The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (190 page)

Ariana pulled him to his feet, and he leaned against her. They struggled around the side of Ketlar toward Drake. It was extremely slow going with the snow as deep as it was, and his weight seemed to grow heavier as they neared the dorm. Ariana’s muscles burned with
every step, and her mind raced with thoughts of Daniel. She hadn’t wanted to believe that he could hurt her like this, hadn’t wanted to think that he could. . . . She shook her head, trying to clear her.

Drake rose up in front of them, looking just as cold and dead as Ketlar had. Even though they wouldn’t have electricity, at least they’d have heat. She stopped when they rounded the side of the building, leaning against Drake’s frozen exterior. She wasn’t sure she had the will to walk another step. She reminded herself that the dorm was heated.
Almost there.
She gritted her teeth and took another step.

“Basement windows are always unlocked,” Thomas mumbled. “I’ve gotten in this way a few times. Never fails.” Ariana braced herself against Thomas’s deadweight. He had definitely taken too much Vicodin. It wouldn’t be long before he was unconscious.

“Just stay with me a little longer,” she demanded.

Four large windows, evenly spaced along the back edge of Drake, looked over the dorm basement. She made it to the first window, collapsing against it.

“Think you can hold yourself up while I open the window?”

She lifted Thomas’s face to hers. His eyes were half-closed, and a smile played across his lips.

“Thomas,” she said sternly.

“Yeah . . .” He nodded.

“Good.”

She crouched down in front of the window, pressing her palms against the glass.

“It’s warm,” she announced, wiping the pane with her sleeve and
peering inside. The basement was cluttered with large cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling and buckets full of cleaning and yard supplies. A large furnace was situated on the other side of the basement, next to the long flight of stairs that led to Drake’s first floor.

She gripped the window and tugged it upward. It gave instantly, and a blast of warm air escaped from inside. Surprised, she fell back and landed on her butt.

“Told you,” Thomas murmured with a smile. “I know my way around this dorm. Wanna know why?”

“Not really.” She dragged a thick pine branch over to the window and wedged it between the window and the windowsill. The opening was almost six feet above the floor. Thomas wouldn’t be able to make it without hurting his ankle again. But they didn’t have a choice. She slipped through the opening, knees bent, and landed on her feet. The air was musty, and she doubled over in a coughing fit.

“We used to have beer pong tournaments down here. I used to sneak in with a girl named Rebecca,” Thomas droned from outside. “I think that’s her name.” He slid his legs through the window and grinned down at Ariana from his perch above. “That’s it. Definitely Rebecca or Lindsay or Paige.” He paused. “Or Juliana. We know a Juliana? No. Wait. We know an Ariana.”

“Yes, we do,” Ariana sighed. “Do you think you can jump?” She took a step back from the window.

“Paige,” Thomas mused, his words beginning to slur. “She’s kind of a bitch, huh?”

Ariana laughed out loud in spite of herself. “Now, Thomas. Before you’re out cold.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Thomas flipped over on his stomach and eased down slowly. He released his hands from the window and dropped the last few inches to the floor. “How’s that?”

“Fine,” she said, her face flushing with embarrassment. High as a kite, and he could still figure out a better way in than she could. She guided his hand over her shoulder, and they navigated their way through the cluttered basement. She eyed the narrow staircase that rose up from the right corner of the room, wishing she could stroll up the stairs and into a warm, safe bed.

Instead she had to settle for the hollow space underneath the stairs. Once she’d propped Thomas against the wall, she stopped to look at him. His face was smeared with dark blood.

How had that gotten there? She frantically searched his face and body for cuts, anything. After a moment she rested her face in her hands, defeated, exhausted. Cold. But there was something sticky on her hands. Warm almost.

“Oh my God.” She heaved, realizing the blood was coming from her. It was all over her hands, her hair. She tore her coat off, examined her own body for cuts. There were none. But that couldn’t be right, unless . . .

The blood wasn’t hers.

She glanced down at her coat, her pulse flickering erratically. There was a bloodstain on the left side of her coat, over her heart.

Someone else’s blood. She shoved the coat in the corner underneath the stairwell. Her stomach heaved.

Someone else’s blood.

So there had been someone in Thomas’s room with her. She
had
hurt someone. But who? Whose blood was all over her? Was it Daniel’s?

Thomas moaned something she couldn’t understand. With numb hands, she guided him into her lap, cradling his head in her arms.

“Careful,” she said softly, as if speaking to a child. Fear surged through her as she wiped the blood from his face with her fingers, leaving a rusty stain on his cheek. This wasn’t Thomas. Thomas was strong and funny and confident. The guy in her arms was scared and hurt.

“You’re so beautiful, you know that?” Thomas said softly, his eyes fluttering closed. “I don’t deserve a girl like you.” His mouth fell open slightly and his head lolled away from her.

“Thomas?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

He didn’t answer. She slipped her hand into his and watched his chest rise and fall, watched the tiny, involuntary movements of sleep. She tried not to think about the fact that she was alone. That Thomas couldn’t help her. Protect her. But protect her from whom?

She wanted to believe that it wasn’t Daniel, that he wasn’t capable of doing such things. Not to her anyway. Yes, he could be violent. But after spending a year in a relationship with him, after everything they had shared, would he really try to physically harm her?

Suddenly she realized she had no idea. Up until this afternoon, she had thought she knew everything about him—the good and the bad. But he had lied to her about being a virgin. Had lied about one
of the most important things in life. What else had he kept from her? What other secrets was he hiding? What else was he capable of?

There was only one way for her to find out whether was in Vermont. She couldn’t call his cell phone this time. She had to call the resort and have him paged. If he picked up, she’d know he was there and not here. Not the one she’d slashed in the darkness of Thomas’s room. Then she would know, at least, that she was safe from Daniel Ryan.

Ariana pulled her phone from her coat pocket and opened it. The screen flashed the low-battery icon, then went blank.

“No!” she groaned.

She patted Thomas’s pockets, searching for his phone. Empty.

Ariana clenched her fists, feeling blood that had caked on her palms crease under her grip. What had she done to deserve this? Nothing that Daniel hadn’t already done. Disgust welled up inside of her as she thought about his lies. His promises.

But Thomas was different. To him, she wasn’t some girl whose mom was crazy and whose dad had to flee to another continent just to get away from it all. She was separate from her messed-up family. She was Ariana. And she
mattered
to Thomas. And for the first time in her life, that feeling mattered more than anything else. More than Billings. Maybe even more than her mother.

Drinking in the look of innocence that had settled over his features as he slept, her breath quickened. Anger poured through her, and she felt the sudden urge to scream. To hit the cement wall over and over until her knuckles bled. To make herself hurt on the outside as much
as she hurt on the inside. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. To feel what she felt with Thomas only to have someone want to take it from her.

Her fingers and toes prickled with feeling as her body began to warm. She blinked, and the tears began to fall freely. Slid down her dry cheeks as she leaned against the hard cement wall, her body shaking. Cradling Thomas’s still body in her arms.

Every creak of the old building, every sound that slipped through the vents and into the basement, made her cringe. Tears dripping into her lap, she closed her eyes against the darkness, but she couldn’t stop the familiar feeling from creeping over her.

Ariana was totally and completely alone.

Ariana felt the light on her face before she opened her eyes. A flashlight beam swung recklessly across the basement, illuminating the tall stacks of musty boxes and the old gardening-slash-beer-pong table piled high with tools and dusty bags of fertilizer. Her heart in her throat, she sipped shaky breaths of warm, stale air as footsteps creaked above her, moving down the stairs in cautious rhythm.

Someone was coming.

She had to move Thomas in a matter of seconds. His legs were sprawled at an unnatural angle, peeking out from beneath the stairs. Carefully, she cradled his head in her hands, lowering it to the cement floor. She slipped her forearms underneath his calves, straining silently against him. His deadweight was too heavy. He didn’t move an inch.

The footsteps continued down the stairs, and Ariana tugged with her last bit of strength. She wasn’t ready to leave Easton. It couldn’t
be over for her yet. Anxious fear swept through her, and she found the strength to drag Thomas completely under the stairs and out of sight.

He mumbled something in his sleep, and the footsteps above them paused. She pressed her hand over Thomas’s mouth, praying he wouldn’t try to speak again. The footsteps resumed slowly, tentatively, as they navigated the darkness.

“Shit.” A male voice sounded just inches from their hiding place. The bottom step cracked under the man’s weight, and he stumbled into the basement. The flashlight fell to the floor and sliced across the room, spinning underneath the gardening table in the middle of the space. A sharp white light glowed parallel to the staircase, inches from Thomas’s foot.

Ariana stopped breathing.

Please. Please, no, no, no.

A dark silhouette stepped into view and bent down to pick up the flashlight. Carefully, quietly, she leaned forward and peeked through the crack between the furnace and the stairwell. Residual light from the beam was just bright enough for Ariana to make out the outline of a familiar figure crouched under the table.

Mr. Holmes.

What the hell was her lit teacher doing in the Drake basement?

Warm dread trickled through Ariana’s veins. It didn’t matter why he was there. All that mattered was that he couldn’t find her there. Of all the teachers she’d ever had at Easton, she had always respected him the most. He was smart and funny and good. And he believed the same about her. She needed him to believe the same about her.

But all that would be over if he found her on campus illegally, covered in blood, cradling the passed-out body of Easton’s resident drug dealer in her arms.

Ariana bit her lip, hard. How had she ended up here? What was the matter with her? She was a Billings Girl, one of Easton’s elite. This was not how she was supposed to be spending her Christmas break, hiding out like a freaking fugitive and on the verge of getting expelled.

She hated herself. Hated herself with a passion so hot it burned her skin. She wished she could strip her coat off, but Holmes was only a few feet away. And besides, she was pinned under Thomas.

The faint taste of her own blood surfaced in Ariana’s mouth as she watched Mr. Holmes walk slowly to the far end of the basement, toward the windows, shining the flashlight behind boxes, underneath chairs, and over tables. He turned toward the stairwell, sweeping the light across the dirty floor. The piercing beam neared Ariana, and she ducked back under the stairs, drawing her knees up to her chest.

Had he seen her? Heard her? If he had, it was over. Mr. Holmes would have to turn them in. Her body shook with nerves as the seconds passed, feeling like hours. Any relationship she thought she’d had with Mr. Holmes would be shattered when he found out she wasn’t who he thought she was. When he found out that she had lied and broken the rules.

And it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to. That she wished, more than anything, that she could be the same sweet, good Ariana
she’d been just a few days before. That she’d only broken the rules because it was absolutely necessary. And it was too late to turn back the clock. She screwed her eyes shut.

“You down here?” Mr. Holmes called.

Ariana’s heart all but stopped. Then a delicate whisper sounded at the top of the stairs, and Mr. Holmes swung the flashlight up the stairwell.

“I’m here.”

Tension flooded out of Ariana’s body. Safe, at least for the moment.

“Good.” His voice sounded strange in the dark. Thick.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Holmes?” Ariana recognized the voice immediately and her pulse raced with intrigue. She heard that sweet, lilting tone laced with condescension in the halls of Billings almost every day.

Isobel Bautista.

Ariana shifted onto her knees and leaned forward, peering out from her hiding place. Risky, she knew, but she had to find out what was going on.

“I did.” Mr. Holmes smirked, leaning against the gardening table and loosening his tie. “Seems I don’t have a paper from you on
Madame Bovary
in my mailbox. Care to explain yourself, Miss Bautista?”

“Must have slipped my mind,” she said mischievously, moving into full view. Her silky black hair tumbled down her back. She ran her fingers up his arms and across his chest, lifting her mouth to his ear. “Any way I could make it up to you?”

She pulled his tie from around his neck, tossing it on the floor. Her hands flew expertly over the buttons on his shirt, across his belt buckle as he ran his fingers through her hair. She slid onto the table and pulled him toward her. Ariana heard his breath quickening in the dark as Isobel edged off his shirt and let it fall to the floor.