He muttered, “Fucking dumbass,” and slammed the door behind him.
I stared after him, wide-eyed.
“Is he—?”
“An asshole?” Havoc finished. “Yeah. Don’t worry. He barks louder than he bites.”
“Are you two…?” I ventured.
She exhaled, brushing past me. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”
But I caught the twitch in her mouth, the soft glance she gave the door before it closed.
Inside, it was warm and inviting. Lived-in. It smelled like cedar and smoke. There was sparse furniture, and a fire burned low in a stone hearth. Havoc tossed her jacket onto a hook and stood there for a second before turning to me.
“When Halo comes back—” I started.
She cut me off. “He’s not.”
The words didn’t register at first. Then they settled in, a block of ice sliding into my gut.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she said. “He asked me to disappear you. To keep you safe. You think he’d ask that if he had any plans to walk away alive? That’s end-of-life measures. He knew he couldn’t come back to make sure you were okay.”
My throat felt too tight to answer. The way she spoke about him like it was inevitable, like it was already over, made me want to scream. Didn’t she love him? Didn’t she care? But then I looked at her again and understood: people like Havoc and Halo and Ghost didn’t get the luxury of softness. They’d grown up in a world where feelings were liabilities, where survival meant turning grief into steel. Her distance wasn’t apathy… it was armor.
“He was always the one trying to save everyone,” Havoc added, softer now, “even when he was a kid. But some things… some people can’t be saved. Sometimes that person is yourself. He knew that.”
Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked them back, refusing to let her see me break. Not here. Not now. Havoc didn’t say anything else. She didn’t offer comfort. She just turned and walked deeper into the house, and I followed. Because what else was there to do?
I sat in the bedroom she had offered me for several minutes as the smell of garlic and eggs wafted through the house. I realized how hungry I was… I couldn’t remember my last decent meal. Havoc came down the hall, popping her head into the room. She was wearing a black tank top now and a pair of jeans, and she looked remarkably more relaxed.
“Dinner’s ready,” she said, looking me up and down once. “It’s breakfast food, hope that’s okay.”
I nodded that it was, but it wasn’t. Even that reminded me of Halo in a painful way.
When I entered the main room again, Ghost was hunched over the stove with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows like the heat couldn’t touch him. The pan sizzled violently as he slammed a spatula into it as though it had personally offended him.
“Who the hell taught you to cook?” Havoc asked from across the room, collapsing on the couch and kicking her feet up on the arm rest.
“Your mom,” he shot back without turning around.
“My mom’s dead.”
“Yeah, well she was probably a shitty cook too.”
Havoc scoffed and leaned back in the chair.
I watched from my seat at the far side of a round kitchen table. These two traded barbs like other people breathed. Still, something in their rhythm wasn't just venom. It was familiar, maybe evenintimate. It felt like something that had been simmering for a long, long time.
“Don’t poison it,” Havoc warned, nodding toward the food.
“If I wanted to kill you,” Ghost said, setting down three mismatched plates, “you’d already be in the fucking dirt. Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”
“Aw,” she said with a grin. “Youdothink about me.”
He gave her the finger and walked off to grab silverware.
