I wet my lips.

I’m dying to ask about Cal’s grandma, about his homelife, what his bedroom looks like … but we’ve already had a tender moment up here, and my heart still feels a bit raw. That’s a subject for another time.

“Won’t she need it?” I ask, but Callum shakes his head, flipping his hood up to cover his hair. Defense mechanism. I’m getting good at recognizing the boys’ little tics. Or … I always knew what those tics were, because I’ve stalked them like a creeper for half of my life.

“She always makes me buy one for her, but she can’t cook it, and I’m no good with that shit.” He keeps smiling, even though there’s melancholy laced in those words. “It makes her happy though, when I bring one home. Maybe I should’ve made more of an effort to learn to cook?”

“You mean, in your spare time, after all the free dance lessons for impoverished little girls, the murdering, the burying of bodies …”

“Bernadette, show some tact,” Oscar says from somewhere behind me, probably leaning out the window of the upstairs bedroom. But if he can leave me to clean blood off the couch by myself, he can deal with my quips.

“Is your mom going to be okay with you staying here indefinitely?” Callum asks after a minute or two. We both know we need to get started with our day, but neither of us has moved. It’s hard to want to leave that spot, with our arms pressed close, hips abutting one another. The sunshine is nice, too. We don’t get much of that these days.

“Probably not,” I admit, pulling my phone out of the hoodie pocket. It’s off, the screen black, all of its horrible secrets hidden away. The last thing I feel like doing is turning it on. After he finishes his cigarette, Callum takes it from me and powers it on. He doesn’t ask me my pin code; he just seems to know it (which is not at all surprising).

“Mm,” he says after a minute, passing the phone back to me. There’s a text message pulled up, just waiting for me to read.

You’re an idiot, Bernadette. But I’ll do it. Let me know when to meet you at the courthouse.

That’s it, the only text I have from Pamela.

There’s nothing from the Thing either.

I smell a rat.

Well, that, and a snake.

“Victor,” I growl, shoving up to my feet and heading for the window. Callum follows close behind, as dexterous as a cat. I’m certain that if I started to fall, he’d catch me.

Hopping into the room, I manage to land just as Hael is pushing his pajama pants down his hips. His cock is hard, and my fingers twitch as I pass him by.

“Morning cutie,” he purrs as I roll my eyes and slip into the hall.

Callum even follows me down the stairs, falling back as I open the downstairs bathroom door to find Vic pissing. He glances casually in my direction, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“What?” he asks, ebon eyes—and yeah, Mr. Darkwood, ebon is a fucking word because it’s in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you twat—watching me as I lift up my phone, screen facing toward him.

“Courthouse? Why is Pamela asking me about the courthouse?”

“Oh.” Vic finishes peeing, shakes his dick off, and then tucks it away. He moves over to the sink to wash his hands, taking his sweet time responding to me. “I paid your mother ten-thousand dollars and a Burberry bag for your hand in marriage.”

I just stare at him. And then I chuck my phone at his head. Unfortunately, he manages to catch it like a boss and looks cool doing it, cigarette clutched in his opposite hand.

“When?” I ask, and Victor shrugs.

“This morning. I was worried Pamela might not like you staying here permanently.” He steps forward and hands the phone back to me. When he leans in and puts his mouth against my ear, my eyes close of their own accord and my fingers fist in the front of his t-shirt. “I’d have told you sooner, but Oscar’s dick was shoved up that sweet cunt of yours.” I punch Vic in his man-tit, but it doesn’t do any good. His muscles are like rocks.

“Why the courthouse?” I ask as I move aside to let him out of the bathroom. “Don’t we have to have a proper ritualistic Western marriage to get your inheritance?” He glances back at me, grinning big and showing teeth.

“Sure, yeah, but we need a marriage license at least three days before the wedding.” Vic turns away from me to watch as Aaron comes down the stairs, his hair wet from the shower. He was in there a long time, so I can only guess he was doing something other than chastely washing his body. Our eyes meet and an awful sense of dread washes over me. I have to tell him that I had sex with Oscar. Like, now.

“We are not getting married in three days,” I snap with a roll of my eyes. Aaron continues down the stairs and heads into the living room, grabbing his boots before he goes to sit down on the long couch. His face very clearly says the fuck happened to my furniture? I pretend not to notice, at least for the moment.

“No,” Vic agrees, nodding his head as he pauses in the archway that leads to the kitchen. “We’re not. We’re getting married in six. Right on my motherfucking birthday.”

One year earlier …

Callum Park

There is nothing more beautiful than Bernadette Blackbird, bathed in moonlight and sleeping peacefully beneath my overly protective gaze. When I first started coming out here and climbing to the roof to watch her, I felt like she could sense me somehow. I’d place my fingers to the glass and let my breath make little clouds in the cool air.

Her unease would quiet, and she’d finally find a chance to rest.

Now that I’ve been doing it for a year, I’m sure of it.

She only truly sleeps when I’m around.

I sit down and cross my legs in front of me, resting my elbows on my knees and parking my chin in my hands to wait, to watch, to keep her safe. I don’t trust that her stepfather will stay away because of the video, so I make certain of it as often as I can.

Instead of letting myself be shackled to a broken dream, I’ve found a new one in the face of a girl who thinks she’s jaded to a fine point. In reality, there’s an innocence in her that’s rare and precious.

Even in the face of hate, of pain, of ruin, Bernadette has never stopped watching us.

Never stopped loving us.

And we, we love her.

Me, most of all.

She just doesn’t know it.

I touch my blue-painted fingernails to her window, wishing I could open it and crawl inside, curl my body around hers and hold her tight.

But I don’t; I can’t.

I sit there, and I make sure her door remains locked, her eyes closed, her mind safe from the destruction of her stepfather. With my chance at escaping South Prescott dashed to ashes, I’ve found a new mission.

Bernadette will be happy, whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter what sacrifices I have to make—even my life is not too much. And if it truly took the death of my dream for me to understand this, then it will have all been worth it.

I chuckle and light up a cigarette, turning my head to look at the moon.

Silver light bathes my face as I close my eyes, dreaming of a day where I don’t have to sit in the cold outside her window, when I can actually touch her, when she’ll talk to me.

Of all the things, that’s what I like best of all, hearing her sweet words.

When the sun begins to peek its head above the horizon, I leave, climbing back down and landing in a crouch in the side yard of the duplex. I don’t like to leave my grandmother home alone, but if it’s between her and Bernadette, I know the hard choice I’d have to make.

Still, my grandma is the only family I have left, and I’ll take care of her for as long as I can. I have a bad feeling that the darkness coming for her is something that I can’t fight with guns and fists.

I walk through the dawn without fear because I know that I am the thing in the darkness to be afraid of. There’s comfort in that, being the monster under the bed instead of the person inside of it.

Later that day, when Bernadette sees me in the hallway, she gives me a wide berth and I pause, turning to look at her over my shoulder. She thinks that I barely know who she is. In reality, I’ve turned into a fucking stalker, my eyes following her even when she thinks no one is watching.

My lips tilt in a sad smile as I turn away, remembering a time when I held little hands out to a crying girl and pulled her into the magical language of dance. Words are hard for me, but the body … the body can say it all without a sound.

Flipping my hood up blocks out the voices of doubt, the fears, the regret. It keeps me calm, hides me in a world of my own making, one where I am the captain of my own fate.

“You’ve been going over there again?” Vic asks, and I nod, turning to look at him as he leans up against the lockers near the front entrance to Prescott High. I say nothing as he looks after her, turning to me only after she’s gone. “Anything I should know about?”

“Nothing at all,” I say, but there is, really. Because with each passing day, Bernadette is drowning. The harder she fights, the deeper that struggle works its way into her bones. It’s only a matter of time before the shell around her innocence is so sharp that it cuts.

One day, she’ll join us. Even if we wish she wouldn’t. We can try, but eventually, you have to accept the inevitable.

“Good,” Vic says, but in his voice, I can hear it.

He wants her, and he isn’t letting her go.

Fine by me, because I don’t want to let her go either.

Not ever.

November eighteenth, Now …

Bernadette Blackbird

At school on Monday, the boys manage to surprise the shit out of me.

“We’re going to deal with Vaughn today,” is the only thing I’m told when Aaron and I roll up to the school to find Oscar waiting for us.

We walk into Prescott High as normal, passing through the metal detectors, skirting the German Shepherds … I almost—check it: almost—miss Hael slipping a wad of cash to the campus cop. I don’t ask any questions, making sure I keep up as we sweep down the hallway as a group.