Victor adjusts himself on Aaron’s other side, turning to look at us. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I can better make out the expression on his full lips: amusement. Which, knowing Vic as I do, is something I most definitely did not expect.

“Are you sure you want this? All of us sleeping in here with you every night?” he asks with a harsh laugh, stripping his own pants off and tossing them to the floor. I see that’s he pulled out one of the other lube bottles from the drawer. “You’ll be attending Oak Valley with a perpetually sore and swollen cunt, and I doubt you’ll get a whole hell of a lot of sleep.”

“If I don’t like it, I have my safe word,” I say, and then I drop my mouth down to Aaron’s dick, tongue swirling around the head as he hisses and uses his hold on my hair to push his cock even deeper into my throat.

“Play with my balls,” he murmurs, and my body flushes with heat. I love hearing him tell me what he wants, and I extra fucking love that he’s not afraid to do it in front of all four of the other Havoc Boys. I slide my mouth up his cock and then adjust my attention to the tight heat of his sack, licking the silky skin and sucking it into my mouth. Behind me, I hear one of Cal’s beautifully broken groans and a sound of pleasure escapes my own throat, fluttering against Aaron’s balls as they tighten against the onslaught of my mouth.

He massages my scalp as I slide my tongue up toward the base of his shaft, tasting the lube there and finding it fruity and sweet, like peaches. A smirk takes over my mouth as I sit up and snag the discarded bottle that’s lying next to Vic. He’s just sitting there, playing with his monster cock and watching me pleasure another man with an expression akin to a king on his throne. This is all for his pleasure, his entertainment. Dickhead.

I steal the lube and sit up, tearing my shirt over my head and chucking it aside before squeezing a generous amount of lubricant on my breasts. Oscar’s staring at me with a hunger that’s so sharp that I wonder if it isn’t cutting me, if he isn’t making me bleed without my even knowing it.

Cal and Hael are both lying back beside him, doing their own thing, listening more so than watching.

Aaron looks down the length of his body at me as I prop myself up on one elbow.

“Give me your hand,” I tell him, and he does, allowing me to press his palm against the silken side of my left breast. I position myself so that my tits are on either side of his cock, using my own hand to press against the opposite breast, creating a tunnel of soft flesh to surround his rigid shaft. He licks his lips, his hips rising up to take advantage of the slick plush cushion around his dick. With his hand on one side, and mine on the other, my breasts are pressed nice and tight, giving Aaron the friction he needs to really get off.

“Fuck,” Oscar grinds out, gripping his own dick so tightly that I worry he might hurt himself. He pumps his fist up and down as the moonlight catches on the little metal swords pierced through his nipples. On my other side, Victor does the same. Hael groans in unabashed pleasure while Callum’s ragged noises tear me apart and put me back together, all at the same time.

I work my breasts on Aaron’s body until his dick begins to twitch, and I worry that he might come before I get what it is that I really want: him inside of me. The nice thing is, if I accidentally push him too far, then I can use a different boy. For as long as I live, I doubt I’ll ever have to deal with the annoyance of going unsatisfied.

When I go to sit up, Aaron makes a growling sound of displeasure, and I find myself being flipped over, my arms pinned up on either side of my head. His eyes find my breasts just before his teeth do, and he bites down so hard on my nipple that I cry out, the sound echoing in the empty apartment. Only … it’s empty in furniture and things only. In every other way, it’s full. Bursting, really.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Aaron murmurs, mouth still pressed against my breasts, tongue teasing my nipples and probably tasting that peach lube I slathered all over them. He moves his mouth to mine, but when I arch my back up and try to kiss him, he pulls away smirking.

“You fucker,” I breathe as he moves his hips forward and slides his cock against the fabric of my pajama pants, the head of his dick pressing against the almost painfully swollen nub of my clit. Aaron laughs, the sound low and soft, just before he drops his hot lips to my neck, kissing and sucking on me in just such a way that I’m sure every person on campus will be able to see the mark of Havoc on my skin.

“I can be,” he murmurs, scooting back so that he can grab my sweats and slide them down and off, tossing them onto the floor before moving back between my thighs. He cradles my head between his hands and finally drops his mouth to mine, tasting me with a sweetness that reminds me of being fifteen again, before Penelope was gone, before Callum lost his dream of dancing, before the whole world shifted and tilted and broke.

I can’t say that I don’t wish things had been different, but I also can’t say that I’m not happy with where I am right now, using all of those broken bits to create a mosaic of stained glass that’s twice as beautiful as any solid piece I might’ve had before. When the light hits it, it paints the world in vibrant color.

Our tongues dance together as Aaron finds my opening, sliding forward so slowly that I ache and writhe and squirm, trying to get just a little more, impale myself a little harder. He keeps complete control of the moment, but not in a domineering way like Vic or an obsessive desperation like Oscar. He just knows what he wants, and he’s okay asking for it.

And what he very clearly wants is me. Us. This. All of it.

We start to move together, our hips creating this coordinated song and dance. Flesh against flesh, the sweet music of wet bodies, our fingers tangled, our eyes locked. I can hear other sounds, lewder ones, groans and curses. I can smell the tang of sex in the air as Aaron tastes my lips, making love to my tongue at the same time he does to my pussy. There are promises in his kisses, in the movements of his hips, the way his muscles tighten and quiver as he approaches his climax.

For the briefest of moments, it’s just me and him again, losing our virginities to one another in a suburban bedroom on the border of Prescott and Fuller while his mother cooks downstairs and the world keeps spinning the way it always does.

The climax takes me first, and Aaron keeps me pinned in place while I quiver and shudder, my silken inner muscles clamping around him and milking him like my body wants something I’m not ready for. But, well, I’ve been taking the pill at the same time every day for extra assurance, so it can do whatever it wants. It feels good anyway, to complete the primal dance of mating with the boy I first fell in love with.

My body goes slack beneath his, but I keep my thighs spread wide so Aaron can use me to find his own orgasm. He pulls back from our kiss, just so he can watch me as he comes, his lids fluttering, my fingernails digging into the tight muscles of his ass he pumps hard and fast a few last times and then collapses on top of me.

I close my eyes as his breath flutters my hair, listening to the chorus of ragged breathing in the room, trying to see if anyone else is still going. But no, it’s nothing but panting and a faint chuckle from Hael’s direction.

“The family that jacks it together stays together,” he says, and Victor lets out an annoyed groan, chucking a pillow in his direction as I open my eyes and Aaron rolls off to lie between me and Vic.

“Thank you,” I tell them, and the playful bickering ceases right away. Nobody asks what I’m saying thank you for—they know it isn’t as simple and stupid as me thanking them for performing a group masturbation. It’s because they love each other as much as they love me, and there’s nothing but death that could ever pull the six of us apart.

I manage to last two weeks at Oak Valley Prep before I give in to one of my many obsessions.

Pamela Pence.

Mother.

Murderer.

Sitting inside the county jail, I rest my elbows on the scratched surface of a small white table and wait for Pam to be brought in. Meanwhile, I tell myself that everything is okay when … none of it is, really. None of it.

She murdered Penelope, I tell myself, but despite holding onto that knowledge for over a month, I don’t believe it. Rather … I don’t want to believe it. My stepfather was the Thing, right? This awful, evil, barely human monster. It only makes sense that he would be the one to end my sister.

Yet …

Pamela sits down in front of me as I raise my gaze from the surface of the table, the fingers of my tattooed left hand tracing a word scratched deeply into the plastic. HAVOC, it says. Because I scratched it there just now, without any of the officers in the room noticing.

“Bernadette,” Pam says, smiling when she sees me. But not like she’s happy I’m there, more like she’s relishing the idea that I might be suffering. She must be able to see it in my face. “I’ve been telling that pretty young officer everything I know about your little gang.”

My turn to smile back. It isn’t easy, especially when I take in Pamela’s disheveled appearance. I’m so used to seeing her in designer clothing, flawless makeup, and coiffed hair that the person sitting in front of me might as well be a stranger. She looks younger this way, somehow. More vulnerable. I think again about her age-gap romance with my already married father.

“Were you and dad in love?” I ask, even though I could snarkily spit back that she doesn’t know shit about my ‘little gang’. I mean, that’d be true. She doesn’t. She doesn’t know a fucking thing about Havoc or me or even Heather—especially not Penelope. Nothing. Nothing at all. “I mean, he was married when you met, and so much older. That must’ve been hard.”

Pamela just stares back at me from emerald eyes, ones that I’m familiar with because I look in the goddamn mirror every single day and see her. The last name on my list. The very last motherfucking name.

“Are you an idiot, Bernadette?” is how she chooses to respond to that statement. She slams her hands down on the surface of the table and one of the guards calls out a warning. “I’m rotting in jail, and you’re here asking about me and your father?”