She hung her wet coat on the hanger on the inside of the door, slipping off her boots—yes, the girl wore rainboots over her leggings. Mel really did prepare for the weather. I felt like a helpless noob beside her.
“It’s raining cats and dogs out there,” I mused, suddenly wondering where the hell that weird saying came from. If it really rained cats and dogs, I doubted everyone would be in such a rush to get inside…unless those cats and dogs were vicious or something.
“Yeah,” Mel said, shooting a glance at me. “You must’ve missed it.”
“By literally seconds.”
She chuckled, a soft sound, a sound that, if the wind blew past, would carry it away. Such a light sound, it was ridiculous. How could a girl like her and a girl like me ever be friends? We were opposites; where she was soft and feathery, I was loud and boisterous. Where she was kind and gentle, I was a brute, never knowing when to stop. Opposites on the spectrum of personalities. She was no Ash, that’s for sure.
But…maybe that was a good thing.
“You’re lucky then,” Mel said. “It’s supposed to be bad all weekend, I think.”
Well, shit. The library was on the opposite side of campus; there was no way I was going to walk all that way in the pouring rain just to work on some papers. I could use Mel’s computer, but I knew she spent most of her free time on it, so I hated bugging her.
“That sucks,” I muttered.
Mel dropped her bag near her desk, tossing me a look. Her blonde pixie cut was less and less a pixie cut with each passing day. If she was trying to grow it out, she needed to get it cut to re-frame her face or something. Right now she was looking a little ratty. Not that I could talk, because my hair was a mess ninety-nine percent of the time.
“Why?” she asked.
“I planned on spending most of it at the library, catching up on stuff.”
“You know you can always use my laptop—”
I nodded. “I know, but I’m sure you have stuff you need to work on too, and I don’t want to make you late on anything you have to do.” If someone was going to get shitty grades because they’d procrastinated, it’d be me.
“Kelsey, you know I always have my stuff done weeks ahead of time,” Mel said, telling me nothing but the truth. “I practically start my term papers the moment they’re assigned. If you need to use my laptop, go ahead. I really don’t mind.” This was the pushiest she’d gotten about it, and I wondered why.
Still, I didn’t want to overstep. “It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll just borrow your raincoat instead.” And look like a total dweeb, but that was better than sitting in the library soaking wet while earning the side-eye from everyone else there because I looked like a drowned rat.
Mel managed a smile, though I didn’t believe it for a second. “If that’s what you want.”
I nodded, not saying anything else as I got out my phone. Mel went to turn the TV on, keeping the volume low. I scrolled through all the social media sites I was on; no updates on Ash, not that I was expecting much. I’d told her that I’d made it back here safely, and that was probably all I would get until winter break.
God, that felt like so far away.
The night passed, the minutes feeling like hours and the hours feeling like eternities. Time itself seemed to not care how miserable I was, dragging it out as long as it possibly could. By the time Mel and I were both ready for bed, I’d already ruminated so fucking much about the earlier encounter with Levi that I hated myself about ten times more than I did yesterday.
Whispering to his back that I loved him. What a stupid move. Those words…those words should never see the light of day again.
My head hit my pillow, my eyes slowly closing out the dark room around me. Mel had some weird superpower that she could fall asleep instantly—though she complained she was still tired all the time, which I totally did not understand—but me? I lay there, wide awake, locked in my head for what felt like hours, and then when I went to glance at my phone’s clock, I usually found it had only been some ridiculously short time, like thirty minutes or something.
Some days I really hated being me, if you couldn’t notice.
Sometime during the night, I turned on my side, about to internally whine—though I promptly forgot what exactly I was going to whine about—when I realized that I wasn’t where I thought I was. Not anymore, at least.
Where did I think I was? My dorm room, with Mel’s bed a few feet away.
You want to know where the hell I was? My freaking bed. As in, my bed at home. What the…
I abruptly sat up, looking all around me. I couldn’t remember exactly what I was doing before this moment, but I knew I shouldn’t be here. I should be at SCC or something, right? Yeah, yeah. I shouldn’t be here at all. Silly me. What was I thinking?
Flipping the covers off me, my bare feet hit the carpet below, and I tiptoed out of the dark bedroom I’d spent so many years growing up in. My hand reached for the knob, and the moment I pulled the door open, the world around me changed. I stepped from my childhood bedroom to the halls of a frat party.
It wasn’t even a frat house I wanted to be at. It was a vaguely familiar house, with people whose faces were all smeared and blurry. I didn’t recognize them, but I knew enough to go up the steps. My feet took two at a time, and I found only one door open upstairs; the rest were shut, the lights off. The light from the open door flooded the space, and I stepped around it to view an empty bathroom.
My stomach immediately dropped, and I wanted to be sick. I didn’t want to go in there, didn’t want to step a single foot into that bathroom, and yet a slurred voice behind me spoke, “I’m ready whenever you are.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned around, spotting a tall, muscled guy in a black and red vampire cape. His hair was black, his eyes a vivid green. His face was the kind of face you’d die for, but it did nothing for me, because he wasn’t Levi.
“Excuse me?” I could barely hiss out the words.
The man grabbed me by the wrist and started dragging me to the bathroom, pushing my stomach against the vanity as I felt him fumble with my clothes. My fingers gripped the edges of the counter, and I wanted to stop this. I needed…I needed something I could never have.
I needed Levi.
“I don’t want this,” I whispered, but it was too late. The man already had his pants down; I could feel his hardness pressing against my backside. He was now trying to help me out of my own pants, and I was paralyzed, mortified, frozen in disgust of myself, of what I was going to do.
This…this was a nightmare. A nightmare of epic proportions.
It was the moment when his hands managed to pull my pants down that I pushed myself off the vanity, having enough. I grabbed the waistline of my pants, hiking them back up as I whirled on the guy. I opened my mouth to tell him off, to tell him something along the lines of fuck you and maybe a knee to the groin, but someone stood in the hallway, watching us.
My first thought, strangely, was Ash…but it wasn’t Ash. It was the one person who I never wanted to see me with another guy.
Fucking Levi. The man just had a habit of popping up wherever he shouldn’t be, didn’t he? It was like magic.
Levi’s strong body wore a dark blue t-shirt, splattered with some design, and dark jeans that hugged his impressive figure like a second skin. He looked drop-dead gorgeous, so very lick-able—only his eyes, normally a crisp, clear blue that made me feel warm all over, were so very cold. As cold as the arctic, as cool as ice. They made me shiver and quickly step away from the guy behind me.
“Levi,” I started, reaching for him, but it was no use. He was angry. Too angry. He wouldn’t listen to reason.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Levi asked, cocking his brown-haired head, giving me the worst look I’d ever imagine on his face. “Who the fuck do you think you are, bouncing from guy to guy like that?” Suddenly we weren’t at the frat house; we were on a basketball court in the middle of the day, the
sunlight harsh overhead. “You made me care about you, and it was all a lie.”
I couldn’t argue with him, because some people you could never win an argument against. Some people, even when faced with facts, refused to acknowledge their wrongness. It’s why most people were so annoying to be around these days. The internet and the general state of society fostered stupidity, and I…I’d been ridiculously stupid.
“I never lied to you,” I said, hardly sounding like myself. That was the thing about Levi; he made me feel all different kinds of conflicted. He made me want things I never wanted before. A boyfriend. Love. A steady happiness that came with knowing another soul inside and out.
Levi’s name was written in the stars with mine, but you had to know what they said about star-crossed lovers…their stories were tragedies.
I didn’t want our story to end like that, but I didn’t know how to fight for a better ending, not with my mistakes. Not with what I did. And judging the look on Levi’s face, he was utterly done with me.
“I knew better than to trust you,” Levi spoke, his hands on his sides, a basketball suddenly in his grip. “I never should’ve looked at you twice, Kelsey. You were nothing but a mistake from the beginning.”
Just when I thought my heart could not break any more, it went and proved me wrong, cracking in new places. Those were words I’d told him, words that somehow rang true, but still I hated hearing them.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Sometimes sorry isn’t enough.” Levi said nothing else, turning towards the hoop that stood fifteen feet back, bending his knees to make a shot.
I opened my mouth to say more, not like anything I could’ve said would fix this terrible situation, but it was that moment that the dream faded around me and I woke up, sweating in my bed.
My heart raced in my chest, and I felt anxious, immediately uneasy. That dream was more like a nightmare. Honestly, the only thing worse than Ash seeing us together would’ve been Levi seeing it. The little racing box in my chest clenched, and I knew I’d hurt him. I’d hurt him, which was something I never wanted to do.
It wasn’t like I was a bitch on purpose. Okay, sometimes, yes, I pushed people away purposefully by being bitchy, but…I didn’t want to actually hurt him. I wasn’t like him, not like Dean. They might’ve played with Mel’s heart last year, but I wasn’t like that. Kelsey Yates was always up for fun, that was my motto. SCC showed me that sometimes fun wasn’t the answer.
Life was more complicated than I thought.
With a groggy mind, I knew I couldn’t stay here. I had to get up, do something. I had to see him. Had to try to…I didn’t know. Do something? At this point, there wasn’t much left to do, but I could not just lay in bed and lose myself in my thoughts.
I ended up grabbing a hoodie and sliding my shoes on, and with my phone and my key in my hoodie’s pocket, I was out the door as quietly as I could. I had one destination on my mind. It was probably a bad idea, but when the hell did I ever have good ideas?
Never, the answer would be never.
The closer my feet dragged me towards the Greek houses at the other end of campus, the more I felt conflicted. I once thought Levi was hot and cold, but you know what? So was I. I was just as hot and cold as he was, as fickle, maybe even more so. Maybe I was worse simply because I was me.
The only lights that were on were the light poles erected beside the sidewalks on campus. I heard no sounds, not even a rustling breeze. The night sky was clear, allowing me to gaze up at the moon and the stars sparkling around it. Its craters were grayer than the rest of it, its partial-circle almost ominous, but still beautiful.
I made it to the Greek houses, and I walked along until I found Sigma Chi’s. I stood in front of it for a few moments, noting that all of the lights were off. No parties tonight; it was a Thursday night…or was it technically Friday morning? Either way, the world was almost too quiet.
Me? My thoughts raced loudly enough, I didn’t need to hear anything else.
I didn’t go up to the front door, didn’t knock. I didn’t even text him or call him. What the hell would I say if I did? What if I found him with another girl up there? I couldn’t even imagine…couldn’t picture how that would make me feel. Even worse, probably, and I thought feeling worse was impossible.
The mental picture of Levi holding another girl in his arms, even if it was just for the night, just a meaningless hookup, made my stomach churn in revulsion and jealousy. I could imagine how Levi felt when I told him about what I did, and I hated that I made him feel that way. For the first time in my life, I hated the fact that I pushed him away.
If you pushed hard enough, you could eventually break even a brick wall. Levi probably thought himself a brick wall, but me? I was stubborn beyond all belief, and I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t need anybody, that I was fine with who I was.
What a lie.
I was the biggest liar out of us all.
No, I couldn’t go inside that house. Plus, what if I ran into Dean, the fuckboy of all fuckboys? No, no. I couldn’t…but neither could I simply turn around and walk back to my dorm, either.
I ended up circling the house, gazing up through the darkness at its third level, where I knew Levi’s room was. Hugging the outer walls of the house, I planted myself in the weed-covered flowerbed. Still a bit wet from the recent rain, but I didn’t care about a wet ass. It was uncomfortable, yeah, but I deserved that and more.
“Levi,” I whispered his name as I slowly reclined my back on the house, “I’m sorry.”
But, like dream Levi said, sometimes sorry wasn’t enough.
Chapter Six – Levi
I was up for hours before I actually got up, shuffling my way across the hall and getting in the shower. Then I stood in the shower for…well, a very long time, trying to forget everything. It would be easier that way, but minds didn’t work like that. You couldn’t just snap your fingers and forget what you wanted to forget.
If only it was that simple.
After my shower, I threw on whatever clothes I got my hands on first in my room, then headed down the stairs. My intent was to grab some cereal, even though I wasn’t really hungry, but there was a pair of guys in my way. They stood near the fridge, near the cabinet where the cereal was kept, talking to each other. Tom and Grady. Tom, I saw, held onto something.
I didn’t want to look at fucking Grady, because now I knew that Kelsey had been serious that night. She would’ve hooked up with Grady in his car if I wasn’t there to stop her. She was…ugh, she drove me crazy, and I wished she didn’t hold such power over me.
Still.
She still held power over me.
When she told me she’d hooked up with a rich boy, I…I got angry. Of course I did. How could I not get enraged when I pictured Kelsey with some other guy? Knowing other hands had touched her…I almost wanted to cut them off, but that would’ve been crossing the line, I guessed.
Still, it was better to see Grady than to see Dean. The fucker had kept a low profile after our little tiff the other day. I heard from some of the other guys that his face was bruised and that his nose had to be reset. Kind of funny, but I knew he was biding his time. That was fine, because I was, too. I had a plan for him, a plan to take him down for good, but I’d only get one shot at it, so I had to be careful.
That meant no more fights, unfortunately.
Tom was a shorter guy, almost half a foot shorter than me. A lot lankier, too, which made the baggy shirts he wore almost silly. “I don’t know, man. I just heard it ringing outside. Over and over again, woke me up, so I had to go out and see what the hell was going on.”
I was about to push past them to reach for the cereal cabinet, but Tom’s words stopped me. My eyes focused on what he held in his hands, and I immediately recognized the plain, worn case and smartphone that was a few years old.
That was Kelsey’s phone.
“I found it outside, sitting in the flowerbed,” Tom was busy saying, while
Grady was nodding, practically sleeping with his eyes open. “I—” Before Tom could say anything else, I snatched the phone out of his hands, causing him to say, “Hey, man! What the hell?”
Grady, however, knew better than to say anything to me. I was pretty sure he’d been scared of me ever since that night. And he should be. That fucking mouth had been on Kelsey.
“Shut the fuck up,” I muttered, not saying anything else as I left the kitchen. Neither Tom nor Grady tried to go after me, which was good. It was too early to explain to them why I wasn’t going to let anyone else touch this phone.
Didn’t want anyone touching the phone, didn’t want anyone else touching Kelsey. That wasn’t wrong of me, was it? I knew I didn’t own her, but…still. I couldn’t help the possessiveness that came over me when it came to that girl.
Once I was in my room with the door firmly shut, I moved to sit on my bed. With my back hunched over, I stared down at the phone in my hands, flipping it over to study the case. Yep. It was hers. Had to be. It was an older model, and a simple case, buffed and scratched in places, worn down over years of use.
My hand gripped its case, my thumb finding the lone button on its one side. When I hit it, I saw that you only had to swipe up to open it; no password necessary. I really shouldn’t go through it; I should find her, wherever she was, and return it, be done with her altogether.
A pipe dream. A fucking pipe dream, because even after knowing what she did, my body, my heart still yearned for her. A fucking stupid thing, but I couldn’t help it.
Before I knew what the hell I was doing, I ran a finger along the screen, swiping up, and opened the phone.
This was a bad idea, probably…but I had to know.
What exactly did I have to know? No clue.
I just had to see if…I didn’t know. If she was texting the rich boy, if she had a lineup of other guys. If I really lost her, or if I ever really had her to begin with.
Kelsey really didn’t text many people. Her parents, although it looked like she hadn’t texted anyone in a little while. Me, but that was even before that. The most recent messages—and calls, lots of them, apparently—were to someone named Ash, and this morning’s calls were from Mel. I took that to mean Kelsey knew her phone was missing and Mel tried to call it, both of them hoping it had maybe slipped and tucked itself away in a nook or cranny in their room.
Making Mistakes: A College Bully Romance (Playing Games Book 2) Page 4
