The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (187 page)

“What about you?” Thomas asked.

“What about me?”

“You said your mom wants you to be with Daniel. But what about you? What do you want?”

Ariana blinked. No one had ever asked her that before. How was it possible that he was the first?

“I . . .” Her voice faltered. “It’s . . . complicated.”

“Complicated? You either like the guy or you don’t. That’s the opposite of complicated.”

The challenge in his voice set Ariana on edge. “It’s not that simple,” she replied. “My mother . . . she lives through me. She’s
so
proud of me, of my life here. . . . If I ever ended things with Daniel, or got expelled, she would just . . .”

She couldn’t finish her thought. Couldn’t bear to imagine what would happen. And it would be all her fault. All. Her. Fault.

“That’s why I have to go to Vermont,” she finished. “I don’t have a choice.”

“But that’s not fair.” Thomas was incredulous. “You shouldn’t have to live your whole life for her. Doesn’t she want you to be happy?”

“Yes, but she believes Easton and Billings and Daniel are the things that will make me happy. And they should.” Her voice was getting higher and higher as she spoke. “I mean, they
do.
He’s a great guy, and he loves me.”

Thomas laughed cruelly. “Daniel Ryan doesn’t love anyone but himself.”

“You don’t know anything,” Ariana said, stacking her napkin pieces on the counter. “Why else would he be ready to lose his virgini—”

Thomas gaped at her.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Daniel Ryan told you he was a virgin?” he blurted.

Ariana felt her face flaming. “He
is
a virgin.”

Thomas’s eyes danced merrily, and suddenly it felt like the room was growing warmer. The condescending way he was looking at her, like she was naïve. Stupid. Her blood boiled in her veins. In her mind’s eye she saw herself picking up the heavy griddle and slamming the back of Thomas’s bent head with it, just to get that look out of his eye.

“Stop looking at me like that!” she said, standing. Her fingers twitched.

“I’m not. . . .” Thomas replied, his eyes serious again. “I’m just . . . I can’t believe he told you that. And I can’t believe you bought it.”

Ariana’s blood began to cool.

“I didn’t buy anything. It’s the truth,” Ariana said firmly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“You just made it my business,” Thomas said, standing. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Ariana didn’t move a muscle.

“I’m going to prove to you that he’s lying,” Thomas said lightly. “Unless you’re scared to know the truth.”

Ariana lifted her chin. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“Good. Then I propose a bet,” Thomas said, picking his coat up off the couch where he’d tossed it earlier.

“What kind of bet?” Ariana asked.

“I bet I can prove that Daniel Ryan is no virgin,” Thomas said, looking down at her. “If I’m wrong, I’ll . . .”

“Come back here and clean this mess up on your own?” Ariana suggested, though the very idea of leaving it behind made her skin crawl.

“Fine, and if you’re wrong, you have to kiss me again,” Thomas said.

“Very creative,” Ariana said, rolling her eyes.

“Men are a simple breed,” Thomas joked.

“Fine,” Ariana said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She pushed past him and yanked her own coat off the sofa. She knew Daniel would never lie to her. Not about something this big. And after the way he’d demeaned her, she couldn’t wait to wipe that cocky smirk off Thomas Pearson’s face.

Thomas shoved open the back door of Billings and they were both blasted in the face with ice and snow. Ariana could hardly see three feet in front of her.

“Come on. I’ll make sure you don’t blow away.” Thomas had to shout to be heard over the whistling wind. He offered her his ungloved hand.

She took it with her gloved one, telling herself it was just for survival purposes and for no other reason, and together they set out into the storm. The snow had piled up so high it kissed the frames of the first-floor windows. As they took their first steps, their legs sank down and the snow came right up to their knees. Ariana cringed as the cold soaked her fresh pair of jeans. Sharp gusts of wind blew the falling snow in dizzying circles around them.

Ariana’s eyes burned. Tears spilled down her cheeks when she blinked.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” she yelled. She turned around and stared longingly through the window into Mrs. Lattimer’s apartment. The memory of the cozy little kitchen disappeared with the next blast of wind.

“Just keep going,” Thomas replied.

They trudged the rest of the way without trying to speak. When they finally reached the back door of Ketlar, they huddled under the overhang, out of the way of the ice and snow. Ariana took a deep breath. Her hair was soaked, her nose was running, and her ears felt as if they were about to break off.

“That wasn’t so bad.” Thomas’s eyes looked gray against the eerie, snowy sky. The dark clouds above had a yellowish tinge, making it impossible to tell that it was just past noon.

Ariana simply stared him down, thinking about Noelle, all cozy in New York, probably eating mahi-mahi at Fred’s at Barneys with her parents, and the Ryans sitting together in front of a roaring fireplace in Vermont. All things she could be doing were she not stuck in this blizzard. She pushed her matted hair behind her shoulders. “Let’s just get inside.”

Thomas reached for the door and Ariana saw a dark figure move out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly Thomas yanked her inside. Together they ducked below the window in the Ketlar front door and Ariana held her breath.

“Who the hell is that?” Thomas whispered. “No one’s staying on this side of campus.”

Ariana inched up and, ignoring Thomas’s whispered pleas to stay
down, peeked out the window. A tall, lithe figure, hunched against the wind moved slowly by, following the general route of the cobblestone pathway that was covered by the snow. Jet black hair whipped wildly in the wind.

“It’s just Isobel,” Ariana whispered, dropping down again. “I don’t think she saw us.”

Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. “What the hell is she doing back here?”

“She’s here for a week while her parents are on vacation.”

“Isobel Bautista couldn’t figure out another vacation plan?” Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like an excuse to me.”

Ariana shrugged and tried to slow her breathing. Her lungs felt like they were filled with shards of glass. “We have to be more careful. If the wrong stay-behind student catches us, we’re screwed.”

“I know.” Thomas stood and grabbed Ariana’s hands to pull her up. “I can’t get caught. My parents will disinherit me.”

“Yeah. Mine too,” Ariana said dryly. She pressed her hands on either side of her nose in an attempt to warm it. It didn’t work.

“No. Seriously.” Thomas’s voice echoed in the empty Ketlar lobby. “One more strike, and I’m cut out of the will. Everything goes to Blake.”

Ariana stared at Thomas in disbelief. “They’d do that?”

Thomas nodded. “They warned me after the last time Headmaster Cox called them. Some freshman told the Wesley advisor that I sold him Adderall.”

“Did you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

“Ungrateful prick,” Thomas muttered. He turned and strode over to the elevator as if he hadn’t just admitted to being a drug dealer. “Let’s go,” he threw over his shoulder. “You’ve got a bet to lose.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ariana said, standing outside the door to Daniel’s dorm room. “He’d kill me.”

“Kill you, huh? Sounds like a winner,” Thomas teased.

Ariana shot him a look of death and shoved the door open. Piles of dirty sports uniforms, back issues of
ESPN
magazine, and protein bar wrappers covered the floor. His dresser exploded with clothes, and a bowl of half-eaten cereal sat on his desk.

“This is nasty,” Thomas announced, eyeing a pair of grass- and mud-stained shorts on Daniel’s bed. “Even for a dude.”

“He doesn’t have a lot of time to clean,” Ariana said, wrinkling her nose as she stepped over a lacrosse helmet.

“Oh, right. Because he’s so busy with all his clubs and teams and being First every semester. Message received,” Thomas replied.

Embarrassed that he’d read her so easily, Ariana turned away and automatically started picking up after Daniel, folding clothes that
looked clean and swiping the dirty ones into his hamper. As she was trying to shove a T-shirt inside, Thomas pulled it away from her and dumped the entire contents out in front of the closet doors.

“What are you doing?” Ariana wailed.

Thomas rifled through the clothes. “Proof enough?” he asked, lifting a lacy camisole from the mess. “Either your boy is getting some on the side, or he likes to play dress-up. Either way, you lose.”

“That’s mine.” Ariana smiled, snatching the cami away from him. “Glad you like it, though.”

“Huh.” Thomas eyed the camisole in her hands, then shifted his gaze to her body, letting his eyes wander.

“Strike one,” she said quickly, stuffing the flimsy garment into her pocket. “Give up?”

“No way,” Thomas scoffed. “I’m just getting started.”

He ambled over to Daniel’s desk, opening and slamming the doors one after the other. Finally he tossed a bunch of books on the floor and a slow grin surfaced.

“Score.” He took a seat on the desk and pulled Daniel’s laptop onto his lap. “Password?”

She shrugged. “No idea,” she said lightly. She crossed the room and leaned back against the desk next to him. “Sorry.”

“Oh, come on,” he protested. “You don’t know your own boyfriend’s password?”

“I told you, I trust him. And he trusts me.”

Lie.

“Yeah?” Thomas raised his brows skeptically.

“As a general rule, I don’t go snooping around in his personal stuff.”

“
Didn’t
,” Thomas corrected her. “You
didn’t
go snooping around in his personal stuff. Until now.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the desk. “What’s his lacrosse number?”

“Twenty-nine,” she replied. “But that’s way too obvious.”

Still. Thomas typed
Ryan29
in the password prompt box.
Invalid password
flashed on the screen.
Daniel29
,
DRyan29
, and
LAX29
elicited the same response.

“Aw.” Ariana pouted. “Strike two.”

She lifted the cereal bowl onto the shelf above the desk and sat down next to Thomas. A strange sensation spread through her body. Relief? Not possible. She hadn’t expected Thomas to find anything. Daniel had never given her a reason not to trust him. And if he shouldn’t trust her anymore, she did trust him. There was no reason for them to be there, going through his personal stuff. Her hair was still damp, but suddenly she felt like she needed another shower.

“Okay,” she announced, tapping her fingernails against the desk. “You gave it a shot. Now let’s get out of here.” The sound of her own nails on the oak surface made her even jumpier. “Let’s go. Please.”

“You have to give me a fair chance to win the bet,” Thomas muttered. “All right. We’ll try something easier. What’s his birthday?”

She sighed impatiently. “August twelfth.”

Thomas typed in Daniel’s birthday. It didn’t work. Ariana jumped off the desk and picked up Daniel’s books from the floor. “Come on.
You’ve got some dishes to do.” She arranged the books haphazardly across the desk, even though it pained her not to leave a neat stack, and turned for the door.

“Wait. Give me one more shot.” Thomas bent over the keyboard.

“No, we’re leaving.” She chose to ignore the dog-eared issue of
Maxim
next to her foot and focused instead on the screen as Thomas typed the word
password
into the prompt box.

Welcome, Daniel Ryan!
flashed on the screen, and a picture of Daniel holding his lacrosse stick glowed behind his desktop icons. Her heart sank.

“Unbelievable.” Thomas smirked. “You’re dating a tool, you know that?’

“Shut up,” Ariana replied through her teeth.

“We’ll try his IM conversations first,” he said, skillfully clicking his way through Daniel’s saved conversations.

“For the record, this is wrong,” she announced, even though her heart was pounding from the intrigue. Morbid curiosity was definitely getting the better of her. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“It’s a little late for that kind of talk,” he replied, scanning the list of conversations. He opened one and skimmed it, laughing quietly to himself. “Oh, this is good.”

“What?” Ariana’s heart thumped. He looked like he’d just hit the jackpot.

“Just read.”

Thomas shifted the laptop screen in her direction. Her heart sped up as she read the first lines of the conversation.

RyanLAX (8:07 P.M.): U there? Come over

Angel01 (8:08 P.M.): Can’t. Too much work for tomorrow.

Tomorrow night if you’re good.

RyanLAX (8:11 P.M.): Any way to convince u?

Angel01 (8:13 P.M.): You have something in mind?

RyanLAX (8:15 P.M.): Come over and find out

Angel01 (8:18 P.M.): Need a hint first

RyanLAX (8:19 P.M.): Hint: u won’t need ur clothes

Angel01 (8:21 P.M.): Good thing I just got out of the shower ;)

She felt Thomas’s eyes on her, and her face warmed.

“That’s enough,” she said slowly, exiting out of the conversation. “I don’t need to read any more.” She pushed the laptop screen toward Thomas and looked away.

Thomas shifted. “Listen, Ariana,” he began. “It’s better for you to know now before you—”

Ariana laughed. “Could you be any more gullible? I don’t need to read any more because I’m Angel-zero-one!”

Thomas’s eyes were wide. “So you
are
a naughty girl.”

Ariana blushed. “Are you ready to admit it yet? Just admit Daniel’s not a liar and we can go.”

“Not even close,” Thomas replied. He opened up a couple of files from the desktop and scanned the contents. Ariana watched him, and after a few clicks of the mouse, she saw his face change. He paused, and his eyes flickered with interest. Ariana’s fingers clenched along with her stomach.