“I wanna see you shirtless and under the hood,” I breathe, leaning into him even harder as my knees get shaky and I find myself having trouble standing. Hael releases me without an orgasm and then licks his fingers in just such a way that I get chills when I turn around and see him doing it.

“We can go. Just don’t let my mama see you, cher. I don’t wanna get in trouble.” He gives me a naughty smirk before heading for the door and opening it. The garage door is immediately to the right, so it’s easy to sneak into without Marie noticing us.

Hael shuts and locks that behind us, pulling up a song on his phone and chucking it onto a rolling metal toolbox to play quietly. He cracks the window on the far side of the room just enough to let in a little night air as I look around.

Fat white moths fly around the light in the center of the room, wings flapping lazily. They look drunk. I glance back at Hael and find him trading out his t-shirt for a gray wifebeater. He kicks a small rolling thing that looks like a skateboard toward the hood of the car and then sits down on it.

“Looking good, huh?” he asks me, because I haven’t seen the Caddy since the day we got Brittany’s DNA test back. It looks substantially different already. Missing parts are now attached, it has wheels and tires, and there are the makings of an interior stacked in one corner of the garage.

“You’ve been working your ass off, Hael,” I murmur, moving over to the car and running my hand along the length of a rusted door.

“Don’t sound too excited,” he says, lying back on the board and then sliding underneath the car. “It gives me something to do when that man is here.” He makes a sound of disgust as I sit down on the stone steps near the door to the house and watch him. I’m not going to let him work for very long, and he probably knows it. This is our version of roleplaying, with just a little truth thrown in. That’s what makes it taste so goddamn sweet; you can feel that all-encompassing comfort of a story with a kernel of reality hiding at its core.

“You sure we can’t just … make him disappear?” I ask, thinking absently about the party and the knife in my hand. “Doubt you would’ve done it, even if you’d had the chance,” the ghost of Kali whispers in my ear. Fuck, I should take off this stupid spirit board dress. It’s probably summoning that cunt from the depths of hell.

“Probably will. Just not yet. We’ve got enough problems, don’t you think?” Hael continues tinkering with the car, and I realize he truly has just gotten straight to work down there.

“Maybe we should call off the last name on my list,” I wonder aloud, and Hael doesn’t answer me. I can’t decide if that’s because he enthusiastically agrees with me or vehemently disagrees. Could be either. It’s definitely not out of a sense of neutrality toward the question.

After a moment, I stand up and Hael’s head pops out from under the car.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, pausing with my hand on the doorknob as I glance his way. “And I’ll be careful.”

He laughs at me as I slip out and find the heels I packed earlier. They’re, like, four inches tall and made of black leather. Little skull charms hang from the peep-toes. I stole these from the Hellhole once and never wore them. I mean, fuck, I’m the queen of heels but nobody wants to walk around the Prescott High campus with bear traps on their feet. I’ll likely never wear these out … but wearing them in sounds nice.

I slip into one of Hael’s t-shirts to hide the fact that I’m not wearing anything but for these heels.

He hears the difference in footwear the second I step into the garage, sliding out from underneath the Eldorado to look at me.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he murmurs, sitting up and swiping a greasy hand over his face. I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t think he deserves this, and I can’t for the life of me understand why.

“You’re looking at me like you think I should run,” I reply, lifting a brow in question. With great reluctance, Hael lifts his eyes from my body to my face. The smile etched into his pretty mouth is tired and grim, that crack in his personality as visible as it’s ever been.

Unlike Oscar, Hael is okay with a little vulnerability.

My right hand curls into a fist against the doorjamb as I think about Oscar’s distant, gloomy gaze, about his words, like pins and needles being pushed into my soul. We’re all about heartbreak and unhappy beginnings here in Prescott.

I’m just hoping that whatever dark goddess is in charge of my life takes pity on me and gives me a happy ending.

“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. “You have no idea what it means to me to have you here.”

“Tell me then,” I challenge, coming down the two steps into the garage. Our gazes meet, and I feel my breath being siphoned from my body. Hael is like an inferno, a fire that burns so hot it draws all the oxygen from the room. There’s no question as to how he’s been able to have any girl, anytime, anywhere. There’s an exciting magnetism to him that none of the other Havoc Boys share, a lightness in the face of so much dark. While Callum has accepted that he will always live in the shadows, while Victor seeks to command them, Hael is determined to be happy. Ultimately, that’s the only thing he really wants.

And somehow, I seem to factor into that equation.

“How do you do that?” he asks me as the song on his phone changes to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things”. It suits him, this song. I reach down and curl my fingers under the hem of the t-shirt—it just so happens to be a Batman tee—as Hael runs his tongue across his lower lip. “Look at me like you can read me in a single glance.”

“I just make shit up in my head,” I retort, slowly pulling the shirt up to reveal the creamy whiteness of my thighs and the vibrant pink splash of my dragon tattoo. “In reality, I don’t know shit. I’m as lost as you are.”

“Bullshit,” Hael retorts with a ragged laugh, running his hand over the seam in his jeans and taking hold of his thickening cock through the fabric. “It’s because you’re a writer, a poet. You see into people’s souls.” He winks at me, but I know he’s being serious right now.

“And you’re avoiding my question,” I reply, letting the shirt fall back into place. Hael lets out this low, deep chuckle and shakes his head, like he’s about to leap across this room after me. “What does it mean for you to have me here?”

He watches me carefully and then begins to circle toward me, past the Eldorado, as I match his pace, staying just ahead of him. We end up walking in a circle as we face each other, those same fat moths fluttering around in the in-between space beneath the light.

“It means …” Hael starts, grinning at me like the devil he is. His bloodred hair matches mine now, like we were forged from the fires of hell just to find each other. “Avec toi j'ai l'impression d'être une personne et pas juste un bon coup.” He pauses, and I frown at him. Speaking in French is hot as fuck, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying, and he knows it.

“Cop-out,” I murmur, and he laughs. “I guess you’re not interested in seeing what’s under this shirt then?” I lift up the hem a bit, teasing him with a clear view of my upper thighs but stopping just short of revealing my cunt.

“Blackbird, ne me chauffe pas comme ça,” he purrs, reaching up to run dirty fingers through his hair. Hael pauses near the door, and I stop where I am, my hand resting on the rusty hood of the Cadillac. His honey-almond eyes find mine, a smear of black grease on his cheek. His muscular arms are dotted with beads of sweat, like little magnifying glasses highlighting the ink underneath. There are hot girls and cars and Sailor Jerry style hearts. He’s got skulls and roses and bluebirds. I could look for hours and still find something new in all that art that wraps his hard muscles. “I’m not great with vocalizing my feelings,” he continues in English, licking the corner of his lip.

My body is aching for the feel of his hands, that sweet coconut oil smell that clings to his skin because he uses it so often to remove the grease and motor oil from his body. But not tonight: I really do want him to be as filthy as possible.

“Try,” I reply, knowing I’m playing hard to get here, but needing something from him. These boys like to play cat and mouse with me. Despite their declarations of obsession, our strange history, their single-minded focus on me. They all need to work on the touchy-feely shit. “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, my hands trembling slightly as Hael puts his fingers under the t-shirt, finding my bare hips and letting out a curse of his own. “Maybe you’re right? Maybe you should try your hand at poetry?”

He chuckles at me, but the sound is different now, much deeper, a bedroom laugh if you will.

“Yeah, no,” Hael whispers, leaning down to press his mouth against the side of my neck. “I’ll leave the writing to you; you leave the explosives and the cars to me. Whatever else we can’t handle we’ll make the guys take care of. That’s what I like about this whole arrangement, Bernie. Everybody has a job; everybody has a purpose.” He lifts the shirt up, pausing with it halfway over my head, so that my mouth is the only part of my face that isn’t covered.