Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys, #4)

by C.M. Stunich

this book is dedicated to the rotten bits inside us all. mostly, it’s dedicated to the people who love us despite all that. or because of it.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“Why are you wearing my boxers?” he asks, eyes half-lidded and gaze thick with desire. He licks his lips. “Because it turns me on like nothing else. You, wearing my smell all over you. Like you’re mine and mine alone.” “I was, once,” I say, and Aaron smiles. It isn’t a very pretty smile. “No, never,” he replies, shaking his head. “You were never just mine.”

All five Havoc Boys are standing at the end of the bed, shirtless and wearing skeleton masks.

A good half of the items aren’t in my size, but that doesn’t bother me. I know my worth.

As Valerie Broussard sings in “A Little Wicked”, nobody calls you honey when you’re sitting on a throne.

I can see inside your soul,” Victor tells me, pointing at his face with two fingers and then turning them on me. “You are me, in female form. We’re the same person, Bernadette.” “Careful, someone might think you weren’t the leader of a vicious gang,” I tell him, loving this invisible barrier between us.

“Bernie, I have to love as fiercely as I destroy, or I’ll rot from the inside out.”

“You won’t find my masculinity so fragile that I can’t tell my wife I love her or that I care about her.”

“I’m struggling, Vic,” I admit, turning back to him with a frown on my face. If my eyes are filled with sadness, at least I’m not crying. “I thought … I guess I thought I was a badass?”

“You are a badass, Bernie. Stop trying so hard and you’ll see that. You don’t have to prove anything, not to me or anyone else in Havoc.”

“I talked a big game, Vic,” I whisper, my hand shaking as I toss the sponge into the bathtub by my feet. “In my head, I was sure I was going to do it. I wanted to taste blood. I wanted it so damn badly. I wanted that crown.” I grit my teeth hard and shake my head, reaching my fingers up to dig in my hair. “And I know I can wear it. I know I can.” I look over at him, his handsome face peaceable and so fucking handsome I want to cry. “You can, you will,” he tells me,

“You’re in your head, Bernie,” Vic warns me, and I look up at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Despite what you might think, I want to know. I want to know every fucking thing there is to know about you.”

“Stick with me, Bernie, and it’ll all be worth it; I promise.”

People look at age, at wrinkles and white hair, as an inevitable curse. In reality, it’s pure luck to get that far in life. Most of us don’t make it nearly that long.

“Sometimes you have to wait,” Cal tells me, taking my wrist in his hand pushing it into the bed above my head. “Even if the waiting’s longer than you’d like. Then, when it’s time, you strike. That’s how I move the way I do. I wait, I watch, and I never try to take something before it’s time. You, for example. Bernie, I waited a long, long time to take you.”

“Have you ever wanted everything to stay the same, but also have it all change, too?” I ask her and she nods, slowly, like she’s actually thought about it. “That’s where I’m at right now.”

I like it so much that it hurts Like the sunlight that falls through the window, white as cream against the tangled sheets. I like it so much that it makes me hate you Like the pain of your hand in my hair, but the pleasure of your body between my thighs. I like you so much that it hurts Like the feeling of losing myself, just so I can find you.

“I’m looking at you like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver,” he tells me, standing up and then using his shirt to swipe some of the sweat and grease from his face. Luckily, he isn’t too fussy about it. I don’t want him clean; I want him dirty. I want his greasy handprints all over my naked body.

“Avec toi j'ai l'impression d'être une personne et pas juste un bon coup.”

“Blackbird, ne me chauffe pas comme ça,”

“Tell me, Hael. What does it mean to have me here?” “It means I can be saved,” he replies in a rush, like the thought’s just occurred to him. This time, when he gives me that shit-eating grin of his, it feels genuine. “Fuck, maybe I could be a poet, too?” He moves through the middle of the room, underneath the light with the fuzzy white moths, and then stops just short of touching me. “Having you here tells me that maybe, just maybe”—he pauses to point at Batman’s logo on my borrowed shirt—“that the idea of good versus evil, of happy endings, of great romance … isn’t all bullshit. Possibility, Blackbird. That’s what you are to me, what you have been since we snuggled up together in a homeless shelter on a shitty, stormy night.” “Fuck,” I breathe,

“Here?” Hael asks, seemingly surprised by the question. “None. You think I’d risk a Cajun mama’s wrath for a quick fuck? No, Bernie, you’re the only girl that’s ever been in my bed.” He kisses me so deeply and so sincerely that I know for a fact that he’s telling the truth. “I love you, Blackbird,” he breathes,

we’ve been craving one another’s company for a decade now. Two, frightened little kids on a stormy night in a shelter full of lost souls.

When you accept a person for who they are, you don’t choose bits and pieces. You accept every part of them, right down to the rotten bits. Because everybody wants somebody to love their rottenness. Even me.