There’s not a single one of us who hasn’t suffered in our family life, who hasn’t been betrayed by somebody that was supposed to love and care about us. That’s why we’re all—Victor included—okay with sharing Bernadette. She’s the center of the wheel, and we’re just spokes. But it takes all of us to keep the fucking thing rolling.

My body is thrown violently into the back of the seat as Bernadette turns the wheel to the left so sharply that we end up making a full U-turn, right there in the middle of traffic. There’s no hesitation when she shifts gears and rockets off down the street while the cruiser struggles to find a break in the traffic to follow after us.

“Well, fuck me,” I laugh as Bernadette grins, taking another wild left turn as we jostle down a street covered in potholes. She might be a new driver, but I don’t have to tell her the ins and outs of south Prescott. We take a narrow alley next, then another right. The racetrack isn’t too far off now. “You must be really eager to get to Pussy Point, eh?”

“And you must be really eager to not get any pussy when we get there,” she retorts, slowing briefly as we near the dirt road that leads to the racetrack. One look at her face is all it takes to know that she’s reliving that awful moment when Aaron crashed the Camaro and was dragged out of the driver’s side window. He could’ve died then. Callum could’ve died on the day of the shooting. Things are rough for Havoc right now.

“If you’re not ready …” I start, because even if Oscar and Bernie had sex at the funeral home, that doesn’t mean she wants me pawing at her hot pink pants and pressing my lips against the side of her pale throat. Of course, I can’t handle things staying too serious for too long, so I just grin and steer the conversation in a different direction. “I’m more than happy to just rub one out. Vic still has that video of you and me, in the master bedroom. I caught him jacking off to it just the other day.”

Bernadette snorts like she doesn’t believe me, but then her green eyes flick my direction as if for confirmation.

“Really?” she asks, sounding surprised. Not as surprised as I was when I opened the bathroom door and walked in on that shit. Victor just stared right back at me, stroking his cock a few last times before coming all over his own hand. Getting kicked out of the room that day twisted my raw anger into something ferocious. And then finding out that he’d had a threesome with Aaron of all people, when the two of them are like oil and friggin’ water, that undid me.

Might still be a little salty about the whole thing. Vic is supposed to be more than a leader; he’s supposed to be my best friend. Then again, seeing him masturbating to that video must mean he wasn’t as bothered by the whole thing as he pretended.

“Really,” I confirm as Bernie slows a bit, taking us down the curving road onto the track and then past it, toward the old campground and the suburban street just beyond it. From here, it’s a straight shot to the Butte.

“You don’t always have to pretend, you know,” she tells me finally, even after I’ve twisted the volume on the radio so Bonnie Tyler can sing about “Holding Out for a Hero”.

“Pretend about what?” I ask, but even if I act like one sometimes, I’m not an idiot. I know what she means. You don’t have to pretend to be cheerful all the time. You don’t have to joke around when you’re pissed off. You can be honest. The thing is, I don’t feel like I have a right to. Oscar had a much harder life than I ever did. My mom might have some mental health issues, and my dad might be a murdering sack of trash, but other than being homeless for a while, what else is there?

“Hael, don’t play that shit with me.” Bernadette guides us up the steep, winding road toward the Butte. I’m not worried though; it’s plenty wide enough to make up for any rookie errors. Plus, there’s a metal railing along the right-hand side. Worst case scenario, she damages the fresh paint job. The thought makes me cringe, but I needn’t have worried: we make it to the top and into the empty parking lot without issue.

Bernie turns the ignition off as I pull out my phone, setting a stopwatch to see how long it takes the police to catch up to us. There’s always the faint threat of the GMP, but with our cop buddies, the assault rifle I’ve got in the trunk, and Bernadette’s scrappiness, we’ll be okay. Victor wouldn’t have allowed us to leave the safe house if he didn’t agree.

“Three minutes,” I say as the car ticks and cools around us and Bernadette adjusts her gaze from the beautiful vista in front of us and over to my face. She isn’t done with that bit of conversation, about the pretending and all that.

“Hael,” she warns as I lift my eyes from my phone screen to glance over at her. “Seriously. You can be real with me. With us. You don’t always have to be chipper and happy and smiling all the goddamn time. That must get old?” She phrases this last bit as a question, but I’m not quite sure what to say. Does it? Even I don’t really know the answer to that.

Blackbird seems content to wait, taking off her seatbelt and leaning back against the bloodred leather. She throws her legs over the top of mine, and I groan as my cock twitches in response. Even that casual touch is enough to ignite all the fire in my blood.

“It’s how I cope,” I tell her, and she nods because, of course, she’s smart enough to have figured that out already.

“Your smiles are like Cal’s hoodie or Vic’s chain-smoking,” she says as I lift a single brow in question. “Just a tic that you don’t know how to function without.”

“Oh, I see.” I grin back at her, even though I’m quite literally doing the exact fucking thing she just accused me of. “My beatific fucking smiles are just tics, huh?”

“Be. Real. With. Me.” My girl stares me down with bright emerald eyes, their color enhanced by the liquid gold of the setting sun. I’ve never been much of a poet—my vocabulary is half-slang, the rest curse words—but something about this woman makes me want to try to be better.

“I’m pissed at Victor,” I admit, and Bernadette nods yet again. She’s too smart to have not seen it. “I’m pissed because he kicked me out, and then he fucked you with Aaron. That should’ve been me. He owes me an apology.”

“So tell him that.” She slips out of her pink leather jacket and tosses it into the back seat, reminding me that there’s no bra underneath her shirt. Her nipples are peaked points, straining against the fabric, and I find myself rubbing a palm over the growing erection trapped inside my jeans. Bernie notices, of course, but all she does is hook a mischievous little smile. “Tell me that. Are you mad at me, too? For letting him get away with that crap.”

I think about that for a minute. Am I? Could I ever be mad at Bernadette for anything?

“No.” I pause for a moment and then shake my head, raking the fingers of my right hand through my hair. “Maybe. Just a little.”

Her smile gets just a bit wider, a bit more real.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she tells me, and I feel a bit of that hot ache buried deep in my chest cool a little. Her beautiful lips, those words … it’s too much. I can’t help myself when I reach out a hand and cup the side of her face, bringing my mouth to hers. The first kiss is almost … sweet? Wasn’t even aware I was capable of such a thing. But it’s like pressing a flame to dry kindling. Just a few brushes of lips later and we may as well have doused our mouths in gasoline and set them on fire.

“Eight minutes,” she murmurs against my lips, and then I’m yanking her onto my lap, encouraging her to rub that hot cunt of hers against my erection. The pink leather of the cigarette pants dips beneath the hard press of my fingers as I kiss along the edge of her jaw toward her ear, savoring the sweetness of her pale skin. “Let me make it up to you.”

Bernie’s inked hands drop to my button and fly, undoing my pants with sure, steady movements. I watch her with slightly parted lips, hunger roaring inside of me. How many times did I imagine this girl when I was with somebody else? Pretty much every fucking time.

Obsession.

We wear it and perform it well in Havoc, now don’t we?

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, pausing her hands before she gets the chance to free my cock from the confines of the tight denim. “If you’re planning on sucking me off, Miss Blackbird, then I’d like to remind you that you already owed me. I made you come first when we fucked in the driveway, so this is hardly making anything up. This was mine to begin with.” I fist a hand in her hair and then kiss away the sharp gasp that tears from her throat.

There’s one other vehicle up here—a classic Ford F100, 1955 I think—with a couple sprawled out in the bed of the pickup. Their moans create a sensual background song to the sweet murmurs spilling from Bernadette’s pink-painted lips. The color on her mouth matches her pants, and I get this hot thrill from imagining it smeared across my face and neck.

The sun is very quickly disappearing into the horizon, and the night throws up a blanket of stars that are only slightly obscured by the lights of the city. Springfield isn’t that big of a town, after all. Just big enough to hold onto. Just big enough to rule.

I hit the button to bring the top down, glad that I added that little extra. Nobody wants to put the fucking thing down manually. Kills the mood. Cool air sweeps in around us, but it doesn’t matter; there’s enough heat in our bodies to make up for it.

“Then I guess I’ll fulfill my end of the bet with my mouth and make up for my mistakes with Victor by using this tight little pussy.” Bernadette grinds herself against me before grabbing my phone and checking the stopwatch once again. “Thirteen minutes,” she murmurs, and then she starts up “Cherry Pie” by Warrant.

“Seriously though?” I ask, but I can’t help the laugh that escapes as Bernadette tosses her hair in time to the music. “Classic stripper rock. Are you my stripper, baby?”