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
