?” I ask, because it’s the one thing I never expected from Vic’s past. He’s such a careful man; he hides his pain so well. He disguises it with his dominance. But he’s only just now becoming an adult, and he hasn’t left all of that childhood pain and trauma behind the way he thinks he does.
“Her …” he breathes, looking into my face with an earnest sort of expression that betrays all of that long-suffering fear. “Her friends. At the fancy parties …” He trails off and wets his lips, closing his eyes for a moment and scrubbing both hands down his face. He leaves them there for a long moment before dropping them to his lap and looking at me with an expression made of obsidian eyes and a mouth as sharp and dangerous as a knife. “This thing, this … perversion, it’s been running in Springfield for a long time. This isn’t new. None of it is.”
I sit there for a moment, fingers twitching in my lap. My head is filled with the white noise of rage. It’s something I’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But, as Victor has warned me on multiple occasions, I need to control it and throw it at the right target at the right time.
“And then they took my baby …” he growls, and I close my eyes, my body breaking out in goose bumps. “They took my fucking baby from me.” A gasp slips from me as he wraps his arms around me and drags me into him. Somehow, I’m already anticipating the move, throwing my own arms around his neck and squeezing him like the fate of the universe depends on it.
Since he just so happens to be the center of mine, I guess it really fucking does.
