Last Christmas Read online

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. Gold. 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.

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  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

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  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

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  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.

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  DUPLICITY

  ***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

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  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.

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  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

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  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?"

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  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.

  Oh. My. God.

  Ariana closed her eyes and sank back underneath the staircase next to Thomas. This couldn't be happening.

  Mr. Holmes would never have an affair with a student. He couldn't. Everyone at Easton knew that he was a

  good guy. A guy with a wife at home, a pregnant wife who sometimes made biscotti for him to bring to class.

  He wouldn't do this to her. There was no way.

  Of course, the slobbering kissing sounds coming from the other side of the room suggested otherwise.

  Ariana's stomach turned. She was even more disgusted with Isobel. She'd been dating her boyfriend, Jack,

  since freshman year. Was almost as attached to him as she was to her morning latte. Ariana had once caught

  her doodling the name Mrs. John Staton in the back of her spring issue of Vogue, and knew that the two of

  them were serious. The spring issue was Isobel's prize possession. It was common knowledge around Billings

  that any girl who so much as looked at her copy of the issue before Isobel read it cover to cover twice would

  never live to tell the tale.

  And yet here they were, Mr. Holmes and Isobel, devouring each other like a pair of horny, rabid dogs in the

  Drake basement. Ariana felt her hands beginning to shake, and she didn't bother to stop them.

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  It wasn't just the fact that they were hooking up, or lying about it, or breaking all sorts of state statutory rape

  laws in the process. She was more pissed at herself for being so naive as to believe that they were good

  people. That they were incapable of doing something so wrong. She had underestimated them, just like she'd

  underestimated Daniel. She'd been at Easton long enough to know that nothing was ever exactly what it

  seemed. Apparently, she hadn't learned the lesson well enough. She felt her hands curling tightly around

  Thomas's wool coat, and rage churned in the pit of her stomach.

  She noticed Mr. Holmes's Dockers out of the corner of her eye. Isobel had whipped the pants toward the

  stairwell, and they were almost within reach. A phone peeked out of the back pocket, and Ariana glanced

  down at her own cell, dead on the floor next to her.

  She still needed to call Daniel, to find out if he was actually in Vermont. And to do that, she needed a cell

  phone that actually worked. As long as Mr. Holmes was busy holding his perverted version of office hours, he

  wouldn't miss his cell.

  Ever so carefully, Ariana inched her foot out from beneath the stairwell, keeping her gaze fixed on Mr.

  Holmes and Isobel to be sure they didn't see her. She nudged the pants toward her, inch by inch, until they

  were close enough that she could reach out and grab the cell phone without exposing herself to the happy

  couple.

  Shielding the phone with her cupped hand, she flipped it open and stared at the screen. As her eyes adjusted to

  the light, the pixels on the screen coalesced to reveal a smiling pregnant woman, one hand resting on her

  belly. Mr. Holmes's wife was standing next to his desk,

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  gesturing proudly with the other hand toward the nameplate that was perched on top of a stack of books.

  Ariana forced herself to look away from the screen. That woman deserved better than Mr. Holmes.

  Don't we all deserve to be happy? Or at least to search for what we think might make us happy? Isn't that a

  basic human right?

  Her jaw tightened as she remembered Mr. Holmes's words in class a few days ago. Now, they took on an

  entirely different meaning. She'd thought he was challenging the class with those words. Pushing them to go

  deeper. But he was just using his lecture to justify an affair with a student. And she'd been stupid enough to

  listen. She shook her head in disgust, cursing herself for trusting him. For always trusting the wrong people.

  Her hand slipped against a button on the side of the phone, and suddenly she was staring at a crooked image

  of Mr. Holmes and Isobel pressed against each other. The furnace blocked part of the screen, but the flashlight

  on the floor offered just enough light for the screen to capture their faces.

  A tiny red dot throbbed at the top of the screen next to the letters rec. The phone was recording video. Her

  heart started to pound in her chest. What was she doing? All she had to do to stop the recording was press the

  button again, but something stopped her. A
riana felt betrayed-used. Disgusted that two people whom she

  had admired had turned out to be so unworthy. She wanted to preserve the evidence of this moment. The

  evidence of their debauchery, the depth of their duplicity. Numb, she stared at the grainy image until their

  bodies melted out of focus on the screen.

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  STALKER

  ***The sun was beginning to rise over the east edge of campus as Ariana crept toward Drake. She hadn't

  slept all night. Had simply stared into the darkness, her hand on Thomas's chest to monitor his breathing. In

  the early predawn hours, she'd slipped through one of the basement windows and sneaked back to Billings to

  get food. Now, she cradled in her arms the only things she'd been able to find in Noelle's closet: a bottle of

  SmartWater, a couple of Zone bars, and a white chocolate reindeer Dash had left on her pillow before break.

  Ariana shuddered in the cold, her body feeling weak and drained. She hadn't been able to bring herself to

  wear the bloodstained coat she'd stashed under the basement stairwell the night before, so while she was at

  Billings she had grabbed her camel-colored fall jacket. It was warm, but not nearly warm enough to combat

  the early morning chill, its icy fingers pressing against the back of her neck and sending continuous shivers

  down her spine.

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  The sound of her boots crunching over the hardened snow cut through the crisp air. As she hurried around

  Drake to get to the basement, she thought she heard another sound. Footsteps moving through the snow in

  tandem with hers. She froze, pressing her body against the side of the building. Holding her breath, trying to

  quiet the sound of her throbbing heart.

  Nothing but deafening silence.

  Don't be stupid, Ariana. No one else is up at 5 a.m. on break. You're alone. It's all in your head.Still, she

  picked up speed as she rounded the building, keeping her eyes on the ground in front of her. She couldn't

  bring herself to look at Ketlar. Just thinking about the deserted dorm chilled her more than the winter air.

  Made her feel like she was back in Thomas's room, petrified and alone. Staring at that awful photograph as a

  hot breath slid down her neck. Her stomach surged again at the memory. Whoever had been in there had

  wanted to hurt her. And had the means to do it. Worse than the idea that someone was trying to sabotage them

  was the suspicion that Daniel was the intruder.

  Mr. Holmes's cell phone hung like a heavy weight in Ariana's pocket. She had thought about calling the

  resort from her room at Billings but had wanted to get back before Thomas woke up. Thinking about making

  the call sent her pulse into overdrive, but she had to do it. Whether he was there or-God forbid-here, she

  had to know. She vowed to call the moment she was safely back at Drake.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, threads of pink light played over campus, casting colorful shadows over the

  white snow. The beautiful

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  sight of Easton's Gothic buildings, suddenly illuminated, should have calmed her. Ariana had always loved

  the way the campus looked in the early morning. The nightmares always woke her well before Noelle stirred,

  and she often sat at her desk to admire the view. Easton seemed so noble, so pristine in the hours before it was

  corrupted with students.

  But instead of looking serene and untouched, the looming buildings seemed menacing, threatening.

  She stopped in front of the first basement window. Something above her had moved. She looked up at the

  rows of windows that stretched above her. On the fourth floor, a shadow was moving in front of the window.

  Startled, Ariana flung herself toward the building and pressed her back up against the wall. She checked her

  watch. Five fifteen a.m. Who would be up at this hour? Trying to control her breathing, she titled her head