“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
