The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (184 page)

“Well, I’ve never actually told anyone this,” Thomas said softly, his face serious. “But I’m psychic.”

“Psychic?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” he said earnestly. He was so close now his nose was touching hers. The light contact sent her blood racing. “Like for example, I know that in five seconds, you’re going to kiss me.”

Ariana’s heart slammed into her rib cage over and over. “Oh, yeah?” she said playfully.

“Yeah.”

Daniel would
kill
her if he knew what she was doing right now—what she was thinking. But she didn’t care. At that moment it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to be with Thomas. To let herself go. To let him do whatever he wanted.

“Four . . .” Thomas flashed his perfect, boyish grin.

“Not gonna happen,” Ariana joked.

“Three . . .”

“You’re going to have to kiss me first.”

“Two . . .”

He shut his eyes.

“Uh-uh . . .” she sang.

“One.”

Ariana closed her eyes and waited for the kiss she knew was coming. Then her cell phone rang. Automatically, her head shot up and she knocked skulls with Thomas. Hard.

“Sonofa—”

Thomas released her and fell back, hand to his forehead.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” Ariana said, ignoring the pain as she groped for her phone in her bag. When she finally found it, the display
said that she had a new text message. Heart pounding, she quickly opened it.

Daniel:
Can’t get warm up here without u. Call and let me know ur ok.

Ariana was crushed by a sudden wave of nausea.

“Who’s that?” Thomas asked, his face still contorted with pain.

“Nothing,” Ariana said quickly. “No one.”

She slung her legs over the side of the bed and got up to crack the window. Snow swirled outside, blanketing the entire campus with a fresh coating of white. There were at least two feet of thick powder. Ariana had never seen so much snow in her life, and she let the cold air pour over her and wash the nausea away. She felt as if she’d just been caught in the act. That Daniel had somehow known the exact moment to text her to keep her from doing what she was about to do with Thomas.

Flipping open her phone, she read the text again.

Okay. Just breathe. Breathe and think this through.

In . . . two . . . three . . .

Out . . . two . . . three . . .

And suddenly, her mind cleared. Daniel was waiting for her in Vermont. This meant that the hat in the woods really
was
a coincidence. He wasn’t still on campus. He didn’t know what she had been doing. Which meant that she could still fix this. She could still turn back and make this all okay.

Ariana took in another breath of icy morning air and held it,
staring out at the gray early morning light. She had never seen campus from this angle before. She’d been in Ketlar plenty of times, but always on the other side of the building, where Daniel’s sloppy disaster of a room was located. She thought of all those nights he’d helped her sneak past Mr. Cross, the Ketlar Hall advisor. How he always let her wear his favorite, worn Harvard sweatshirt when she got cold. How warm and cozy she always felt when they cuddled while watching movies on his laptop. How he always walked her back to Billings no matter what time it was, risking getting caught every time.

Maybe it wasn’t exhilarating and dangerous like the last fourteen hours with Thomas had been, but it was her life. The life she was supposed to have. The life her mother wanted for her. Thomas Pearson could not be part of that life.

“Something wrong, naughty girl?” Thomas asked, walking to the window and snaking his arms around her from behind.

Cold, dark rage instantly overcame her. The arms that had made her feel so safe moments ago suddenly burned her skin.

“Let go of me,” she snapped, ripping herself away from him.

Thomas took a step back, startled, but Ariana barely noticed. Her mind was racing off on a horrible tangent and she couldn’t stop it. She was dirt. She was nothing. She wasn’t worthy of Daniel Ryan. Look what she’d done to him. Look where she was while he was waiting for her in Vermont. Look who she was
with.
Ariana grabbed her sweater off the extra bed and clutched it in both hands, twisting it into a spiral. Daniel would die if he knew.

Guilt crashed down on her in merciless waves. Each time she tried to catch her breath, another swept over her, dragging her under. She
doubled over, gasping for air, fighting the bile that surged from her stomach to the back of her throat. Tears stung her eyes.

“Ariana, what’s wrong?” Thomas reached out and rested his hand on her back.

She jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”

“Sorry.” A surprised look passed over Thomas’s face, and he held his hands up in surrender.

“I have to go. I have to shower.”

She felt so dirty. So awful she could hardly stand to be in her own skin.

“Okay. Okay, fine. I’ll come with you and show you where the—”

“No!” Ariana whirled on him. What did he think they were going to do, shower
together
? She couldn’t believe he was still coming on to her. Couldn’t this guy take a hint? “I’m not showering with you. I have to get out of here. I have to get away from you.”

Ariana sat and yanked her boots on, angry tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Okay. What the hell just happened here?” Thomas demanded.

Ariana looked up at him. He was still shirtless. Standing there in his boxers. Disgusted, Ariana looked away and shoved her hair behind her shoulders.

“What just happened is, I woke up. I realized what I’m doing, how
wrong
this is,” she spat. “I’m going to Vermont. I’m going to be with Daniel. This was a mistake.”

Thomas’s face was saturated with confusion. Ariana felt a new wave of guilt, but she couldn’t let him get to her. He was not important. Not anymore. She had to focus.

Daniel . . . Daniel is the one I need.

“Fine.” In an instant, Thomas’s face hardened and he took a step back toward the bed. “Good luck getting out of here in this weather. And try not to get caught. If I’m gonna get a third strike, it’s not gonna be for you.”

“What?” Ariana blurted. She stood and snatched up her coat and bag.

“You’re not the only one who has something to lose here,” Thomas yelled, yanking a long-sleeved T-shirt on over his head. “I’m not gonna get expelled just because Easton’s resident prude wanted to use me for the lamest walk on the wild side ever.”

Without even thinking, Ariana slapped Thomas clean across the face. Then, while he was still standing there, stunned, she turned and stormed out of his room, slamming the door behind her. Her palm stung from the contact as she hurried down the hallway and into the stairwell, fumbling with her phone. Daniel’s cell went right to voice mail. Ariana took a deep breath and concentrated on sounding chipper.

“Daniel, hi. I’m so sorry. I got caught in this stupid storm, but I’m doing everything I can to get there. I’ll see you soon.” She took the stairs two at a time, but she wasn’t breathing. If she breathed he would hear that she was upset. “I love you,” she added quickly.

Then she burst out into the cold, gasping for air. Wind whipped past her, nearly knocking her off her feet as icy snow pelted her face. But the frigid air cleared away everything else and Ariana started to feel in control again. It was okay. It was all going to be okay.

Her moment of insanity was over.

Lukewarm water spilled from the showerhead over Ariana’s smooth, pale skin. She’d been so desperate to get away from Thomas that she had almost used her electronic key to enter Billings through the front door, then remembered at the last second that she wasn’t supposed to be on campus, and that security would be alerted if someone tried to enter any dorm other than Drake. Cursing herself for nearly messing up so badly, she had trudged around to the back and used Mrs. Lattimer’s key to get in through the rear door. Noelle had had the key made at the beginning of the semester, in anticipation of the many times she wouldn’t make it back to Billings in time for curfew. She kept it wedged behind one of the wrought iron sconces that illuminated the back entrance. Ariana was the only other person on campus who knew about the key, but she’d never had to use it. Until now.

Exhausted, she leaned against the frosted glass shower door. The large sea foam green bathroom tiles were usually calming, usually
made the shower feel like a spa—her own small oasis. But today they just seemed hard and cold. She flinched as the water temperature dipped, then rose again. She knew that it didn’t matter how long she stood under the water. The guilt would be impossible to rinse away.

She had to believe that it wasn’t too late to fix things. If she could just get to Vermont, everything would be fine. She would remember that she loved Daniel, and why. Remember all the sweet things he had done for her in their year together.

And there had been so many. As she worked her coconut-scented shampoo through her tangled hair, she smiled at the memory of her birthday last spring. Daniel had shown up at her door in jeans and a T-shirt, holding a bottle of Clos du Mesnil. They’d taken a car to Manhattan, where he’d surprised her with a private literary tour of the West Village. They roamed the quaint streets together, exploring her favorite American authors’ haunts. Shared a bottle of red wine in a tiny, poorly lit bar overlooking Washington Square, where Henry James was said to have struggled through
The Wings of the Dove
. Downed a tall mug of dark beer at Chumley’s, where she could almost feel the ghosts of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in the next booth over. For an entire afternoon, she’d been transported to a place where she didn’t have to worry about her family, or making good grades, or keeping Paige Ryan happy so she would get a bid at Billings. She could lose herself in another time, in the stories she loved so much. And Daniel had done it all for her. Because he loved her.

He showed it every day, in the way he was so protective of her. Like that thing with Sergei the other night. Like . . .

Suddenly the memory of that awful night back in August came rushing back to Ariana and her eyes popped open. She didn’t want to remember what Daniel had done that night, but the images came back in full color nonetheless. All the Billings Girls and their boyfriends had been hanging out in the woods, a last gathering before classes started. Ariana was snuggled against Daniel in front of the fire, sipping a beer, when she felt his body tense beside her. He’d accused one of Dash’s buddies from home of staring at Ariana, and just like that, Daniel had snapped.

Ariana squeezed her eyes closed again and braced her hand against the wall, trying to block it out, but she couldn’t. She heard the crack as the guy was slammed back against a tree. The sick, dull thud of Daniel’s fists as they hit him again and again. The pathetic pleading, over and over and over again.

Please, man . . . I didn’t mean anything . . . please stop. . . .

Finally, Dash had dragged Daniel off and helped his friend back to his car, but everyone else had acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Paige had shrugged it off with a roll of her eyes and a “That’s my brother.” Even Noelle had seemed impressed that Daniel would go so far to protect his territory.

His territory. Me,
Ariana thought.

Her skin prickled with heat even as the water turned colder. She had to get out of the shower before she got pneumonia. As she grasped the shower nozzle and turned it all the way to the left, the sound of screeching pipes echoed in the bathroom, but the water temperature didn’t change. Ariana held her breath and ducked
under the chilly spray, combing the shampoo out of her hair with her fingers.

Something caught her ear and Ariana froze. Had she just heard a creak, or was she imagining things? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow slip by. She grabbed her arm, anxiously digging her fingernails into her flesh.

“Hello? Thomas? Is that you?”

Nothing. But she was sure someone was there. Who was it? Was some random person watching her? For a long moment, Ariana didn’t move. She simply held her breath and listened. There was nothing. It was her imagination. She was seeing things.

Then, another creak. Ariana turned off the icy cold water.

“Hello?” she called. The word hovered in the air a moment after she’d spoken. “Is someone there?”

Silence.

She opened the shower door a crack. The bathroom was empty. Single drops of water were falling slowly from the porcelain sink. But it had been dripping earlier, too, right? And everything was in its place: Noelle’s cubby stocked with shampoo, loofahs, and expensive clay facial masques; Ariana’s electric toothbrush; her towel, draped over the bench just outside the shower door. She blinked. Strange. She could have sworn she’d hung it on the door hook. She
always
hung it on the hook.

She shook her head. It was just her imagination. That was all. She was in Billings, alone, for the first time, and it was creeping her out. She’d obviously been rushed and upset and put her clothes in a different place. Not a big deal. She exhaled a shaky sigh of relief and reached for her towel.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom swung open. Ariana screamed.

“Perfect timing,” Thomas Pearson said with a leer.

“Thomas!” Ariana screeched, wrapping the towel around her as tightly as possible. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Oh my God, Thomas Pearson just saw me naked. Completely. Naked.

His features contorted, like he was trying to keep a straight face. There was snow in his hair and his cheeks had turned adorably pink from the cold. “Sorry. I mean, sorry I scared you. Not that I saw you naked. Just to be clear.”

“That’s not funny.” She closed the door again, putting the foggy glass between the two of them, and huddled in the corner to take a breath, hand to her chest. “What are you doing here?”

Thomas walked into the bathroom. She could hear him rifling through the medicine cabinet over the sink. “Just wanted to give you a chance to apologize. You know, for being such a bitch.”