I’m not sure if I could handle another place like that.

I’m leaving, even if that means I’m a coward. I have to. If I don’t, I’m pretty sure I’ll die here long before they kill me. Maybe I already am dead? Either way, I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t going to be around to protect you.

That’s okay though because I know you can protect yourself. And I know that if you just reach out and ask, those boys will protect you, too. All you have to do is ask, Bernie. Call Havoc. Just say it. That one word. Utter it. Then I’ll be gone and safe, and you’ll have an army to fight for you and Heather.

Just know that I love you to the moon and stars and back. I always have. I always will.

No matter what.

XoXo

Penelope

I drop the letter to my side, offering it up when Callum moves over and takes it from me. He shows it to Oscar before handing it off to Vic. Once we’ve all read it, Victor hands it back to me and I slip the page into the envelope. Bernie, please, I think, praying harder than I’ve ever prayed. I’m not religious, but I still do it because I don’t know what else to do.

We’ve done everything we could to keep her safe. Somehow, we failed. Somehow, in the end, it didn’t matter because she was willing to sacrifice herself to save any one of us. Hael blames himself, but it wouldn’t have mattered who it was because Bernadette knew what she wanted—or maybe even felt she needed—to do.

The pair of swinging doors opposite the waiting area open, and the surgeon we met with earlier walks out. She pulls her mask down, and I swear that I can tell everything that’s happened based on the expression on her face.

Please no. Please, please, please. Dark god or goddess or benevolent universal energy, please don’t take my first and only love from me. Please. We’ll all break. Havoc will cease to exist. It’ll be the end of everything good and true in our lives.

“Victor Channing?” she calls out, because Victor is Bernadette’s legal husband. That’ll kill me if that’s how we end it all, with his ring on her finger and the rest of us waiting with bated breath. I want her to know that she doesn’t have to choose, that she never has to choose. Because we’re blood in, blood out. Havoc. Forever. Always.

Vic stands up from the chair, the wood creaking as he lifts his heavy body. I don’t turn back to look at him, waiting for the rubber squeak of his boots against the linoleum. He pauses beside me, on my right. Hael is on my left. Oscar and Callum wait behind us.

“I’m Vic Channing,” is all he manages to get out. His hands are shaking by his sides. The unshakeable Victor Channing. He’s trembling so badly that I wonder if he doesn’t need medical attention. My eyes slide closed, and I struggle to breathe.

If Bernadette is dead …

Then Havoc is dead.

The letter of her name might not be in the acronym, but she is Havoc. She always has been. We live and die by the cadence of her breath. We exist as rhythm and pulse to her heartbeat.

“Mr. Channing …” the surgeon begins.

Tick, tock.

I can hear the old-fashioned clock on the wall.

It swallows up the words that follow, and I tumble into an emotional rabbit hole.

Down, down, down, and even deeper still until I was down too deep to swim, and the water filled my lungs, and then … I had my epiphany.

Two months later …

Getting three little girls dressed for a birthday party is a skill I never imagined I’d have in my wheelhouse.

“My hair looks weird,” Heather tells me, standing in front of a mirror with a fine pink mist covering her slicked-back brunette hair. “In a good way. I like it.” She turns around to grin at me as I plant my hands on my hips and smile down at her.

Not bad for an eighteen-year-old guy, huh?

“I do my fucking best,” I say, shaking my head as I glance over at Kara. She’s stacking bracelets on her left arm, a rainbow of rubber ones that she’s collected from various school events and charity donations. Anytime she sees an offering near a checkout counter, she makes me donate the dollar or whatever so she can get one. Or so she says. Secretly, I think she just likes the idea of helping people. “Let’s hurry up. These Oak River people are nuts.”

Not sure how I feel about the girls going to some fancy-ass mansion in Oak Park for a party, but I guess I’ll be there as a chaperone, so it doesn’t matter. We’ll stay for a few hours and then GTFO.

“Do my hair like Bernie’s,” Ashley says, handing me a can of red hair dye. It’s the spray-on kind that only lasts for like, a day, but the girls are obsessed with it. My heart skips a beat at the sound of Bernie’s name, and my throat gets all tight and hot the way it does when I think about her. That’s how it’s always been for me, that physical manifestation of being separated.

I felt like this during sophomore year when I betrayed the love of my life, my best friend, and my favorite person in the whole goddamn world for all the right reasons. To give her a chance. To send her away from Prescott. From Havoc and all of our fucking violence.

And, like in the most fucked-up and horrible way possible, my prophecies and my fears and my worries all came true.

I take the end of Ashley’s chestnut-colored hair and lay it over the back of the chair she’s sitting on. There’s a towel covering the chair, too, keeping the fine red mist away from the furniture while I spray.

Thinking about Bernadette … about her being shot … about her dying … that kills me.

“Okay, all done,” I choke out, swiping a hand over my face as Ashley leaps up from the chair and races over to the mirror where Heather’s still scoping out her pink locks—a color she attributes to Penelope since, apparently, she personally despises it. I sit down heavily in one of the other chairs while we wait for Kara to finish piling on the bracelets from her extensive collection.

The sliding glass doors open behind me and Hael steps in.

Our eyes meet, and I wonder if he can’t sense what I’m thinking about. His guilt runs deep, but we all know that it wasn’t his fault. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to convince him of that fact, but we’ll get there.

“You’re running like, seriously fucking late,” he says, looking around the house like he’s going to miss it. I will, too, in a strange way. But I’ll also be relieved to start fresh somewhere else. Anyway, we’ve got some time to kill beforehand. We don’t move for a couple of months. “Do you want me to drive? Since, you know, you drive like a fucking grandma.”

“Fuck you,” I fire back, toying with my phone for a minute. “We could probably get Wesley’s on the way back?” Even though we’ve graduated, and the diner is sort of a Prescott High hotspot, I think we can get away with going there indefinitely. After all, we’re Prescott royalty, aren’t we? “Do you want to see if everyone else is interested in going?”

“Roger that,” Hael says, slipping back outside to the smell of weed. It’s our own strain—Havoc at Prescott High—and it’s fucking delicious. I’d smoke some if I wasn’t about to drive three little girls to a party.

My mouth softens, thinking about Bernadette in her pink and white Cadillac Eldorado, hair billowing in the wind. I exhale sharply just before the back door opens and Hael reemerges with Victor, Callum, and Oscar at his back.

“If you’re all going to Wesley’s, then I’m going,” is what Vic says as he breezes past, and I sigh. We’re out of the woods as far as the GMP goes—at least that’s how it appears with their infighting and power struggles up in Portland—and we’re not being tailed by the VGTF anymore, but Vic is a good leader and he keeps us on our toes, reminds us that we need caution around every corner.

Especially after what happened to Bernie.

Pain seizes me, and I have to brace myself on the table to remember how to breathe. Bernie, lying prone on the ground, bloody bubbles at her lips, the surgeon coming out and removing the mask from her face …

I look back up as Ashley grabs onto my arm.

“Let’s go!” she whines as Oscar gives her a patronizing look and Cal shrugs into a hoodie. Even if Vic is taking his bike, we’ll need at least the Bronco and the Camaro. Or, I guess, we could take the Caddy …

“Alright, alright.” I encourage Kara and Ashley out the front door and then pause beside Heather as she checks her hair in the mirror one last time. A smile teases the edges of my mouth, made out of bitterness mixed with joy. How can things be so bad one minute, and then so good the next? How could Bernadette have been shot? How could she have died?

I exhale again, squeezing my hands into fists at my sides and then forcing myself to relax them.

“You ready now?” I ask as Heather finally turns back to me. She nods, and I shoo her ass right out the door, too, heading up the stairs to open the door to my bedroom—a place so inextricably entwined with memories of Bernadette that I could never see it and not think of her.

Never.

Not in a million years …

Bernadette Blackbird

Graduation day …

There are so many ways to end a story like mine. If I were to try, I would do it like this.

Born of vengeance and hardened by hate

Every act of revenge a cry for love

Desperate to keep believing

Kisses that scorch my skin and leave forever marks

A desperate sort of havoc, a broken chaos, a mayhem that crawls beneath your skin and makes you bleed

Anarchy that ensues inside a twisted heart

Only true victory comes with acceptance and mournful goodbyes

Only true victory comes with love

I die that day. I do. Hard for me to believe it, too. Especially the peaceful part. Because after everything I’ve been through, I assumed that when I finally lost control of my body, I would find myself on a rapid descent to some sort of hellish existence. Instead, all I feel is joy because I made those last few moments count. I smile because I know my boys are there with me. It seems too soon to say goodbye, but some part of me understands that I’ll see them again, somewhere, sometime, someplace.