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

by C.M. Stunich

Some things break when you put too much pressure on them, but those shards they break into can be twice as deadly.

tastes

She said that some balls are made of glass and some of plastic; you have to decide which ones to drop and when.

“What’s wrong with holding hands?” Cal asks innocently enough, but with a bit of an edge that finally drags Oscar’s attention up from his iPad and over to his friend’s face. They stare at each other for so long that I’m damn near certain they must be telepathically communicating. “It grounds me, Oscar. It makes me feel human. You should try it sometime.”

If you agree to hate yourself because the world tells you to do so, then it’s already won. Don’t let them do that to you, make you despise yourself even as they lust and drool after everything it is that you already have.

People are not born hating themselves. It’s something that comes with time, with careful conditioning and spiteful words, with fingernails dug into your arm until you bleed. It’s a special sort of skill, to hurt someone so badly that they don’t love themselves anymore.

The thing about true darkness is that it doesn’t just disappear forever. It sits, crouched and waiting at the bottom of your soul. As soon as it finds an opening, it springs and sinks its teeth in.

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.

“Vulnerability leaves a person open to endless pain.”

“We’re going to die out here,” I murmur as Oscar gets out of the car and pauses beside me. “Mark my words. This is the beginning of the motherfucking end.” “And you’re such the expert,” he fires back at me, following me up the wide steps.

How can I keep hold of so many men? I wonder, hating that that’s the way I think, how I was raised and brought up. How do I keep them? instead of how do I make sure they know what I’m worth and how lucky they are?

“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.”

I wrap my arms around Hael’s neck, kissing him like the high school sweetheart that every girl wants, the one that tastes like heartbreak yet goes out of his way to keep your heart whole.

“You’re not alone, Bernadette. You never were. If you need to fall, let your knees go and I’ll catch you.” “You can’t sweet-talk me during the middle of a robbery,”

If I don’t fit into Havoc, Victor, then I don’t fit anywhere.”

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.

When I started out, I told myself I was on a journey of revenge. Then it was about power. It was about belonging. It was about family and connection and sex and love and dark fantasy. What is it now? Acceptance. Because if I hate myself as much as the world wants me to, then everyone else has won and I’ve lost.

Bernadette asked me a question tonight: do you want me to keep touching you? Now she knows the truth: I do. Desperately so.

Trouble has a smell. I know for a fact that it does because I always catch a whiff of it just before shit goes down. It tastes like wet copper on the back of your tongue, and its scent is as sharp as rubbing alcohol. Even before my phone buzzes in my pocket with an incoming text, I can sense it. Something is wrong.