But this … it’s nothing but passion and poison.

I reach over my shoulder and grab a fistful of my shirt, lifting it over my head and tossing it aside. I reach my right hand back and flick off the lights. Every movement that I make hurts; there is no part of me that isn’t terrified right now. Yet, I’ve been letting this one fear above all others consume me, and I can’t let it do that anymore. Not when Bernadette needs me the way she does.

“What are you doing?” Bernie asks as I strip off my pants and step into the tub, sliding my naked body around hers. I’ve always wondered what the point of these oversized tubs was. Now I know. “Oscar …” she starts, reaching down and curling her fingers through mine. I hiss at the sensation, but I don’t pull away. The heat of her is incinerating.

“I have no idea,” I say, my lips pressed against the side of her neck. There’s a hickey there. I stare at the shape of it and imagine that it feels familiar. I left that there. I lift my eyes up to the faucet as it drips into the tub. She’s finally put the plug in, and it’s filling with water that feels lukewarm in comparison to her skin. “This is all new to me. You seem to be okay with it though. Why don’t you tell me?”

She stays where she is for a minute and then leans back into me.

After a minute, I swear I can feel her smiling. I can certainly hear it when she speaks.

“And those eyes, the break of day,” she murmurs, the peach soap floating in the tub and bumping up against my hand as it stays banded across her belly. “Lights that do mislead the morn.”

My own mouth tilts into an uncomfortable sort of smile.

We should not be smiling.

Our school was shot up.

This girl is suffering.

We could very well die before we graduate.

It’s something that I’ve always feared. In that moment, I swear I can feel it, this pall that falls over us both like the shadow of something morbid creeping its way in. My eyes close and I squeeze her even tighter.

That’s why I’m smiling.

Because you’ll only know true regret when it’s too late. I want to smile now, just in case. Just in case one of us doesn’t make it out of this. Just in case neither of us does.

“Do you think broken people fit together just right sometimes?” she asks absently, her hair tickling my bare chest. My cock is rock-solid, but that’s mostly irritating to me. I can’t help the blood that rushes to it every time I see Bernadette, but now is definitely not the time. She needs rest and respect, not a man with so little self-control that he was afraid to fuck because he might kill. “Like, their jagged edges fit together so they don’t feel so broken anymore?”

I pause, listening to her swirl her finger in the water.

“At least when I’m with you, I don’t crave death the way I do when I’m alone.” I stroke my fingers gently down her belly, wondering absently what I would think if she were still pregnant. Mostly, I think, I would feel sorry for her. Because she doesn’t want a baby. She shouldn’t want any of us. But she’s got us. And I, I would be inappropriately thrilled, almost to the point of being obscene. It’s why I always ask about it. Because I want to know. Because I’m desperate to do something awful and embrace my selfishness. Only I don’t. Not to Bernadette. “You don’t deserve the burden, but there it is. I’ll try my best to lighten the load.”

“It doesn’t feel like a burden to me.” Bernadette lifts my hand to her lips and kisses my wet knuckles. I shudder, my skin prickling with goose bumps, but that delicious heat swirls through me and I close my eyes again, savoring the feel of it.

“Then you have stronger shoulders than most.” I lift my hand up and cup her chin, using the feel of her to see when my eyes can make out only the deepest shadows of the bathroom. My mouth finds hers easily, even in the pitch-black. It may as well be drawn there. I couldn’t be anymore enamored than if I’d been summoned, an awful demon from the ugliest depths of the world. And here I am, in all my hideous glory. “But my kisses bring again,” I whisper against her mouth, pushing her face back just a bit when she tries to kiss me. “Bring again—” I move our lips together but only enough to burn; there’s no relief in that kiss. It just turns our desperation for one another up to dangerous levels. “Seals of love, but seal’d in vain.” Another sweetly agonizing brush of lips. It almost hurts now. I’m trembling. “Seal’d in vain.”

I kiss her again, letting my tongue delve deep, my fingers tighten on her chin. She makes a noise that’s caught somewhere between pleasure and pain. I’m kissing her just right, but I’m holding her too hard. And I can’t seem to make myself stop.

After a moment, I pull back and simultaneously release her so roughly that she cries out. I stand up out of the bath and step onto the mat, dripping water everywhere. You’re being too subtle, Oscar. She can’t read your mind, remember? Be a fucking man and spell it out so that she’ll know, so that she’ll always understand the truth behind everything you do.

“All I mean to say, Bernadette,” I begin, and I know that if I hesitate too long in here, I won’t be able to control myself. The GMP beat the baby out of my mate. My jaw clenches and my hands curl into fists, nails digging bloody crescents into my palm. “Is that I’m in love with you.” I pause, finding that I’ve abruptly stopped breathing. It takes me a moment to remember how, and I let out a long, deep exhale. “Desperately so.”

I step into the hallway and slam the bathroom door behind me.

Bernadette Blackbird

I end up sitting on the edge of Aaron’s bed, a hot water bottle pressed against my belly, hands trembling as I look through the pictures that the boys saved for me. My eyes are so wet that I could cure drought, chase away the harsh sands and welcome fresh green growth from the earth.

“Penelope,” I whisper, fingers holding aloft a picture of me, Pen, Pam, and our father. The weirdest part about this picture is that we’re all still smiling in it—even Pam. When did she come to hate us? It doesn’t feel like she did before, but maybe it was the money that made her happy, softened her sharper edges.

I stand up, clutching my hot water bottle and groaning. I’m wearing my own panties today, my own shirt. I just wanted to wear my own things for a minute. I just wanted to be alone for two. “I’m in love with you. Desperately so.”

Why did Oscar have to tell me he loves me in a way that sounds so similar to the word goodbye? Because that’s all I heard when he said that to me: I love you so much but goodbye. He’s worried about us and the GMP, the VGTF, the world. He isn’t as sure as he’s always seemed about everything.

I used to think that Havoc was untouchable, but now that I’m on the inside, I can see it.

We are all—as Oscar might say—desperately human.

But it’s the inhuman parts of us, all the ugliest, most hideous, most bloodied parts, that will save us in the end.

I kneel down beside Penelope’s box and dig furiously through it, pulling out old math assignments, an essay about—of all things—Shakespeare (namely that the fucker was likely a plagiarist of George North), until I find a bunch of pages with thin pink lines printed on the paper. I recognize these pages as coming from her journal.