“You can, you will,” he tells me, dressed in a black wifebeater and jeans. It could be any other day, couldn’t it? But it’s not. It’s Christmas Day today, not a holiday I usually look forward to.

The reason is that a holiday like this is always a disappointment. Penelope and I, we used to look forward to it so much when my dad was alive. There were presents and big dinners and driving around town to look at Christmas lights.

With Pamela and Neil … I remember one Christmas, when I was ten years old, we had a party at the house. There was no tree, no presents, just coolers full of beer and some haphazard lights tacked to the walls. The only food in the house was for the party, but Pamela wouldn’t let me eat it. I remember sneaking handfuls of chips and then getting so sick that I threw up in the middle of the living room.

All my mother did was laugh at 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.”

I stare at him for so long that I’m not even sure if he’s real anymore.

“I hate Pamela,” I tell him, and he nods. Pretty sure he knew that already, but maybe he doesn’t know that the reason I threw the tape dispenser against the wall so hard it broke last night was because I’m sad, too. Underneath all of that vengeance is the pain of a little girl. “I hate Christmas.”

“You’re the one that wanted a tree,” he tells me, but we both know that the tree isn’t for me. It’s for Heather, and Kara, and Ashley. “I hope you like sappy, stupid, sentimental presents because I’m pretty sure they all got you one.” My lips twitch at the irritated edge to his voice. We both know that when he says they all, he’s not talking about the girls. No, he’s talking about my beautifully broken Havoc Boys, himself included, I’m sure. I can’t imagine Victor would let the other guys buy me presents if he hadn’t already done so.

“And you?” I ask, but Vic just gives me this inscrutable sort of look. “You did.”

“Finish up and get that sexy ass out of the shower,” he tells me, shaking his head and running his fingers through his hair as I laugh. He totally bought me something, probably wrapped it, too. “I can’t look at you anymore without doing something I really shouldn’t do to you right now.

I oblige him, shutting the water off and turning to see that he has a towel waiting for me. Biting my lower lip, I step into it and Victor wraps it around me, pulling me in close and resting his chin on top of my head.

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

He releases me, stepping back to watch as I dry my body and then towel dry my hair. Slipping into black sweatpants and an old gym shirt from freshman year, I blow-dry my hair so we can both see how the red tips turned out.

They’re vibrant as fuck, fading as the color travels up until it lightens into my natural white blonde.

“What do you think?” I ask as Vic makes a sound in his throat that rumbles through me. It’s a growl, that’s what that is. “I take it you like it?”

“Fuck it,” he says, and then I’m gasping as he pushes me over and yanks my pants down. His huge cock pushes up against my opening, and then slips in effortlessly. I’m wet as fuck, so wet that it doesn’t matter that I just showered. As soon as I stepped out of the water, I felt myself grow slick for him.

My husband.

My Vic.

Mine.

At least, out of everything, I have this.

He screws me into the countertop in that rough, primal way of his, but I love it too much to tell him to stop, even though I’m sore as hell, even though I probably shouldn’t. Despite the brutal way Victor fucks, he’s careful with the wound on my side. I work my hips, rolling them into Vic, making him moan like a tortured man.

When he comes inside of me, I push him off, but he grabs my hand, curling his fingers around mine. Our eyes lock, and I try my best to pretend that I’m not enthralled.

“Stop punishing yourself,” he warns me, lifting me up onto the counter and putting his mouth between my legs. I curl my fingers into his hair and lean my head back against the mirror, groaning and writhing against him. I let him make me come, but I don’t know if I can do that, stop punishing myself.

“Because you know you’re not worth shit,” Kali whispers after we finish, and I’ve washed up in the shower again. I pretend not to see her. If she isn’t gone by the time school starts, then I’ll tell somebody. For now, I keep my craziness to myself.

Two years earlier … 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.

“You can’t let them get to you,” Penelope says to me, putting my hair in a fishtail braid as I sit on the edge of Prescott High’s front steps. I was missing for seven days and yet, Pamela and Neil barely noticed when I came back, sweaty and disheveled and twisted into a whole new shape.

The Havoc Boys did me a favor, locking me in the closet like that. The reason I say that is because I had seven days of darkness to contemplate my life. Seven days to get to know myself better. I realized then that I didn’t hate myself so much as I hated everyone else. Neil and Pam, Kali and Coraleigh, the Kushners and Principal Vaughn.

The only people who were worried about me were my sisters.

Penelope held me so tightly that day, I thought I might never breathe again.

“Victor came to me,” she whispered in my ear. “He told me that he had you, and that he’d give you back. I didn’t know what to do.”

But I don’t blame Pen for handling things the way she did. How could she call the cops when Neil is one of them? As twisted and dark as anything that ever came out of Prescott High. Who was going to help her find me?

Nobody.

Fucking nobody.

Just weeks before her death, she was able to smile at me, to braid my hair and talk about impossible things, like flying to Paris to visit the catacombs. Traveling to New Orleans to see gators. Road-tripping along Route 66. Somebody who’s thinking about suicide doesn’t dream the way she did, right?

Right?

“Let who get to me?” I ask belatedly. It’s a dumb question because we both know exactly who she’s talking about. Havoc. Havoc, Havoc, Havoc. It’s always about Havoc nowadays. They’re so damn good at what they do that I’ve stopped wondering when they’re going to come. I’ll never be able to predict it, so why bother?

“Bernadette, don’t pretend you don’t know,” Penelope chastises, clucking her tongue like an old lady. “Havoc.” She pauses as Kali comes down the steps, her high pony swinging, her lips plastered into a permanent smirk, one that I so desperately wish that I could slap off her face. But I can’t touch her, not with Havoc at her beck and call. “Stupid cow,” Pen hisses, and I just know that as sweet as my sister is, she’s got enough Prescott blood in her to beat a bitch.

“Take a look at this ass and get used to kissing it,” Kali purrs, smacking my sister in the shoulder with her bag. Penelope watches her with narrowed eyes as I get to my feet. I know from past experience that once Pen gets an idea in her head, it’s almost impossible to dislodge it. She takes off down the steps after Kali before I can stop her.

“Penelope, no,” I growl, stumbling down the cement stairs as she grabs Kali by the strap of her bag and yanks her back.

“You can’t touch me!” Kali screams as Pen shoves her to the ground and gets on top of her. Pretty in pink with her blond hair in loose waves, my sister proceeds to beat the shit out of Kali as I stand off to the side, shaking but unable to interfere.

As far as I can tell, Kali asked Havoc to keep me away from her. She never asked for protection from my sister. Penelope should be okay …

“Oh dear.” I hear Oscar Montauk’s smooth voice behind me, whirling around to see the five of them standing there like they’ve been summoned. If I put a pentagram down, and bled myself in sacrifice, would they appear for me, too? It doesn’t seem fair, that I should lust after them for years only to lose them to Kali Rose-Kennedy. “What should we do about this?”

My eyes slide past Victor Channing, past the enigma that is Callum Park, and across Hael Harbin, the naughty bad boy that every girl in this city dreams of taking to bed. I find Aaron Fadler, the love of my life, his green-gold eyes dark, his motivations impossible to understand.

Everything was okay between us until … until it just wasn’t.

“Please don’t hurt her,” I whisper, a desperate pleading in my voice that I’m immediately ashamed of. “Penelope has nothing to do with … us.” It’s the only way I can think to phrase our strange and eternal relationship, me and these boys.

All five of the them are staring at me now, but it’s Victor who answers. It’s always Victor.

“Your begging changes nothing,” he tells me as several administrators and one of the campus cops appear to drag the two girls apart. The only person that’s bleeding right now is Kali. “But you’re lucky, Bernadette,” he continues as the rest of the Havoc Boys move around me, like I’m a rock in an ice-cold stream, breaking in half until there’s two of them on either side. “Penelope has nothing to do with Kali’s request.”

Vic peels off and the boys follow after him, leaving me panting and shaking as my sister is dragged into Principal Vaughn’s office.

As for Kali … she looks at my sister’s retreating back with murder in her eyes.

Later, when we come home to Pamela waiting in the living room for us, I know things are about to go from bad to worse.

Pen and I both freeze where we are, our conversation about the fight forgotten for the briefest of moments. The world is scary; it is for nearly everyone who attempts to traverse it. But it’s a whole other animal to be afraid of the person who brought you into it, the one person who should care when nobody else does.