Torment (28 page)

About an hour later, a knock on the window made Luce jump as she sat staring at the dwindling fire in the hearth. Before she could even get up, there was a second knock on the pane, but this time it sounded more hesitant. Luce rose from the floor and went to the window. What was Daniel doing here again? After making such a huge deal about how unsafe it was to see each other, why did he keep turning up?

She didn’t even know what Daniel wanted from her—other than to torment her, the way she’d seen him torment those other versions of her in the Announcers. Or, as he put it,
loved
so many versions of her. Tonight all she wanted from him was to be left alone.

She flung open the wooden shutters, then pushed up the pane, knocking over yet another one of Shelby’s thousand plants. She braced her hands on the sill, then plunged her head into the night, ready to rip into Daniel.

But it wasn’t Daniel standing on the ledge in the moonlight.

It was Miles.

He’d changed out of his fancy clothes, but he’d left off the Dodgers cap. Most of his body was in shadow, but the outline of his broad shoulders was clear against the deep blue night. His shy smile brought an answering smile to her face. He was holding a gold cornucopia full of orange lilies plucked from one of the Harvest Fest centerpieces.

“Miles,” Luce said. The word felt funny in her mouth. It was tinged with pleasant surprise, when a moment ago she’d been so prepared to be nasty. Her heartbeat picked up, and she couldn’t stop grinning.

“How crazy is it that I can walk from the ledge outside my window to yours?”

Luce shook her head, stunned too. She’d never even been to Miles’s room on the boys’ side of the dorm. She didn’t even know where it was.

“See?” His smile broadened. “If you hadn’t been grounded, we never would have known. It’s really pretty out here, Luce; you should come out. You’re not scared of heights or anything?”

Luce wanted to go out on the ledge with Miles. She just didn’t want to be reminded of the times she’d been out there with Daniel. The two of them were so different. Miles—dependable, sweet, concerned. Daniel—the love of her life. If only it were that simple. It seemed unfair, and impossible, to compare them.

“How come you’re not at the beach with everyone?” she asked.

“Not
everyone’s
down at the beach.” Miles smiled. “You’re here.” He waved the cornucopia of flowers in the air. “I brought these for you from the dinner. Shelby’s got all those plants on her side of the room. I thought you could put these on your desk.”

Miles shoved the wicker horn through the window at her. It was brimming with the glossy orange flowers. Their black stamens shivered in the wind. They weren’t perfect, a few were even wilting, but they were so much lovelier than the larger-than-life peonies Francesca had made bloom.
Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere
.

This was maybe the nicest thing anyone had done for her at Shoreline—up there with the time Miles had broken into Steven’s office to steal the book so he could help Luce learn how to step through a shadow. Or the time Miles had invited her to have breakfast, the very first day he met her. Or how quick Miles had been to include her in his Thanksgiving plans. Or the utter absence of resentment on Miles’s face when he’d been assigned garbage duty after she’d gotten him in trouble for sneaking out. Or the way Miles …

She could go on, she realized, all night. She carried the flowers across the room and set them on her desk.

When she came back, Miles was holding out a hand for her to step through the window. She could make up an excuse, something lame about not breaking Francesca’s rules. Or she could just take his hand, warm and strong and safe, and let herself glide through. She could forget Daniel for just a moment.

Outside, the sky was an explosion of stars. They glittered in the black night like Ms. Fisher’s diamonds—but clearer, brighter, even more beautiful. From here, the redwood canopy east of the school looked dense and dark and foreboding; to the west were the ceaselessly churning water and the distant glow of the bonfire blazing down on the blustery beach. Luce had noticed these things before from the ledge. Ocean. Forest. Sky. But all the other times she’d been out here, Daniel had consumed her focus. Almost blinded her, to the point where she’d never really taken in the scene.

It truly was breathtaking.

“You’re probably wondering why I came over,” Miles said, which made Luce realize they’d both been silent for a while. “I started to tell you this earlier, but—I didn’t—I’m not sure—”

“I’m glad you came by. It was getting a little boring in there, staring at the fire.” She gave him half a smile.

Miles stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Look, I know you and Daniel—”

Luce involuntarily groaned.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t even bring this up—”

“No, that wasn’t why I groaned.”

“It’s just … You know I like you, right?”

“Um.”

Of course Miles liked her. They were friends. Good friends.

Luce chewed her lip. Now she was playing dumb with herself, which was never a good sign. The truth: Miles
liked
her. And she
liked
him, too. Look at the guy. With his ocean-blue eyes and the little chuckle he gave every time he broke into a smile. Plus, he was hands down the nicest person she had ever met.

But there was Daniel, and before him there’d been Daniel too, and Daniel again and again and—it was endlessly complicated.

“I’m botching this.” Miles winced. “When all I really wanted to do was say goodnight.”

She looked up at him and found that he was looking down at her. His hands came out of his pockets, found her hands, and clasped them in the space between their chests. He leaned down slowly, deliberately, giving Luce another chance to feel the spectacular night all around them.

She knew that Miles was going to kiss her. She knew she shouldn’t let him. Because of Daniel, of course—but also because of what had happened when she’d kissed Trevor. Her first kiss. The only kiss she’d ever had with anyone besides Daniel. Could being tied to Daniel be the reason Trevor died? What if the second she kissed Miles, he … she couldn’t even bear to think about it.

“Miles.” She pressed him back. “You shouldn’t do this. Kissing me is”—she swallowed—“dangerous.”

He chuckled. Of course he would, because he didn’t know anything about Trevor. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

She tried to pull back, but Miles had a way of making her feel good about almost everything. Even this. When his mouth came down on hers, she held her breath, waiting for the worst.

But nothing happened.

Miles lips were feather-soft, kissing her gently enough that he still felt like her good friend—but with just enough passion to prove there was more where this one came from. If she wanted it.

But even if there were no flames, no scorched skin, no death or destruction—and why weren’t there?—the kiss was still supposed to
feel
wrong. For so long, all her lips had wanted were Daniel’s lips, all the time. She used to dream about his kiss, his smile, his gorgeous violet eyes, his body holding hers. There was never supposed to be anyone else.

What if she’d been wrong about Daniel? What if she could be happier—or happy, period—with another guy?

Miles pulled away, looking happy and sad at the same time. “So, goodnight.” He turned away, almost like he was going to bolt back toward his room. But then he turned back. And took her hand. “If you ever feel like things aren’t working out, you know, with …” He looked up at the sky. “I’m here. Just wanted you to know.”

Luce nodded, already battling a rolling wave of confusion. Miles squeezed her hand, then took off in the other direction, bounding over the sloping shingled roof, back toward his side of the dorm.

Alone, she traced her lips where Miles’s had just been. The next time she saw Daniel, would he be able to tell? Her head hurt from all the ups and downs of the day, and she wanted to crawl into bed. As she slipped back through the window into her room, she turned one last time to take in the view, to remember how everything had looked on the night when so many things had changed.

But instead of the stars and trees and crashing waves, Luce’s eyes fixed on something else behind one of the roof’s many chimneys. Something white and billowing. An iridescent pair of wings.

Daniel. Crouched, only half hidden from view, just feet away from where she and Miles had kissed. His back was to her. His head was hanging.

“Daniel,” she called out, feeling her voice catch on his name.

When he turned to face her, the drawn look on his face was one of absolute agony. As if Luce had just ripped his heart out. He bent his knees, unfurled his wings, and took off into the night.

A moment later, he looked like just another star in the sparkling black sky.

SIXTEEN

THREE DAYS

A
t breakfast the next morning, Luce could hardly eat anything.

It was the last day of classes before Shoreline dismissed the students for Thanksgiving break, and Luce was already feeling lonely. Loneliness in a crowd of people was the worst kind of loneliness, but she couldn’t help it. All the students around her were chattering happily about going home to their families. About the girl or guy they hadn’t seen since summer break. About the parties their best friends were throwing over the weekend.

The only party Luce was going to this weekend was the pity party in her empty dorm room.

Of course, a few other students from the main school were staying put over the break: Connor Madson, who had come to Shoreline from an orphanage in Minnesota. Brenna Lee, whose parents lived in China. Francesca and Steven were staying, too—surprise, surprise—and were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner-for-the-displaced in the mess hall Thursday night.

Luce was holding out one hope: That Arriane’s threat to keep an eye on her included Thanksgiving break. Then again, she’d barely seen the girl since Arriane had taken the three of them back to Shoreline. Only for that brief moment at Harvest Fest.

Everyone else was checking out in the next day or two. Miles to his family’s one-hundred-plus-person catered event. Dawn and Jasmine to their families’ joint gathering at Jasmine’s Sausalito mansion. Even Shelby—though she hadn’t said a word to Luce about going back to Bakersfield—had been on the phone with her mom the day before, groaning, “
Yes
. I
know
. I’ll
be
there.”

It was the worst possible time for Luce to be left alone. The stew of her inner turmoil grew thicker every day, until she didn’t know how to feel about Daniel or anyone else. And she couldn’t stop cursing herself for how stupid she’d been the night before, letting Miles go so far.

All night long, she kept arriving at the same conclusion: Even though she was upset with Daniel, what had happened with Miles wasn’t anyone’s fault but hers. She was the one who’d cheated.

It made her physically ill to think of Daniel sitting out there, watching, saying nothing as she and Miles kissed; to imagine how he must have felt when he took off from her roof. The way she’d felt when she first heard about whatever had happened between Daniel and Shelby—only worse, because this was bona fide cheating. One more thing to add to the list of proofs that she and Daniel could not seem to communicate.

A soft laugh brought her back to her uneaten breakfast.

Francesca was gliding around the tables in a long black-and-white polka-dotted cape. Every time Luce glanced over at her, she had that saccharine smile stuck on her face and was deep in conversation with one student or another, but Luce still felt under heavy scrutiny. As if Francesca could bore into Luce’s mind and know exactly what had made Luce lose her appetite. Like the wild white peonies that had disappeared without a trace from their border overnight, so too could Francesca’s belief disappear that Luce was strong.

“Why so glum, chum?” Shelby swallowed a large wedge of bagel. “Believe me, you didn’t miss that much last night.”

Luce didn’t answer. The bonfire on the beach was the furthest thing from her mind. She’d just noticed Miles trudging to breakfast, much later than he usually did. His Dodgers cap was tugged low over his eyes, and his shoulders looked a little stooped. Involuntarily, her fingers went to her lips.

Shelby was waving flamboyantly, both arms over her head. “What is he, blind? Earth to Miles!”

When she finally caught his attention, Miles gave their table a clumsy wave, practically tripping over the to-go buffet. He waved again, then disappeared behind the mess hall.

“Is it me or has Miles been acting like a total spaz recently?” Shelby rolled her eyes and imitated Miles’s goofy stumble.

But Luce was dying to stumble after him and—

And what? Tell him not to feel embarrassed? That the kiss had been her fault, too? That having a crush on a train wreck like her was only going to end badly? That she liked him, but so many things about it—them—were impossible? That even though she and Daniel were fighting right now, nothing could ever really threaten their love?

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Shelby continued, refilling Luce’s coffee from the bronze carafe on the table. “Bonfire, hedonism, blah blah blah. These things can be so tedious.” One side of Shelby’s mouth flinched to an almost-smile. “Especially, you know, when you’re not around.”

Luce’s heart unclenched just a little. Every once in a while, Shelby let in the tiniest ray of light. But then her roommate quickly shrugged, as if to say
Don’t let it go to your head
.

“No one else appreciates my Lilith impersonation. That’s all.” Shelby straightened her spine, heaved her chest forward, and made the right side of her top lip quiver disapprovingly.

Shelby’s Lilith impersonation had never failed to crack Luce up. But today all she could manage was a thin closed-mouth smile.

“Hmmm,” Shelby said. “Not that you’d care what you missed at the party. I noticed Daniel flying away over the beach last night. You two must have had a lot to catch up on.”

Shelby had seen Daniel? Why hadn’t she mentioned it sooner? Could anyone else have seen him?

“We didn’t even talk.”

“That’s hard to believe. He’s usually so full of orders to give you—”

“Shelby, Miles kissed me,” Luce interrupted. Her eyes were closed. For some reason, that made it easier to confess. “Last night. And Daniel saw everything. He took off before I could—”

“Yeah, that would do it.” Shelby let out a low whistle. “This is kind of huge.”

Luce’s face burned with shame. Her mind couldn’t shake the image of Daniel taking flight. It felt so final.

“So is it, you know,
over
between you and Daniel?”

“No. Never.” Luce couldn’t even hear that phrase without shuddering. “I just don’t know.”

She hadn’t told Shelby the rest of what she’d glimpsed in the Announcer, that Daniel and Cam were working together. Were secret pals, as far as she could tell. Shelby wouldn’t know who Cam was, anyway, and the history was way too complicated to explain. Besides, Luce wouldn’t be able to stand it if Shelby, with her oh-so-deliberately-controversial views about angels and demons, tried to make a case that a partnership between Daniel and Cam wasn’t that big a deal.

“You know Daniel’s gonna be all screwed up over it right now. Isn’t that Daniel’s big thing—the
undying
devotion you two share?”

Luce stiffened in her white iron chair.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic, Luce. So maybe, I don’t know, Daniel’s been involved with other people. It’s all pretty nebulous. The take-home message, like I said before, is that there was never a question in his mind that you were the only one that mattered.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t claim to be in the business of making you feel better, I’m just trying to illustrate a point. For all Daniel’s annoying aloofness—and there’s plenty of it—the guy’s clearly devoted. The real question here is: Are you? As far as Daniel knows, you could drop him as soon as someone else comes along. Miles has come along. And he’s obviously a great guy. A little sappy for my taste, but—”

“I would never drop Daniel,” Luce said aloud, desperately wanting to believe it.

She thought about the horror on his face the night they’d argued on the beach. She was stunned when he’d been so quick to ask:
Are we breaking up?
Like he suspected that was a possibility. Like she hadn’t swallowed whole his entire insane story about their endless love when he’d told her under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. She had swallowed it, in one single believing gulp, ingesting all its fissures, too—the jagged pieces that made no sense but begged her to believe them at the time. Now, every day, another of them gnawed at her insides. She could feel the biggest one rising up in her throat:

“Most of the time, I don’t even know why he likes me.”

“Come on,” Shelby groaned. “Do not be one of those girls.
He’s too good for me, wah wah wah
. I’ll have to punt you over to Dawn and Jasmine’s table. That’s their expertise, not mine.”

“I don’t mean it like that.” Luce leaned in and dropped her voice. “I mean, ages ago, when Daniel was, you know,
up there
, he chose me. Me, out of everyone else on earth—”

“Well, there were probably a lot fewer options back then—Ouch!” Luce had swatted her. “Just trying to lighten the mood!”

“He chose me, Shelby, over some big role in Heaven, over some elevated position. That’s pretty major, don’t you think?” Shelby nodded. “There had to be more to it than just him thinking I was cute.”

“But … you don’t know what it was?”

“I’ve asked, but he’s never told me what happened. When I brought it up, it was almost like Daniel couldn’t remember. And that’s crazy, because it means we’re both just going through the motions. Based on thousands of years of some fairy tale neither one of us can even back up.”

Shelby rubbed her jaw. “What else is Daniel keeping from you?”

“That’s what I plan on finding out.”

Around the terrace, time had marched on; most of the students were heading to class. The scholarship waiters were hurrying to bus the plates. At a table closest to the ocean, Steven was drinking coffee alone. His glasses were folded up and resting on the table. His eyes found Luce’s, and he held her gaze for a long time, so long that—even after she stood up to go to class—his intense, watchful expression stuck with her. Which was probably his point.

After the longest, most mind-numbing PBS special on cell division ever seen, Luce walked out of her biology class, down the stairs of the main school building, and outside, where she was surprised to see the parking lot completely packed. Parents, older siblings, and more than a few chauffeurs formed one long line of vehicles the likes of which Luce hadn’t seen since the car-pool lane at her middle school in Georgia.

Around her, students hurried out of class and zigzagged toward the cars, wheeling suitcases in their wake. Dawn and Jasmine hugged goodbye before Jasmine got into a town car and Dawn’s brothers made room for her in the back of an SUV. The two of them were only splitting up for a few hours.

Luce ducked back into the building and slipped out the rarely used rear door to trek across the grounds to her dorm. She definitely could not deal with goodbyes right now.

Walking under the gray sky, Luce was still a guilty wreck, but her conversation with Shelby had left her feeling a bit more in control. It was screwed up, she knew it, but having kissed someone else made her feel like she finally had a say in her relationship with Daniel. Maybe she’d get a reaction out of him, for a change. She could apologize. He could apologize. They could make lemonade or whatever. Break through all this crap and really start talking.

Just then, her phone buzzed. A text from Mr. Cole:

Everything’s taken care of.

So Mr. Cole had passed on the news that Luce wasn’t coming home. But he’d conveniently left out of his text whether or not her parents were still speaking to her. She hadn’t heard from them in days.

It was a no-win situation: If they wrote to her, she felt guilty about not writing them back. If they didn’t write to her, she felt responsible for being the reason they couldn’t reach out. She still hadn’t figured out what to do about Callie.

She thumped up the stairs of the empty dorm. Each step echoed hollowly in the cavernous building. No one was around.

When she made it to her room, she expected to find Shelby already gone—or at least, to see her suitcase packed and waiting by the door.

Shelby wasn’t there, but her clothes were still strewn all over her side of the room. Her puffy red vest was still on its peg, and her yoga gear was still stacked in the corner. Maybe she wasn’t leaving until tomorrow morning.

Before Luce had even fully closed the door behind her, someone knocked on the other side. She stuck her head into the hallway.