Mistakes : A College Bully Romance

by Candace Wondrak

  Attacking Dean head-on would only get me expelled. Me fighting him, and then Kelsey punching him in the kidney—which I still found hilarious, honestly—had only riled the beast. Plus, there were too many witnesses. If shit hit the fan, my fraternity brothers would side with Dean, because I threw the first punch. I was the aggressor.

  Dean wasn’t going to get away with this shit for much longer, that I swore.

  It felt like I was waiting an eternity. It felt like years passed as I headed up to my room and waited for Kelsey to text me. As long as she had eyes on Dean, that was the only thing that mattered.

  I had the cameras ready to go. They were wireless, and their batteries wouldn’t last forever, but their saving grace was that the cameras only recorded when they saw movement, wirelessly transmitting to an app I already downloaded on my phone.

  Tick, tock.

  The fucking clock moved ungodly slow as I stared at my phone in my lap, waiting for it to light up. Waiting for Kelsey’s message. If Dean didn’t respond to her, didn’t go to her, we’d have to try something else. Maybe get Kelsey to go to the rec and watch them play. Something, anything. To say we were grasping at straws wouldn’t do enough to explain how I felt.

  This was for Kelsey. This was for Mel, for everything I did to her, none of which she deserved. This was for Dean, getting payback when he deserved a whole world of hurt. A broken nose and a bruised kidney were nothing compared to what I wanted to do to him, but to play dirty, we’d need the dirt, and these cameras were the only way I could think of to get that dirt, since Dean and I weren’t friends.

  And then, like magic, my phone screen lit up, and Kelsey’s name appeared, along with the words: He’s here. My heart started to race, and I grew excited. Was it wrong to be thrilled about what I had to do? After all, I’d been dreaming of this day for so long now—taking Dean down—that it almost felt surreal.

  Who knew all I needed to actually commence the plan was a partner in crime? Kelsey really was perfect for me. I just hoped she was able to speak to Dean with a level head, no punching of the kidney or dick variety. She liked to do both, apparently. That girl…

  Oh, that girl drove me crazy, but now wasn’t the time to think about that.

  I set the volume of my phone to vibrate, so I’d feel it go off when I was in his room, if Kelsey and Dean’s talk didn’t end up lasting long. I got off my bed and headed to the corner of my room, where I kept my gym bag. It was also out of the camera’s sight, which was why I kept my own shiny new toys safely tucked away in the gym bag I never used anymore. I grabbed the strap and slung it across my shoulders, heading right out of the room.

  I headed to the second floor, where Dean’s room was. I had no idea if he had any other cameras in his room; I assumed he had some in the other guys’ rooms, but even that was a guess. Maybe he only put a camera in mine because he knew my hazing involved Mel. Maybe he just wanted to watch his ex-girlfriend break. The sick fuck.

  My feet took me to his room, and I stepped inside with the bag snug over my shoulder, closing the door behind me quietly. I scanned the room, trying to find places that would be perfect to hide my own cameras while attempting to see if he had any of his own hidden.

  I couldn’t find any, but it wasn’t like I tore his room apart from top to bottom. Didn’t have time to. Had to be in and out as quickly as I could, which meant if there was a camera in here, I’d deal with it when I’d deal with it.

  I really hoped there wasn’t, though. That would totally kill this plan and force us to think of something else.

  Moving toward his bed, his sheets rumpled and dirty—I doubted the bastard had washed his sheets at all this semester so far, which was kind of nasty, considering all the bodies that had to have sweated under them—I set my bag down and unzipped the side compartment, pulling out my new, tiny black cameras.

  They had switches on the bottom, where you could turn them on. I’d had them in waiting for so long, it felt almost surreal. My mom had asked why I needed so much money for a class project, but I told her some lie about needing to pay for some equipment that I had to rent out from the school. It was a lie my mom believed, because she never asked twice about it.

  It wasn’t like I came from heapings of money, but we did fine. We weren’t as poor off as Kelsey’s family apparently was—the family that she tried desperately never talking about, even when I asked. I did try to talk to her about her parents, but she shut down anytime they were mentioned. She was clearly in denial of their divorce, which, if it came as news out of the blue, I couldn’t blame her. She’d thought her family was a happy one that would stay together forever, and now she had to readjust her view. Something like that was never easy.

  I looked for shadows in his room, little nooks that I could squeeze the cameras in. Multiple angles, multiple cameras. In the end, if he found them, he’d never know it was me, because the cameras were hooked up to my app. He wouldn’t be able to see what they’d recorded.

  Dean’s room was even messier than mine. Papers tossed about, clothes everywhere. It kind of reeked of sweat, too. Nasty.

  I ended up choosing the bookcase in the corner, noting the dust on the shelves, figuring he hardly ever used it. I tucked the first camera between two textbooks after switching it on, and then I spotted a few other good places around the room. On the floor, just by the bedpost. On his nightstand, underneath the lamp, hidden in the shadows.

  All in all, I thought I picked some pretty good places. It wasn’t like I did this on a daily basis, but it would do. I had nearly every angle of the room covered, including a camera that overlooked where his laptop was.

  That thing was password encoded. Most laptops were. And knowing Dean, I doubted it was something simple like Mel’s phone was. No, the shit he had, the password had to be more complicated than that.

  I was out of Dean’s room before I got the text from Kelsey that Dean had left.

  First step down. Now, the only question was, how long did we wait to view the footage? How long did we give him before we really sat down and planned this all out? I supposed that depended on what, if anything, we saw when we went back to watch the cameras. In all truth, we might not see anything.

  Knowing Dean, though…there’d be something. There always was.

  Chapter Fifteen – Kelsey

  My stomach was in knots as I headed to the union. The day was brisk, definitely a late November day. The days varied in temperature, but I was pretty sure today was the coldest day we’d had so far. My hoodie did not do enough to keep my body heat close. I paired it with a baseball cap to keep my brown hair from flying around, and as I walked to the union, I put earbuds in and listened to some of my favorite songs.

  I hadn’t listened to music since driving home from Hillcrest the weekend before Halloween. It was crazy how much time had passed since then, how much things had changed. No longer was I wallowing in what I did and how horrible I felt—I hardly had time to think about Ash and how I hadn’t talked to her.

  She was mad at me. She had to be pissed, and she’d be pissed for a while. I didn’t blame her. I fucked up, and I would have to make amends sooner or later. Right now, though, all of my attention was on Mel and what Dean did to her. I hated that douchebag more than any other guy in the universe, and that was saying something. I had a lot of hate to give, trust me.

  Dean. He deserved to be tied up and dragged through the mud, laughed at for the rest of his life, made to feel as if he was nothing, like he didn’t matter. That guy was just a bully, and he resorted to childish pranks and cruel jokes when he didn’t get his way.

  All because I told Mel to steer clear of him. All because I never agreed to help him get Mel back. All because Levi wouldn’t help him. Dean was a fuckup, and I was determined to make him realize just how much of a fuckup he truly was.

  I made it the union, taking off my hat and running my fingers through my hair, untangling some of the knots that had formed in the walk over. It couldn’t just be cold outside—no, it h
ad to be windy, too. Windy and cold equaled miserable.

  The cafeteria area wasn’t as bustling as it was during peak mealtime hours. Only about half of the tables were full, and I chose a seat on one of the end ones, as far away from everyone else as I could be. I set my phone on the table before me, angling my head down as I typed out a message to send to Dean.

  I was so not looking forward to this little chat, assuming he came, but it was the only way we could think of to get him out of his room. As long as he was with me, I knew he wasn’t with Levi. I had to suck it up and talk with him like a civilized person and not a chick who wanted to kick his balls up into his stomach.

  I waited to send the message to Dean until I got a text from Levi saying he’d left the frat house. On his way to the rec with the other guys, but I was ninety-percent sure that if I mentioned Mel in the text, Dean would come running. The sick fuck still liked her, but he was toxic. A toxic man who did awful things to the people who refused to do what he wanted.

  You didn’t act like that. Normal people didn’t act like that. Dean needed to learn that he would not skate by in life by acting like such a big bag of dicks.

  It was a few minutes before I got anything back.

  He was coming. He was coming right now, a dog chasing a bone, but what he didn’t realize was that he was on a treadmill, and the bone hanging in front of him, in this case Mel, hung a few feet before him, off the treadmill. He’d never reach her. He’d never get her again.

  I wanted to crush that man-boy’s hopes and dreams and make his life as miserable as it could possibly be. Did that make me evil? I knew I was already a bitch, rash and stupid sometimes, but to be so spiteful…

  Eh, he deserved it.

  I texted him back and told him where I was, and then I waited, looking bored. With my phone resting before me, I gazed all around. The minute I saw him walking in through the side entrance of the union, I hurriedly texted Levi and told him that he was here, then I hid my phone in my hoodie’s pocket, not wanting Dean to see any messages back.

  Yeah, if he saw Levi’s name flash across my screen, he might get some ideas. Hell, he might get some ideas anyway, but it was worth a shot.

  Inner revilement bubbled up the moment Dean spotted me, sauntering up to me and slipping in the chair facing me. He had a gym bag around his shoulder, which he immediately dropped to the ground beside him. His black hair was cut short; he must’ve recently gotten a haircut. His face looked a bit better than it did before, his nose no longer wearing whatever brace he had last time. Some bruising was still there, though the swelling of his nose had gone down.

  Kind of marred his physical attractiveness, which made me smile.

  What did not make me smile, however, was the grin he wore. That just made me want to throw up.

  “Well, well,” Dean spoke, flashing me his perfect teeth. Teeth that must’ve had braces and some whitening done. “So you want to talk about Mel? It’s about damn time. I’ve been waiting for her to see reason.”

  Oh, that instantly ticked me off.

  “And what reason is that?” I asked him, tilting my head as if clueless, as if I had no idea what the hell he was saying. And I didn’t. There was no reasoning here. Mel should never go back to that assface.

  “She belongs with me,” Dean said.

  “If she belongs with you, why did you fuck her over?” I wasn’t mincing words here. I was still me, after all. Still Kelsey Yates. No filter here, and none to ever be seen. “You are aware that people in relationships don’t normally sleep with other people, unless that relationship is open—and tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Mel would like a relationship like that.”

  No, Mel and an open relationship shouldn’t even go in the same sentence.

  “Is this why you wanted to talk to me?” Dean asked, his dark brows coming together. “To lecture me? Fuck that—” He started to get up, to grab his bag, but I was quick to say something else that got him to immediately stop.

  “No, I came here to talk about Mel, not about your relationship with her, or lack of it,” I informed him. “Sit your ass back down, because there’s something you should probably know.”

  Dean’s curiosity was piqued, and he was slow to drop his bag again and sit down in the same chair. His dark eyes never left mine as he asked, “What about her?” Hedging, as if trying not to appear too interested—which was a lie we both knew, because neither of us were dumb enough to believe he didn’t care.

  He cared. He might be a toxic person whom Mel should avoid at all cost, but he cared in his own way.

  I was pretty sure.

  “You sent her the video of her and Levi together,” I said, posing the statement almost like a question, baiting him. It wasn’t like I was recording him, so his confession wouldn’t mean much. In the long run, it didn’t matter what he said to me today; I just had to keep him occupied. “Why? What did you hope to accomplish, Dean? You had to have known how she’d feel watching it.”

  Dean scoffed, turning his face away, but he didn’t get up, didn’t move to storm away again. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but I sent that to her to remind her that we all fuck up sometimes—”

  “She wasn’t with you when she was with Levi. It wasn’t like she cheated on you with him and you caught her,” I told him. It was insanely hard to look at his smug face and not reach over the table and strangle him. “You can’t compare it to what you did to her.”

  “I can do whatever the fuck I want, and if that includes telling this whole campus little miss goodie two shoes isn’t so good after all, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  The nerve of this guy. Mel was so sweet…was he like this when they were in high school, or did college change him this much? Did joining Sigma Chi turn him into some kind of Dick King Douche Canoe? Seriously. Ugh.

  I stared at him for a long while, meeting his dark eyes. Black, soulless, utterly mean and despicable, the very opposite of warm eyes. I hated him. I really, really hated him. Like, on a whole different level than the self-hatred I carried for myself after that weekend at Hillcrest. This was a hatred I would go out of my way to satisfy. This was a hatred that might drag me down to his level of bullying, but I didn’t care. If that made me a spiteful bitch, I say…where’s my bitchin’ sash and my spiteful crown? I’d be the queen, and I’d knock this king down.

  “You have no idea, do you?” I asked quietly, the sound of the chattering around us almost drowning me out.

  Dean blinked, his eyebrows drawing together. “No idea what?”

  “You know what happened last year, after the thing with Levi, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but what does that have to…” Dean trailed off, his eyes widening—only slightly, but enough to notice. The small change in his facial expression he immediately tried to hide with a stern scowl. “What the fuck are you trying to say?”

  I let my silence speak for itself, at least for a little while. Dean knew, deep down, exactly what I was saying, but I’d tell him word for fucking word what I meant. I’d even draw him a diagram if he needed it: Mel, her body weirdly contorted on the floor, the pill bottle hidden away. Of course, it’d be a shitty diagram because I was no artist, but hey, if it helped the fucking idiot understand the gravity of the shit he’d created, I was all for it.

  “You got one your friends to forward her that video since she blocked you,” I informed him, knowing more than he thought I did. “Do you know how I found her last night? Do you want to know how I came home to find Mel unconscious on the floor, barely breathing?”

  Dean started to shake his head, slowly at first, but then quickly, as if his newfound speed would push the mental image from his mind. If that’s how easy it was to forget, I would’ve forgotten a long time ago. “No, no. You’re wrong. I don’t—”

  Still not wanting to face facts, so I said it in the harshest way possible. Mel didn’t deserve to be spoken of like this, but I found my patience growing short when it came to Dean and his stupi
d ass self.

  “Mel took a bunch of pills, and she started seizing,” I said, my heart hurting as I told him. I didn’t feel bad for him, but for Mel? God, I hated what happened to her. She got the short end of the stick time and time again.

  That girl…she deserved happiness. She deserved the fucking world.

  Dean was silent, his jaw tensing, but I plowed on, never one to know when to quit: “It’s a good thing I came home right then, because what if she started seizing when no one was there? What if she choked to death on her own tongue? She almost died—”

  Oh, God. This was hard. I never thought I was the type of girl to burst into tears, but my eyes were definitely watering. No tear fall yet, though. Hopefully I’d be able to keep it in until I no longer sat across from the King of Dicks himself.

  “—and she’s still fighting for her life at the hospital,” I muttered. “So tell me, Dean, is this what you wanted? Are you finally happy now?”

  He was quiet for a while. For a long while. I could see the gears turning in his head, and I wished I knew what he was thinking, what his thought process was. Did he really think spreading that video of her around campus would make her run back to him? It was laughable. Using a video like that…

  “You made her question our friendship, you made her feel alone, isolated, and you made her relive that heartbreak,” I told him when he remained silent. “Everything you’ve done has hurt her, over and over again. You say you want her back, and yet you sleep around. You act obsessed with her, but you couldn’t care less. I mean, look at you. I just told you that she tried to kill herself—and, hell, she might’ve succeeded. She might never wake up. If you really loved her, even just a little, you wouldn’t act like this.”

  Dean let out a long breath. Whatever he was feeling, he had to have been holding it back, hiding his true self, not wanting me to see him for who he really was. Didn’t matter much, because no matter what emotions he had inside, he was a fuckup through and through.