I shiver as his hands drift along my ribs to my upper back, unhooking my bra and letting it fall to my lap.

“Get on the bed,” he tells me, his voice dark and low, his own hands shaking as he stands up, wincing slightly with the movement and then rubbing at one of his knees. That’s the most damaged part of him, the most scarred. I can only imagine the constant pain he must live with.

I nestle into the pillows, hoping he’ll get naked before he joins me. Instead, he stays fully clothed, boots and all, as he climbs onto the bed. Starting at my left foot, he kisses his way back up and over the mound of pale hair between my thighs, getting just close enough to my clit to make me squirm without actually taking away any of that desperate aching.

His right hand covers my bare breast, kneading the soft round weight with his fingers as he licks around the nipple on the opposite side. His tongue is hot and slick, but he keeps it just far enough away from the pink point that it feels like I’m going crazy.

“Breathe,” he repeats, placing a palm flat on my chest as he lifts his mouth to mine, kissing me with slow, languid movements that promise we have all the time in the world. In reality, we’re both functioning on borrowed time. With all the shit we have going on, we know that forever cannot and will not be promised by anyone or anything.

Callum bites my lower lip hard, stopping just short of making me bleed, pressing down on my chest with his hand to keep me calm. It’s a struggle, especially as he kisses along the edge of my jaw to my ear, and bites that, too. I’m writhing now, but at least I’m still breathing, and very quietly, too. That, and I’m not making a single other sound, not even when he begins to suck on my neck, tasting my thrumming pulse with his tongue.

My legs spread wide, wrapping around him, wanting more and finding myself denied. He won’t grind against me, won’t touch me between the thighs. At least, he doesn’t for a good fifteen minutes. Maybe more. Maybe a half an hour.

“Callum, I can’t take it,” I admit as he nuzzles into that hollow space between my neck and shoulder, biting me there, too. I’m soaked in sweat now, absolutely drenched. God knows how long we’ve been in here.

On the positive side, Kali’s ghost seems to have disappeared again. That’s a good sign, right?

Without warning, Cal sneaks his hand between my thighs and slides two fingers into the molten heat of my core before I can even register that he’s taken my words seriously. His thumb slicks my own juices up and over my clit, massaging that as he fucks me with his hand, just as slow and easy as he kissed me.

My fingers curl together behind his neck as he stares down at me, so much less vulnerable since he’s clothed and I’m not. I decide to go for it and reach my right hand between us, searching for his cock.

It’s thick and hot under my palm, even with his jean shorts between us.

“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.”

He drives a third finger into me, and my hips buck up off the bed, body pulsing around his hand. I’m thrusting against him, digging my nails into the shoulders of his hoodie and wishing I could tear it right off.

He doesn’t change his pace, moving his fingers in and out until he’s able to add a fourth. His lips tease the hollow of my throat, and then he bites down hard, slamming his hand into me over and over and over until I’m coming so hard that I see stars, that I groan so loud I bet every nosy ass neighbor on that street can hear me.

And then I collapse, boneless and shaking, into the sheets.

Cal sits up and then wipes his hand on his hoodie with a small, secretive smile playing on his fairy-tale lips.

“I have to wash this tonight anyway,” he explains, leaning down one final time to press a kiss to my lower belly. “You did well, Bernadette.”

I say nothing as Callum stands up and leaves the room. By the time I get dressed again and head out into the living room, he’s already gone back to his grandmother’s place.

Unlike Oscar, however, I know that Cal isn’t running away. Instead, he’s trying to teach me something.

Good things come to those who wait.

I’m determined to graduate. I don’t want gang leader’s girlfriend to be my only lifetime accomplishment. Besides, I’d be the first woman on my mother’s side to actually finish high school and get her diploma. That, and there’s always the chance that something will happen, that we won’t get the money. It seems too good to be true, and when something seems that way, it usually is.

When I tell this to Vic, he looks at me like I’m nuts.

“First off, I do want you to graduate, so don’t take this the wrong way.” He steps up close to me, smelling too good to be real. Too male to be sane. “Gang leader’s wife, first off.” I roll my eyes, but Victor’s smirking at me because he knows he’s got me. “And this will work out. Just trust me.”

“Trust you when you ask about an annulment like it could be a good thing?”

He stares back at me as I sit on the edge of the bed in panties and a bra. I haven’t gotten dressed for school yet. To be honest, I’m dreading it. First thing I thought when I opened my eyes today was why the fuck do I have to go back there, to Prescott motherfucking High?

But goddamn it, I’m going to finish high school if it kills me.

The thing is, it just might …

“What do you make of James Barrasso being at that club?” I ask, and I can see the muscles in Vic’s back tighten. He turns around, a pair of jeans slung over his arm. He hasn’t gotten dressed either; I can see his dick. I intend to keep this view for as long as is feasibly possible.

“Trouble,” he tells me which isn’t really an answer at all.

We ride his bike together to the school, park at the curb, climb out like everything is normal. There are extra cops here, sure, but that’s nothing new. It’s not Sara Young’s presence, or Detective Constantine’s that makes everything feel so surreal, like one of those awful paintings at the art gallery, some cubist nightmare come to life.

It’s the fact that Kali isn’t here.

Mitch isn’t here.

Logan isn’t here.

None of the Ensbrook brothers are here.

I sit down in Mr. Darkwood’s class first thing, black-painted fingernails tapping out the rhythm to MISSIO’s song “Twisted”. The Charter Crew is absent, but so are a lot of kids. This is fucking Prescott High for fuck’s sake. People go missing or run away or quit all the time.

Still … this is different.

I had my hands around Kali’s throat. Aaron shot her. She’s gone and she isn’t coming back.

“Boo,” Cal says at lunch, and I jump. I don’t mean to, and he smiles sadly at me when it happens, but it’s just more proof that something isn’t quite right here.

“I don’t like what’s happening,” I tell the boys in the cafeteria, just waiting for that first summons to the principal’s office. I’m nowhere near untangling myself from Sara Young. I just have to hope I can lead her in the right direction. If not, she might end up in the same position as Kali. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Because it’s not,” Oscar agrees, sitting at the table with his iPad. He’s wearing contacts again today. He’s been wearing them quite a lot actually. It took me an entire week to figure out why he wasn’t wearing his glasses as often: his face hurts. Of course, he’d never tell me that himself, but I caught him in the bathroom, sliding his glasses onto his nose and cringing. I pretended that I didn’t catch his flinch. “I don’t like the fact that Barrasso was at the club. And I don’t like Trinity Jade.”

“At least the school is under control,” Aaron says, observing the other students. We’ve been treated like royalty since we arrived on campus this morning. Nobody wants to ask where Mitch or Kyler or Logan are, where Kali is. Because they already know the answer to that.

Don’t mess with Havoc unless you’re willing to pay the price. And since people keep forcing our hands, we’re all growing up much faster than we should be. Our bites are most definitely worse than our barks.

“Not you, though, Bernadette. Because you didn’t kill me. You wouldn’t.” Kali’s ghost sits beside me, a frustrating reminder of my own fragile morality.

I exhale and stretch my knuckles.

“Prescott High is peaceful, but the city’s in a turmoil,” I say, because I can feel it. People are looking at us who never noticed us before. And not the right kind of people either. Our age no longer protects us.

“I’m meeting with my mother today,” Victor announces, pushing his math homework forward. I’ve never noticed before that he’s in calculus. I didn’t think anyone but Oscar was in calculus at Prescott High. It’s not even really a class. The regular math teacher—Miss Addie—just prints out course material from an online college class and uses that for any advanced students. “She wants my answer about the annulment.”

“It’d be safer for Bernadette,” Aaron offers up, drawing Victor’s unnerving focus and attention. For a second there, I’m convinced that Vic is going to start a fight with Aaron, or that Aaron is going to push so hard and so fast that Victor has no choice but to defend his authority.

“It would be. That’s why I’m agreeing to it.”

A shock tears through me, one that makes me feel cold and empty for the briefest of seconds. My hands curl into fists, but I keep the rest of what I’m feeling from showing on my face.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Hael asks as he looks between Callum and Aaron for help. He knows better than to look at Oscar; we both know how likely it is that Vic’s already talked this out with him. I remember Oscar’s words from the other day, too, when he said he never should’ve let Vic marry me.