“There must be a reason you and your partner were hanging around here,” Oscar deadpans, turning his attention over to Detective Constantine. Shit, I have no idea why I keep calling him ‘detective’. He’s obviously with the VGTF as well. I think about when we first met, and he was questioning me over Danny Ensbrook. Because of the GMP.

The FBI thinks the GMP took out the entire Charter Crew.

This could be a good turn of luck for us.

“We’re expecting the GMP to hit you hard-and-fast,” Sara explains, glancing over at the squad car with Pamela in the back seat. Nailing her for Neil’s murder … That’s such a Havoc move right there. What was it that Victor said to me at the boutique? “Poetic justice, personal choice, and wrongs made right.”

Perfection.

“We could protect you, Bernadette. All of you. If you wanted,” she continues when I don’t respond to her previous statement. She’s grooming me to be a snitch. Baiting me. I refuse to rise to the occasion, staring wordlessly back at her until she shakes her head and turns toward Callum instead. “Mr. Park, a word?” she asks, and he complies, moving over to speak to her on the driveway.

Me? I barely make it into the house before my head starts to spin and I get so dizzy that I can’t find my feet.

Surprisingly, it’s Oscar motherfucking Montauk who picks me up and carries me upstairs to the shower.

“You are in so much fucking trouble for making me watch that,” Vic growls out as we pass by, but I know he doesn’t mean it. I killed that. Pamela is in custody. Sara knows the GMP caused my miscarriage.

Oscar is … being nice?

We might just win this after all.

Stranger things have obviously happened.

Oscar Montauk

I put Bernadette in the bathtub and then crouch down beside it, laying my forearms along the side and resting my chin atop them. On the outside, I’m nothing if not calm, stoic even. On the inside, I’m shattering and cracking into a million tiny splinters. And every single one of them is aimed at the heart of the GMP.

How dare they do this to her, of all people … How dare they?! HOW FUCKING DARE THEY?!

“Penny for your thoughts,” Bernadette asks as I blink at her, still unmoving, my muscles locked and tense. God help the first person to cross me that isn’t family.

“Are you upset?” I ask, my voice like a stone wall. Why anyone would want to breach it is beyond me. But … I’ve said it before myself: blood in, blood out. There are certain things that cannot be undone.

Especially this, Oscar Montauk, you fool. Especially this.

My left hand twitches with the need to touch the side of her face, but I can’t quite seem to get myself to move. Maybe I’m afraid that if that happens, I won’t be able to control myself. What if my fingertips brush her soft face and I feel her sadness swirl through me like a storm? Then I’ll take as many guns as I can carry and do something that we’ll all regret.

My control is not absolute. You should ask fucking Victor for advice.

I pinch my mouth, and it occurs to me that Bernadette cannot read my goddamn thoughts. I scowl and spit and sneer, and that’s all she sees. She doesn’t know what goes on inside, how fucking conflicted I am. How twisted.

“Upset?” Bernie asks, taking off her grass-stained shirt with some long-gone fascist that used to be president on it. I abhor politics, one of the few remaining facets of modern-day life where common sense means nothing. The whole world is stupid as far as I’m concerned. All I want is this, me and Bernadette Savannah Blackbird and an eternity of quietly whispered things, fingertips tracing flesh, and sweet mouths. “About what?”

Her bloodied shorts come off next. She tosses them at me, and I catch them. Glancing down, I see ruby red color staining my fingertips. When I lift my gaze up, I see her scoot forward and turn the shower on, letting the hot water run over her as she sits naked in the bathtub.

It’s a moment like before, when she was on the toilet last night telling us about the pregnancy. I did nothing then. How could I? I have no idea what to do or how to behave in these sorts of situations. For fuck’s sake, my mother used to dye my hair as a child so that her husband wouldn’t suspect I wasn’t his biological kid; I’ve never stopped. Clearly, I have issues. More than anyone else in this fucked-up little family I’d imagine.

I raise a single brow. It’s the most expression I usually show that isn’t somehow related to disdain, carnal delight, or sarcasm.

“Don’t make me state the obvious,” I purr back, turning away so Bernadette can clean and reinsert her menstrual cup. She doesn’t seem to give a shit that I’m in here, watching with eyes that have already seen too much. My father might not have been the biological contributor to my DNA, but he certainly left his mark on me. He molded me into the monster I am, right at about the same time he put his gun to his temple and took his own life.

Sometimes, I swear to god I can hear the sound of his body hitting the ground. Thump. Over and over and over. Thump, thump, thump. I blink again and force my lips to smile. Bernadette is just staring right back at me, like she’s waiting for something.

“The miscarriage.” I start with that because it’s the most obvious and most pressing point. But what about the rest of it? What about the way her face changed before Pamela slapped her? What about the way her hands shook? “Your mother. How do you feel about that?”

“Do you think we can talk freely in here? Because I have theories about the GMP.” Bernie grabs that damned peach soap of hers and my hand snaps out, long, inked fingers curling around her wrist. It’s such a strange sight, to see my hand touching someone else’s skin. I can feel her pulse thundering in my hand, and I rub my thumb along the dancing heat of it.

A small, sharp gasp escapes Bernie’s throat, and I close my eyes in pleasure. When I bring her wrist to my mouth, she lets me take it. Carefully, gently, I uncurl some of my fingers, exposing an inked portion of her wrist.

There’s a small book tattooed here with a quill pin twirling above it. My mouth curves up sharply at one side. Ah, the clichéd tattoo of a dreamer. Nothing has ever looked so beautiful to me before. The thing with dreamers like this, they sometimes get the silly idea that they’re ordinary.

In reality, I’m drawn to this girl as a shooting star is drawn across the sky.

Some things cannot be undone.

This is one of them.

“Take, O take those lips away,” I whisper, kissing her pulse again. She tries to draw her arm away and my fingers wrap tight again, nails digging into her flesh. “That so sweetly were forsworn.”

“I think I care more for the miniscule cluster of cells I just lost than my mother ever did for me.” Bernadette stops talking and this time, when she tries to pull her arm away, I let her. I stand up. That old, familiar panic surges through me, but I tamp down on it; Bernadette is more important than any fear or hesitation that I might feel.

Four months ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve walked away, left her in here to cry. Or worse: not cry. Because emotions that stick around inside of you for too long, they rot. Trust me, I know better than anyone.

Two years ago, if we’d been here, doing this, I would’ve whispered awful things in her ear and I would’ve delighted in seeing her face darken with anger. Because that meant this strange hold we have on one another, this attraction that never goes away, that it could be broken somehow. Or at the very least, stretched. She might’ve walked away and known a life of ignorance and bliss.