The nine of us end up at her grave together, studying her new headstone which suits the space so much more than the plain and austere shimmer of the obelisk. After we’ve laid our flowers down and said some frilly, fancy words that are more for us than for her, the boys excuse themselves and I sit down with Heather.

I pull her close and I tell her about Pam. Not all the worst parts because she isn’t quite ready for that. But I explain to her that Pam and Neil hurt Penelope, and that they’re both gone now. Both of her parents are gone.

She sits in silence for a long, long time.

“Are you mad that I waited so long to tell you?” I ask, and I wonder if she hadn’t already Googled their names and found out. We try to keep tabs on the girls’ internet activity, but like, fuck, it’s so easy for kids to find ways around that shit. She could’ve seen news stories or headlines from anywhere.

Those first few weeks after the raid, the boys kept her offline completely, until some of the buzz died down. But still … I wonder how much she really knows.

“I’m not mad,” she admits after a moment, sniffling as I hug her close and we look at Penelope’s final resting place together. “Because you were trying to keep me safe.” She looks over at me and I wonder if she knows how much I truly love her. I tell her all the time, but you can never say that sort of thing too much. I only wish I’d savored it each time Penelope said those three little words to me. I love you. “I still miss them,” she hazards after a moment. “Mom and Dad.”

“You can miss them if you want,” I tell her, giving her another squeeze. “There’s no rulebook for grief.”

So we sit there together, and she tells me all her best and favorite memories of Pam and Neil, and then she starts to cry again and I let her. I let her and I hold her, and then we say goodbye to Penelope and head home for movies and popcorn and hair-braiding that Aaron is getting better at but that Victor sucks at.

The girls attend Oak River Elementary; the boys and I build an empire; our love blossoms and amplifies and turns the entire world into a dream that I never, ever want to wake up from.

Five years later …

Vera and I stop by the same rachet ass coffee place that has no name, just a sign in the window that reads Coffee, and we take our drinks across the street to the newly created park funded by some of the inheritance money.

Shit, we meant what we said about staying here and improving the city. Already, Prescott High is thriving, lead by Breonna Keating and rife with fresh funding for structural improvements and iPads, new desks and staff members with proper degrees under their belts. There are grief counselors and tutors and after-school programs for teen mothers.

Because even if I quite literally saw my husband put bullets into the heads of five people last week during a meeting with an overzealous motorcycle club, we’re still community members, too. Really, we’re community members first and foremost: we just clean up the blood and the shit and the darkness that rolls in every now and again.

It isn’t in our nature to just sit back and relax, sip Prosecco out of fancy fluted glasses, and donate money here and there. No, we have to rule. We have to conquer. We need bloodshed and control.

And so, because there will always be an underground in every neighborhood, in every city, in every country, we hold the reins and guide the dark horse.

“Tattoo day?” Vera inquires after we finish our coffee and start walking again. I nod. Because it is. And it’s been too long. This is something that should’ve happened like, years ago.

“Tattoo day,” I confirm, glancing over at her. Her head is no longer shaved. Instead, she wears it in a glossy red wave down her back. Also, Vera only dates non-binary people and girls now. She says she’s done with men. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’d call her pansexual but really, she’s more of a pan-slut. Which, obviously, coming from me is a compliment. I don’t slut-shame.

“You sure you want to do it?” she asks me, glancing over and taking in my tatted knuckles. HAVOC stares back up at me when I follow her gaze, flexing and unflexing my fingers. In the past few years, I’ve added a few tattoos here and there. One says Penelope along the outside of my left thigh. One is a crown, inked into stark and mesmerizing detail on the back of my neck. There are others, too, more meaningless ones because not every tattoo has to mean something. That’s a lie. You are allowed to get pretty art for the simple sake of aesthetic beauty. “Get all their names carved into your skin?”

I lift my hand up for examination and she swats it away.

“That’s a gang tat, not a lovers’ tat,” she says dismissively, her pale eyes ringed in thick, traditional Prescott liner. “That will always mean something to you. I’m talking about the boys though. All five of them? Like, forever? Just you and them?”

“Just me and them,” I reply, because I’m not sure that Vera will understand if I try to explain how our relationship really works. It isn’t ‘just’ me and the boys. It’s us. We’re an us. A family. They are as intertwined with another as they are with me. It took me a while to see it, but once I did, I felt a sort of overall peace inside of me, that same peace that allowed me to relax when I thought my time had come.

Now that I’ve been there, now that I’ve seen death, I’m not afraid of it anymore.

“You know Scarlett Force, right?” I ask, and Vera rolls her eyes at me.

“Born and raised in Prescott, remember? Of course I know who Scarlett motherfucking Force is. She came to Stacey’s funeral, didn’t she?” Vera tosses her hair and adjusts her coat as we keep walking. As soon as we turn the corner onto the street where the tattoo shop—a place known only as Ink—waits, I see them.

Five boys in black, smoking cigarettes.

Or, I guess, now you could just call them men. They haven’t been boys in years. Shit, they weren’t even ‘boys’ during our senior year, were they? Just men. Just Havoc.

Aaron stands up from where he’s sitting as my chest tightens with that overflowing feeling, the one made up of beautiful things and happy dreams and hope. It feels like fireflies drifting through a sweet summer night or bubbles in a champagne bottle waiting to be opened in celebration.

“What about Scarlett Force?” Vera prompts me, and I reach up to rub at my nose to fight back a sniffle. Something about today feels emotional to me, even though it isn’t much different than any regular day.

“She once said, if you aren’t brave enough to risk mistakes, then you aren’t deserving of quiet triumphs.”

“And that means what, exactly?” Vera asks, but if she doesn’t get it, then she isn’t ready for it. So I just move forward and let Aaron sweep me up into his arms as if it’s been years. Really, it’s been an hour and a half, and we fucked in our custom-sized bed this morning, so I’m definitely being overdramatic.

But shit if he doesn’t smell like young love, roses and sandalwood. If his eyes aren’t the green-gold marriage of spring and autumn. His hair, chestnut with shimmers of red and gold, depending on the light.

“You’re here,” he says, his voice laced with a bit of dark wonder. Like, he can never quite believe that we made it this far, that we’re still together, that after everything we’ve been through we get to have this.

“I’m here,” I whisper as Vera makes a noise behind me, and Ashley comes tumbling out of the Camaro, shouting and bouncing around her as she tries to show off her favorite viral video. Vera swats her away, but she’s smiling, too, because she loves babysitting for us. Sometimes, when we go to pick Ashley up, and I see Vera staring at her girlfriend in the right light, I know that she’s thinking about Stacey.

“Alright, let’s get the fuck out of here and get some ice cream or something,” she tells Ashley as Heather and Kara lounge and strut and act all gross and fourteen. They don’t want or need a babysitter, but they’re also part of Havoc which comes with danger. So, while we’re at the tattoo shop, they can hang with Vera. You’d think the world was ending, but they’ll get over it.

“It’s far too cold for ice cream,” Heather warns her, and Vera makes a grumble of annoyance.

“Hot cocoa then. Or pizza. Or I don’t know, like books or something? You guys still like paper books?” Vera looks to me for confirmation, and I shrug. We can afford … anything now. Really, anything. Only, we don’t buy everything because we don’t need to buy happiness. We found it on our own, in a dark and quiet corner of the world where the police wouldn’t come and the people are poor and everyone calls us white trash but we wear it as a badge of pride.

Things could certainly have been worse. Truly, there are worse places. But for a while there, it was rough.

“Paper books are an institution,” Heather says, aghast and confident. Because she’s fourteen now and she knows fucking everything. “In a digital world, we all crave tactile experiences.”

Kara snorts at her as I roll my eyes.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I say, swatting her on the ass just before Victor pulls me into his arms and wraps his massive body around me. Heather stares at us for a minute before nodding and taking off after Stacey, like she is the one that delivered me to the boys rather than me delivering her to Vera.

After Vic found her in the woods that day, she’s been attached to him like the father she always should’ve had. A good one. A strong one.

As he always does, Vic smells of amber and musk, he’s big and warm and dominant and annoying and perfect. My soul mate with ebon eyes—one more time, ebon, ebon, ebon—and purple-dark hair and tattoos and a monster dick that belongs to one woman and one woman only.

“Let’s do this,” he purrs, licking up the side of my neck and making me shiver.

Oscar rolls his eyes, but he isn’t actually upset. He just likes to quip and pick and needle because it’s how he survived for so many years.

“Miss me?” I ask as he adjusts his glasses on his perfect nose, as I take in the ink crawling up his neck and over his hands. The way he looks at me, with eyes the color of gravestones and fog and full moons edged in starlight, tells me all that I need to know. He does. He did. He’s as obsessive as I am, as any of the other boys are.