Tiny Dark Deeds: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Court Legacy Book 3)

Sloane

The night with Legacy wasn’t over, but they stressed it was for me. They had to pick up Wells’s car, which had gotten impounded in all this. Whoever he’d hit had had it towed, I guess, and after they dropped me off, they all piled into their individual cars to get Wells’s. I figured I wouldn’t hear anything more about any of this until at least morning, so I decided to go to bed. Bow was right where I’d left her when I got upstairs, snoozing away on my comforter. I’d known her to be a heavy sleeper.

After getting into my pajamas, I planned to get a little shut eye myself, but everything that had happened tonight still nagged at me. I decided to wait downstairs for Ares to come back so I could hound him about things, and eventually, I did hear talking outside while I waited in the kitchen.

It wasn’t Ares’s voice, though.

Tugging the curtain away from the back door, I spotted Dorian and Wells. They chatted, Wells’s hands in his pockets. Like before, I couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but it seemed to be over when Dorian took Wells’s hand and brought him in for one of those bro hugs. Dorian said something more to him but stopped when his gaze flicked in my direction.

My mouth parted, caught. Wells shifted in my direction too, frowning, and he exchanged a glance between Dorian and me.

We were still looking at each other.

It was like we couldn’t stop, my swallow hard. I let go of the curtain but didn’t bother scurrying away. They’d both seen me, so what would have been the point?

I simply waited, looking again to see Dorian head toward his car. Wells headed in my direction. I unlocked the door for him and was still in the kitchen when he finally came inside. He shut the door quietly behind him while I stood in the kitchen, lit by little more than the light above the stove.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, watching as he took his coat off. I thought his face screwed up a little while he did it, but I could have been mistaken. The room was kind of dark.

He folded his coat over his arm. “Wolf said I could stay the night. My dad’s a light sleeper. Don’t want him to see me sneaking back in.”

I leaned against the kitchen island. “Where is he? Ares?”

“Behind me somewhere,” he said, looking rather tired himself. It seemed whatever energy he’d harnessed before was gone. He squeezed his eyes. “D and I drive fast so we got ahead. Thatcher went home after we got my car.” He yawned after he said it, shaking his head. He laughed. “Dorian wanted to make sure I took no detours back here, I guess. And to check in. Make sure I was okay or whatever.”

Because that was the kind of stuff he did for his friends. I rubbed my arm. Wells hung his coat up at the door, and I stepped forward to ask him more about tonight. I started to, but he cringed, and that was something I definitely noticed since he was like a foot or so away from me now.

As well as the state of his shirt.

Blood red and ripped down the side. His white tee currently clung to him in a soaked crimson and was more than visible since he was no longer holding his coat over the stain. I gasped. “Oh my God, Wells. You’re like bleeding.”

Instantly, he directed a look down, and when he lifted his shirt, he merely cursed while I just about fainted. The bandage he had over his side was caked in blood, the few strips of tape around it the same.

“Damn it,” he said, wincing. He messed with the tape and revealed blood-stained abs, a deep gash in his side, and my stomach rolled. “Fuck—”

“Okay, we need to get you to a hospital.”

“No.” He waved me off, me panicking way more than he was. “It’s fine. I just need a new bandage.”

“No, what you need is stitches.” I approached, swallowing down the bile in my throat. I’d never been great with blood. I grabbed his arm. “Come on. I’ll take you.”

“No,” he growled, shifting into angry Wells again. I was starting to see more of this darker side he had. He lifted a hand. “I got this. Brielle keeps a first-aid kit around here. I just need to clean it.”

He said this, but he visibly paled while he stared at the wound. Something told me he wasn’t great with blood either, but when he walked away, I knew he was about to try and fix this himself.

I growled now, grabbing his arm. He started to pull away from me, but I made him follow me into the house. I knew where Brielle kept the first-aid kit, and gratefully for him, she kept more than bandages nearby.

“What you doing?” he asked, his eyebrow arching. We’d made it into the bathroom where I found the kit.

“Trying to fix your ass since you won’t go to a hospital.” I forced the kit into his chest. “Hold that.”

“K.” His lengthy digits braced the kit, his shirt basically ruined. Especially since it was ripped. His attention followed me around the bathroom to a junk drawer that held a needle and thread. After I got that, I made the boy follow me up to the dark prince’s room. We’d do this in mine, but Bow was in there sleeping.

“Why are we in here?” His gaze traveled when I dug into Dorian’s sock drawer. I found the lighter, and Wells’s brow jumped. “What are you doing with that shit?”

“I’m going to sew you up myself,” I said, and not looking forward to it. I really was squeamish around blood, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done this before. I tossed Wells a pair of socks. “You’re going to need to bite down on that.”

“You’re fucking serious?” He eyed the socks but didn’t do anything with them. “You ever stitch someone up before?”

I gave him a look like it was obvious. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t.”

“K,” he repeated, sitting down on Dorian’s bed when I told him. I instructed him to take off his shirt too, and he smirked. “Hold up, princess. Usually, I ask for a little dinner first.”

He waggled his eyebrows, flashing a more than prominent dimple in his right side. Since he smiled a lot, I’d caught it before. He really could look like a teddy when he wasn’t being an asshole.

I rolled my damn eyes, then proceeded to get one last item. I knew the dark prince kept a bottle of vodka in his underwear drawer, and he may or may not have used it to lick off my nipples in the past. He was fucking crazy, and I caught myself smiling a little.

Wells noticed, his grin lazy, cocky. He jutted his chin. “You sure know your way around this room, princess. You and D playing house or what?”

My eyes lifted again. Yes, I knew where his vodka was and his spare lighter. We’d both used the latter to smoke weed in the past. I didn’t think we were playing house, though. I’d just been in here a lot.  

I shoved the bottle into Wells’s chest too. He gripped it, telling me I was bossy when I repeated he needed to take off his shirt so we could do this. Eventually, he did, and his wound looked so much worse when he completely took off the bandage. Actually, he bled so bad that we moved to Dorian’s bathroom. I didn’t want to get blood all over the place.

“What the hell happened?” I had to use several towels to get all the blood off, the wound seeping from his rib cage.

Wells’s smirk was just as cocky as his grin. He lounged against the sink with his long legs stamped out, his eyes closing when his head touched the mirror. “Mmm. Don’t stop. That feels nice when you touch me like that.” To show me, he grabbed the hand rubbing blood off his abs, and I just about socked him in them. He chuckled. “I’m just joking. D would kill me. Fuck.”

I would kill him, and clearly, he was being this way to avoid the question, flirting. Whereas Ares and Dorian just got mean when they didn’t want to talk about shit, Wells seemed to like to flirt.

I didn’t know how Thatcher was since I didn’t spend a lot of time with him, but Wells and Thatcher seemed to be as joined at the hip as Ares and Dorian.

“If you don’t want me to help you, fine,” I said, literally covered in the boy’s blood. I raised and dropped my hands. “Because I won’t if you don’t stop that shit and tell me what happened tonight.”

To prove that to him, I started to go, but he wrapped his lengthy digits around my arm.

“Fine.” He positioned back against the sink. He shook his head. “I hit someone, and he fought back obviously.”

I knew he’d hit someone, but I hadn’t known a stab wound was involved, which was what this was. I studied the wound. “You were stabbed?”

“Barely a nick, but I didn’t see it coming.” He cursed when I cleaned it. He bared teeth. “Watch that shit, aight?”

I smirked now. “More than a nick then?”

His eyes lifted, and his hands braced the sink so hard when I put antiseptic on the wound I thought he’d break that shit. He crossed his ankles. “Like I said, fucker got the jump on me, but I got the last laugh.” His eyes danced, rimmed with cruel delight. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he did enjoy whatever had happened tonight. “Dude went down like a sack of potatoes in the end. He’ll never get his face to look right after what I did.”

He cursed again when all I did was touch the skin near the wound. I told him to drink the vodka, which he did, but when I told him to put the sock in his mouth for the stitches, he refused.

“D wears that shit. No fucking way.”

He was being a total diva right now, but he promised not to scream when I did stitch him up. I didn’t necessarily believe him, but I didn’t have a choice since he refused to put the sock in his mouth.

I guessed he’d gotten this shitty bandage from the precinct, which definitely showed how much they cared about getting him proper care.

I heated the needle, sterilizing it. “Brace yourself.”

He did as asked when he lodged his forearm between his teeth. Immediately, he bit down during that first stitch, and every one after that as well. He was so white by the end of it, I thought he’d pass out, but he stayed standing and, as promised, didn’t scream. I’d actually done a good job too, considering I’d only patched up myself in the past.

“Not bad, princess. Not bad,” he said, analyzing the black stitches in the mirror. He was so tan any scarring he got probably wouldn’t be terribly visible. He gave a soft clap. “I guess you have done this before.”

I shrugged. “Girl came at me with a box cutter once in the eight grade,” I said, and Wells’s lips parted. “Yeah, and when you don’t have health insurance…”

“Shit. You did it on yourself.” He whistled. “I suppose you didn’t get any help from that fucker who took you.” He frowned. “D mentioned he had a lot of depression and anxiety.”

He was right about that, but that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I crossed my arms. “What happened to you? For real. The guys only told me you hit someone.” I lifted a hand. “Do they even know you were stabbed?” Thatcher had picked his ass up at the precinct today and twirled him around. Something told me, if he’d known, he wouldn’t have done that.

Wells shook his head, and my jaw dropped. “What the fuck, Wells—”

“They don’t know because it’s not a big deal, and you’re not going to tell them.” He put his bloody shirt back on, covering my work. He tugged it down. “As far as who I hit, just know he deserved that shit.” His growl was low. “He deserved more than that shit. Dude’s a fucking creep, and he’ll be getting his.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t need to worry about it. The guys are handling it.”

He tried to cut around me, but I stopped him.

“Princess—”

“Who did you hit, and why?”

His head lowered, his arms braced. I wasn’t going to let this go, and it was easy going against Legacy when it was just one of them. The four of them together had a tendency to strong-arm.

“You’re lucky I like you,” he said, his grin teasing. He lounged back against the sink. “I’m only sad our love story had to end for the sake of my boy.” He put a hand on his chest. “So tragic.”

Good God, he was such a hopeless flirt, shameless. My eyes lifted. “Tell me what happened.”

“I hit Shapiro,” he said, and I croaked. He smirked. “Yeah, Mr. Shapiro, and dude called the cops on me like a little bitch.”

“Why in the…” I was at a loss for words. I mean, was he a psychopath? “So, what you’re saying is you hit a teacher?”

“Nah, princess. I hit a creepy-ass predator who gets off messing with high school chicks.” His eyes narrowed. “Fucker even changed his name because the last school he worked at, he had to resign because he’s a nasty fuck who likes getting with underage girls.”

My mouth opened and closed. “How do you know that?”

“Because he made a pass at a girl I was fucking.” His expression darkened. “Shapiro’s nasty ass didn’t know that I saw but I did, and since I knew Bow was working with him on some computer thing, that shit wasn’t okay.”

My brow lifted. “Is that why you told him she couldn’t each lunch with him?”

He pushed off the sink. “Like I said, that shit wasn’t okay. Of course, that was before I knew he changed his name and his history at that other school. Through some digging, Thatcher found that shit out after he asked me why I threatened the guy.” He scrubbed his face. “Dude only doesn’t have a record because he somehow got his victims to drop the charges. His history at the other school slipped under the radar too because his family has money and covered that shit up. Thatcher and I wanted to go after his ass ourselves since the law couldn’t, but Dorian and Wolf said that wasn’t the way to go. They both asked around, and it wasn’t hard for them to find a few girls that Shapiro already messed with since coming to our school. The girls agreed to come forward, and Wolf and Dorian made Thatch tell his parents all the stuff he dug up so we could get the cops involved in all this. While they were doing that, I went after Shapiro myself. Dude needed a fucking beating if he was even entertaining for a fucking second making Bow his next victim, and I knew the cops wouldn’t do that.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Does Bow know about all this?”

Wells cuffed his arms. “Don’t know why she needs to,” he said, and I blinked.

“Uh, how about because you might have saved her from something really messed up?” Not to mention she thought what he’d done today was because he’d gone psycho. Hell, I’d thought he’d gone psycho. “She thinks you’re just being controlling.”

Wells’s look was dismissive, passive when he moved his blond locks around. He really didn’t care what she believed, but I did.

My lips turned down. “You should tell her.”

“No, and neither will you.” He checked himself out in the mirror like an arrogant fuck. I usually only caught Thatcher doing that crap. The boy had a mirror in his fucking locker. Wells’s gaze clashed with mine through the mirror. “She does belong at our table and shouldn’t be sitting with anyone else.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “You know, I think she has a crush on you.” Though, I didn’t understand why. Especially since she said he bullied her.

His hands stopped in his hair. “Well, that’d be stupid of her,” he said, flicking his stark white locks forward like he was actually going somewhere. “She’s like my little sister, and Thatcher’s actual sister.” He dropped his hands. “Like I said, stupid.”

Jesus. He really was an asshole, but then again…

I’d come to know all these guys since coming here, and being an asshole and being Legacy tended to go together. The dark prince and I had definitely butted heads in the past.

We butted heads now.

“Thanks for stitching me up,” Wells said, a door clicking shut from somewhere in the house. Since we were on this end of it, I assumed that person was Ares. “That’d be Wolf. Probably need to, uh…”

Before he could finish, I went back into Dorian’s room. I found a spare shirt, then tossed it at Wells. “If you don’t want him to know about the blood.”

Wells nodded before swapping one shirt out for the other. He seemed at odds with what to do with the first so I took it, telling him I’d take care of it. I didn’t know exactly what I’d do with it, but Ares would obviously be looking for him, so I had more time to stash it.

Wells pounded my fist. “Good looking out, princess.”

I laughed. “No problem.” I started to go, but before I did, he cut me off.

“I know you and D are having an issue, and though neither of you asked for my two cents on the situation, I’m going to give it to at least you.”

Getting my attention, I rested against the door.

His hands eased into his pockets. “It probably looks like he really didn’t want to tell you about that bastard Callum, like he didn’t trust you, but I know D. He does trust you. He just…”

“Didn’t want me to see him as a monster.” My stomach soured. “I know.”

Wells acknowledged that, his nod subtle. “Anyway, I’m not saying you should forgive him, but he loves you a lot and…” Wells rubbed his arm. “He’s hurting real bad. He sees a lot of shit in himself that isn’t real, and thinking you’d see that shit too?” He shook his head. “I know he’s not a monster. We all do, but that shit doesn’t matter when a guy believes it, which he does. It kills him knowing you’d see that, or even the possibility of it.”

I knew this too, and I didn’t see him as a monster. In fact, he was the opposite to me always.

I couldn’t believe Wells and his intuitiveness sometimes. He’d shared his own musings on Ares with me before, and he was really surprising me with how thoughtful and profound he could be. He and Thatcher tended to lack a maturity the other boys had, and Dorian didn’t seem like the type much to share his feelings. He might not have to with these best friends he had though. They all really were intuitive about each other, as if empaths for one another.

There was so much love between them.

I’d seen that time and time again, another example tonight at the precinct. Thatcher telling Wells thanks after what he’d done tonight, which was something he obviously couldn’t do himself. Then there was Ares picking everyone up and using his resources to go into the precinct himself to get Wells out. Dorian hugging Wells at the police station, then later escorting him to our house to make sure he was okay only completed their circle.

Wells probably thought we were done, but I ended up hugging him for some reason. I just felt we’d shared a moment, and it was nice…

Until he sniffed my hair.

He borderline moaned after he did, and I shoved him off.

He lifted his hands. “Nothing creepy. Just had to get it out of my system. I mean, I am still in mourning here over our love lost.”

He nudged me after he said it, waggling his eyebrows. The boy was a fucking freak, but he did have a heart. I’d honor what he requested about not telling Bow about what he and the others did tonight, but I, personally, would never forget it.

Even if it seemed like he wanted me to.