Chapter Thirteen – Kelsey
Sharing my bed with someone was…strange. It was an ungodly sort of uncomfortable first, Levi and I trying to find a good way for the both of us to lay down and feel each other’s bodies under the sheets, but eventually we decided on spooning: me, tucked between Levi’s hard body and the wall, a mountain of sheets over us, blocking out the light coming in through the windows.
Yeah, I’d said fuck it to my classes for the day. I really didn’t feel like going to any. Not like I’d be able to focus with everything going on, so, why bother?
Levi apparently must’ve thought the same, because when I woke up after dozing off, he was still there. Still beside me. His strong arm wrapped around me protectively—not that I needed protecting, but it was nice to know someone was there. It was good not to be alone.
I honestly didn’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Levi.
By the sound of his even breathing, I assumed Levi was asleep, and I tossed a quick look over my shoulder to see that was indeed the case. His eyes were shut, and with the light peeking through the blinds, I realized how long of eyelashes he had. So unfair. His eyelashes were longer than mine, for God’s sake. So not fair.
Still. Those damned eyelashes framed those beautiful blue eyes so well, I guessed I couldn’t be too jealous, because I got to stare at them.
I slowly turned to my other side, no longer playing the little spoon. Our fronts touched, and I studied his sleeping face. His lips were parted slightly, every muscle in his face relaxed. Levi never looked this serene; was this how he always looked when he was asleep? It was such a switch from his usual personality.
Without knowing what I was doing, I traced the square line of his jaw, watching as he slowly opened his eyes, blinking a few times to adjust his eyes to the light, fixating on me. “You know,” he spoke, his voice gravelly from being asleep, “I was sleeping.”
“I know,” I whispered, still touching his face, still amazed at how perfect Levi’s features were. Not a single scar. Not a blemish or pimple to be seen. This man’s attractiveness was movie star level, no joke.
“Well,” he said, “I guess if I’m going to be woken up, you’re not that bad to wake up to.” His lips grew in a lazy half-smirk, the arm that had been laying across me becoming firm in its hold of me. An insult paired with a silent, assertive motion: you’re mine.
It was fine. I liked being his.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, cocking a brow. The expression lost a little of its oomph since a part of his face was still sunken into the pillow beside me. “Get up, or stay in bed all day?”
I was super exhausted from last night, but I knew we couldn’t stay in bed. I mean, we could, but what would that accomplish besides dirty, sweaty sheets? Like, come on, if I stayed in bed all day with a guy like Levi, there wouldn’t be much more sleeping to be had, just lots and lots of sex.
“We have to get up,” I told him in a whisper. “We never called Mel’s parents last night.”
That sobered him up real fast. “You’re right.”
Last night—or technically early this morning—we’d kind of gotten lost in each other. What happened in the shower, falling into each other’s arms in bed…yeah, it was a nice distraction at the time, but now we had to focus on the matter at hand.
Mel.
Call her parents, notify them of what happened, tell them what hospital she’s at—and that was only the beginning. Should I notify the dean? Her professors? I wasn’t even sure what schedule she had, let alone which professors. Sometimes professors made exceptions when it came to tests and homework, and knowing Mel and how good of a student she was, she was probably on good terms with them all. Maybe they’d agree to postpone her dates.
But, of course, that was assuming she woke up. She might not. She…might not ever wake up.
That was something I didn’t want to face. Absolutely no hurry to face reality. Nope.
I ended up rolling on top of Levi in a bid to get off the bed first, and I think he let me only because he had a bit of a morning wood situation going on—not that it was morning. Judging from the sunlight streaming in—actual sun in late November, totally crazy—I’d say it was at least past noon.
I only wore a shirt, no pants. No bra, either. Flashing the goods, and from the sound of it, Levi made no moves to get off the bed after me. He was probably staring at my ass, not that I could blame him. It was kind of just there.
My feet drew me to Mel’s side of the room, and I started searching for her phone. I didn’t see it last night when I found her, just her and the pill bottle. It wasn’t on her nightstand near her television set, so I moved to her desk, shuffling the notebooks on top around. A pencil rested on top of one of the notebooks, and when I moved the one it rested on, it rolled off the desk and fell to the floor, in the nook the chair was in.
Call it intuition, but I figured I’d better pick it up, so I bent over and grabbed it—and it was a damned good thing I did, because I spotted her phone nestled between one of the chair’s bottom legs and the side of her desk.
I grabbed it and hit the side button. To my delight, the battery was still half-charged, although it wouldn’t be hard to plug it into the charger she had resting near her pillowcase. However, to my utter horror, the phone needed a four-digit passcode to unlock.
Shit. Technology these days. More secure, but at a time like this, a simple open sesame would’ve been sufficient.
I tried the basic ones. One, two, three, four and a few others. None of them unlocked it, and I let out a sigh. “It needs a passcode,” I said, glancing to Levi. He’d rolled onto his other side and propped his head up, blue eyes watching me with interest. Since he was on his side, his boner wasn’t as evident.
“Try two, zero, zero, zero,” he suggested. When I tried it and it worked, I couldn’t help but stare at him and lift both brows. “Her birthday year,” he whispered.
I did not want to think about why Levi knew that off the top of his head, although he was able to fill out her medical forms pretty well. Nope. Not going to ruminate about it. Not going to make drama where there was already drama enough. I knew that was a Kelsey Yates specialty, but I was trying to be better about it.
I went into her contacts, found both her parents’ numbers, and then I hesitated. Who did I call first? And what the freaking hell did I say when they picked up, expecting to hear Mel’s voice but instead heard mine?
Giving the phone to Levi was out of the question. I didn’t know what her parents knew about what happened last year, but I didn’t want to take the chance. No, I had to make this call.
I chose to call her mother, figuring she’d contact the father and tell him. My stomach was in knots as I listened to the line ringing and ringing, and I wondered when the last time I ate anything was.
She picked up after the fifth ring, asking, “Mel, honey, is something wrong? You don’t normally call.” That was a strange way to possibly greet her daughter, and my already conflicted insides grew even more anxious. Her voice came out strained, almost too authoritarian.
Great sign. I could totally tell why Mel refused to go home.
“This isn’t Mel,” I spoke, glancing back at Levi for…I didn’t know, some kind of moral support. This was a kind of call I never thought I’d have to make. Who would?
“Who are you, and why are you calling me from my daughter’s phone?” Her mother was quick to sound angry, and I winced at her sudden change of tone. I felt like she was the type of woman to flip on a switch.
I swallowed. “I…I’m her roommate, Kelsey. Last night I…” Memories of what happened last night flashed in my head, and I knew those were some images I would never forget. As the years wore on, no matter what ended up happening to Mel, I would always remember the night I came home to find her sprawled on the floor, looking pale as death itself. “I found her on the floor. She took a bunch of pills.”
A moment of silence before I heard her mutter, “Oh, God. I knew I never s
hould’ve let her go back there, not after what happened. I appreciate your call. Where is she?”
I rattled off the name of the nearby hospital, “Summit General.”
“Thank you. I’ll let my husband know, and we’ll handle it from here.” She said nothing else as she hung up, and I lowered the phone away from my ear, staring at it as if it was going to sprout legs and run away.
That was…not what I expected, and that was putting it lightly.
“Her mom seems weird,” I muttered, moving to set her phone on her nightstand near her TV. “She said she’d handle it from here, whatever that means.”
Levi finally got out of bed, wearing nothing but boxers. His erection had mostly gone away, and he ran a hand through his brown hair. No one looked as good with bedhead as he did. “I never met her parents, but she never spoke of them kindly, so I can imagine they’re not very nice people.” His feet drew him to me, and I let him wrap his arms around me, pressing my face against his bare chest.
I closed my eyes, momentarily losing myself in his arms. If we could stop time, if we could pretend the world didn’t exist for just these few seconds, that would be great. As it turned out, the world was a shitty place, and shitty things happened left and right, and there was nothing you could do about them. You couldn’t stop them. The only thing you could do was stand there and survive.
Mel…I had to make sure that girl survived.
I had to make sure she got retribution for this.
With that thought, I pulled away from Levi, going back to her phone. I plugged it into its charger and leaned on the edge of her bed, deciding to do a little digging. She had to have seen the video, somehow, whether it was online or through a text. I knew she’d blocked Dean’s number, but there were ways around everything.
I clicked on her messages first, and the very first message I saw was from a number not stored in her phone. After clicking on it, I saw that the unknown number forwarded a video to her—the video of Mel and Levi together.
Fuck.
I couldn’t watch that, not if I wanted to keep my sanity, so I hit the home button fast, before the video could start playing. If I had to guess, Dean texted the video to one of his frat buddies, and he got his friend to forward the video to her, since he had to have known by now Mel blocked his number.
That damned guy. He had to get his, I would see to it.
Once again, I set down the phone, turning to look at Levi. He’d reached for his shirt and put it on, hiding his muscular body from me. “We have to do something,” I told him.
His blue eyes looked at me. “Do what? Mel’s already in the hospital.”
“Not about her, about him.”
That was all Levi needed to know who I was talking about: “Dean.”
I nodded. “Yep. That motherfucker is going to get what’s coming to him, but it has to be good. We have to do it right. I want that bastard to never go one day in his life without thinking of how shitty he is for what he did.”
Levi bent over to grab his jeans on the floor. “That’s a tall order. I don’t think Dean ever realizes how shitty of a person he is.”
“He will, by the time I’m done with him.” I studied Levi, watching silently as he shoved one leg into his pants and then the other. “You are going to help, aren’t you?” Didn’t know why I momentarily doubted him, but I did. Maybe because he and Dean were a part of the same fraternity, maybe because Levi had let misunderstandings and lies come between us before.
“Of course I am,” he said, giving me an annoyed look. “I’ve been coming up with a plan for a while now.”
I folded my arms across my chest. Felt a little strange to be half-naked while Levi was almost fully dressed, but I was too damn curious to move. “Oh, yeah? And what plan is that?”
“I…I don’t know yet. I asked my mom for some extra cash to buy some small cameras—”
“To beat Dean at his own game?” I asked, so far not impressed.
“Yeah, I guess. I haven’t had the chance to plant any yet, because almost anytime I’m there, Dean is home.”
It was my turn to run a hand through my hair, only my hair was longer and much knottier, so they got pretty tangled real fast. “So you want to set up the cameras in his room, just like he did with you?”
Fighting fire with fire sometimes worked, but in other cases the original fire only grew exponentially larger.
“You assume he’ll do something that we can use?” I asked, and Levi nodded. “How about this—I get him out of his room so you can set those cameras up.”
Levi’s brows came together. “How? I doubt he’s going to want to see the girl that kidney-punched him.” As he spoke the last few words, he grinned. Yeah, I was still kind of proud of that.
“If I mention Mel, I’m sure he’ll drop everything to talk to me. I’ll meet with him in the union, and I’ll text you when he leaves. That should give you plenty of time to find some places, right?” Distract Dean, talk to him about Mel, all while Levi did the dirty work in his room. He’d have to make sure no one else in the house saw him enter or leave Dean’s room, but beyond that, he had the easy job.
Me? What the fuck was I supposed to say to distract Dean for more than a minute? I hated that fucker, and I didn’t want to talk to him about Mel at all, but Mel was the only leverage we had on him, and I doubted he knew about what happened.
“Probably,” Levi said.
“Then that’s the plan.”
I got Dean’s number from Levi, feeling somewhat satisfied with our plan. I had no idea what dirt those cameras would dig up on Dean, but there had to be something. If he was going to play dirty, so were we. I wasn’t going to take his antics lying down. Mel was in the hospital, so this was as serious as a situation could get.
By the time Mel woke up, Dean would be on his knees, begging for mercy.
Would he get mercy? Was I the kind of person who forgave and forgot? No, no I was not. I held grudges, and this grudge would never go away, even after Dean got his comeuppance. Never claimed to be a good person, never said I wanted to be. I’d be better with Levi, but when it came to that fuckface and what he did?
Hell no. I’d be the bitch of bitches, and I’d make sure to kick him when he was down.
Figuratively, I mean.
Mostly figuratively.
Chapter Fourteen – Levi
We waited until the next day, until after lab. Kelsey and I played it cool anytime we were in public together, because if one of my frat brothers saw us together, they’d know something was going on. That, or they’d tell Dean, and then our chances of revenge would be slimmer than they already were.
The problem I had with this place was simply because Dean had been doing this for so long, he was careful. He knew what to do and when to do it, and he had most of Sigma Chi on his side. I had no one but Kelsey on my side, because I never tried making friends, never cared enough to. I didn’t smile and talk to them all like Dean did. Sure, I played a game of basketball with them every now and then—though I stopped doing that a while ago—but that was it, the extent of me being a part of Sigma Chi this year.
Last year had been enough. I should have told my mom I didn’t want to be a part of the fraternity any more, but the fact that she was paying for my schooling gave me pause.
But it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t. If getting back at Dean meant that I would no longer be a part of Sigma Chi, then so be it—and if that meant my mom got so upset with me she pulled my tuition, I’d just be like ninety percent of the other students here and take out the loans. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, and I’d have Kelsey by my side. There wasn’t anything else I could ask for.
I stood in the kitchen, trying to make myself look busy. My phone rested on the counter near me, and I fiddled with mixing something. I’d just gotten back from my bio lab, and the plan was a go. Kelsey would text Dean the moment I told her he’d left the house to go to the rec. As long as one of us had eyes on him, we both knew where he was. During their b
asketball games at the rec, most of the other guys in the house would be gone as well. It was the perfect time.
The moment Dean left the house, I’d text Kelsey, and she’d contact him. I would have to wait until I got confirmation from her that she saw him walking up before I actually went in his room and did what I had to do.
I only hoped I was as good at hiding tiny cameras as Dean was. That was apparently a skill he was obscenely good at.
Ever since discovering the camera in my room, it was hard not to act like I knew it was there. Of course, when I found it, I acted like my eyes scanned right over it, not seeing it, pretended I was just looking for something on my messy desk. I hoped I was a good actor, but I guessed you never really knew when it came to these things.
Fucking Dean. I wanted to fuck him up all over again.
My ears heard a bunch of footsteps coming down the stairs behind me, and I threw a quick look over my shoulder, moving to stare down the hallway that led from the kitchen to the front door. The base of the stairs was near the door, and I watched a whole group of guys saunter out, coats on, a few with hats, and most with gym bags. Dean was the last one out, and the moment he glanced down the hall at me, I stepped into the kitchen and pretended I was busy. When the front door slammed shut, I doubled checked.
Everyone was gone, and as I moved toward the door after picking up my phone, I saw them all heading to the sidewalk, talking and laughing amongst themselves. Dean included in their number.
I texted Kelsey that it was time, and then I went back to the kitchen, tossing whatever I was mixing. I wasn’t really going to cook anything. It was just a front for me to wait and watch without being overly obvious about it. After I set the bowl in the sink, I checked my phone.
Kelsey said: Now we wait.
Waiting was hard, and it was especially hard because of what we had to do. I just wanted to get it over with, to do the deed and have it done. Whether or not this endeavor yielded anything worthwhile would be anyone’s guess, but it was better than sitting back and doing nothing.
Mistakes : A College Bully Romance Page 31
