“Fine,” I say, but they’re bleeding a little. I mean, he did throw me into a wall.

Vic grunts and grabs an extra hoodie from a hook near the door, chucking it at me the same way I chucked my dirty jeans at him, and then we head outside to his bike. I have to hide a small grimace when I straddle it, that ache between my thighs burning now that the adrenaline of the moment has faded.

Neither of us says a word until we arrive back at the high school, parking a block away and walking back.

Hael meets us out front.

Must be lunchtime. Seniors are the only ones allowed off-campus during lunch. Either that, or the Havoc Boys have paid off the new security guard to look the other way when they break the rules, the same way they did the last one.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Hael demands, sliding his palms over his red hair, muscles in his inked arms bunching with the motion. “Shit is going down. Those Ensbrook and Charter fuckers are all over our dicks.”

“I told you to wait until I got back,” Vic snaps, ice-cold, iron-clad.

Fuck, I hate him.

And yet … when I close my eyes, I can feel him buried inside of me, and that heat I work so hard to fight back begins to creep into every single cell.

Luckily, Hael is too flustered to notice either of our strange behavior, or the fact that I’m wearing Victor’s gym shorts. His goddamn name is written across one leg in Sharpie—a school requirement since we have so many problems with theft.

“What happened?” Vic demands as we start toward the front steps where Oscar, Callum, and Aaron are waiting. Unlike Hael, Aaron notices the shorts right away, and his gaze flicks up to my face and the slightly damp tips of my hair.

His mouth purses into a thin, hard line.

“The Charter crew won’t let us near Billie or Kali,” Callum says, his voice that rough, broken sound as he flips his hood back, revealing mussed-up blond hair. “And they’re spreading rumors about Bernadette.” He looks at me with bright blue eyes ringed in thick liner, and then turns his attention over his shoulder as the front doors of Prescott High open and Mitch, Logan, Kyler, Danny, and Timmy step out. Two Charter boys—Mitch and Logan—and the three Ensbrook brothers. Two families, all trash.

My lip curls.

“What kind of rumors?” Vic asks, as if he hasn’t noticed the horde of assholes descending the steps toward us.

“That she fucks her stepfather. That she’s joined us in order to rat our crimes out to him.” Oscar says all of this without skipping a beat, his gray eyes raking my body from head to toe. I can tell right away that he knows about me and Vic in an instant. Unlike Aaron, he isn’t surprised, and he doesn’t care. I also note that he’s wearing his original glasses again, like maybe the ones he wore to deal with Don were throwaways, so they couldn’t be identified.

I open my mouth to defend myself, but Vic is already sweeping past the other Havoc Boys to face off against Mitch—the apparent leader of this new rebel group. For three years, Havoc has ruled these halls with an iron fist. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing as Billie and Kali bring up the rear of their little team.

“What did Kali pay you to get her dirty work done?” I whisper loud enough that only Aaron can hear, standing on my right side with his teeth gritted, and his hands curled into fists at his sides. He barely slides those gold-green eyes of his over to me, the angry scowl on his face twisting down into a frown.

“She betrayed every person she knows to us, including her cousin who was fucking a well-known local judge.” Aaron exhales and closes his eyes for a moment. He acts like I’ve just taken a sledgehammer to his skull. “Kali’s cousin was pissed off at us for a turf war we got into with her brother at Fuller High, and sicced the court system on me. I barely managed to keep the girls from ending up in foster care.”

My brows go up, and I feel this sharp ache inside my chest as I turn back toward the scene in front of me.

“Do you think this is a game?” Vic asks as I let my eyes wander the front of the school, searching for any of the on-campus cops. There are none in sight. So somebody paid them to look the other way. Could’ve been Havoc, or maybe their newfound enemies. “Your girl cut mine up with a knife.”

Mine.

That word does all sorts of strange things to me. Rage fills me in this unstoppable inferno, and I find myself stepping toward Callum. I haven’t forgotten that he keeps a knife in his pocket. He stiffens up slightly when my hand dips into the front pocket of his hoodie, but he doesn’t stop me as I draw it out, sidling up beside Vic.

His dark gaze briefly flicks to mine, but he quickly returns his attention to Mitch.

“What’s your point? And why are you suddenly so protective of Bernadette Blackbird.” Mitch scoffs my name like I’m worth less than dog shit. “Didn’t you torture the shit out of her during sophomore year? Is that your thing, Bernadette, to fuck the people that treat you like crap? Must be why you like your pedo stepdaddy so much.”

Without thinking, I find myself darting forward, the knife slipping from inside my palm. Nobody expects me to move, so I find little resistance when I bounce up the steps. Swear to god, there’s nothing going on inside my head when I slam the blade into Kali’s shoulder. She lets out a scream as the metal sinks in, and blood blooms bright on her pale skin.

In a split-second, the world erupts into chaos. Kyler comes at me, Callum skirts around the side and tackles him. Billie grabs Kali as she collapses back, but I’m already retreating, stumbling down the steps as the two groups clash.

It only lasts a minute or two, but by then there are crowds of students watching from the first and second floor windows of the school, cheering on one side or the other. The entire campus security staff as well as our personal pair of cops appear and a few, brave teachers approach, tearing the two sides apart.

“Oh, honey,” Ms. Keating says as she kneels down beside Kali and pulls out her phone, dialing up 911. Me, I’m just standing there as the rain starts to come down on top of us in thick sheets.

“Who did this?” Principal Vaughn roars as the boys walk off the fight on opposite sides of the brick walkway. He’s pointing at Kali who’s moaning and milking the moment for all it’s worth. She’s no more injured than I am, but I have a feeling that things are not going to go as well for me as they did for her. She is not above tossing me to the administration for punishment.

I open my mouth to admit to it before Kali can get the satisfaction, when I hear Hael’s voice.

“I did—” he starts, but Aaron’s own words drown him out.

“It was me,” he announces, and our eyes meet across the rainy courtyard. “It’s my knife.”

The cops cuff him quick and take him away in the back of a squad car while the rest of us are shuffled into Mr. Vaughn’s office.

With one student on their way to juvie, one on the way to the hospital, and eleven more crowded inside the narrow space, our corrupt asshole of a principal doesn’t have much choice but to assign us all two days of suspension starting tomorrow, followed by two weeks detention, and then cut us loose.

Prescott High cannot afford to expel thirteen students and lose all that state funding.

Besides, I know Principal Vaughn is still actively recruiting girls for his little side project.