Torment - Lauren Kate [32]
Roland led her to a bench facing the water, far away from all the campus buildings. Looking down, she could see a rugged set of stairs carved into the rock, starting just below where they were sitting, and leading all the way down to the beach.
“What do you know that you aren’t saying?” Luce asked when the silence began to get to her.
“That water is fifty-one degrees,” Roland said.
“Not what I meant,” she said, looking him right in the eyes. “Did he send you here to watch over me?”
Roland scratched his head. “Look. Daniel’s off doing his thing.” He made a flitting motion at the sky. “In the meantime”—and she thought he cocked his head toward the forest behind the dorm—“you got your own thing to take care of.”
“What? No, I don’t have a thing. I’m just here because—”
“Bullshit.” He laughed. “We all have our secrets, Luce. Mine brought me to Shoreline. Yours has been leading you out to those woods.”
She started to protest, but Roland waved her off, that ever-cryptic look in his eyes.
“I’m not going to get you in trouble. In fact, I’m rooting for you.” His eyes moved past her, out to sea. “Now, back to that water. It’s frigid. Have you been in it? I know you like to swim.”
It struck Luce that she’d been at Shoreline for three days, with the ocean always visible, the waves always audible, the salt air always coating everything, but she still hadn’t set foot on the beach. And it wasn’t like at Sword & Cross, where a laundry list of things were off-limits. She didn’t know why it hadn’t even occurred to her.
She shook her head.
“About all you can do with a beach that cold is build a bonfire.” Roland glanced at her. “You made any friends here yet?”
Luce shrugged. “A few.”
“Bring them by tonight, after dark.” He pointed to a narrow peninsula of sand at the foot of the rocky stairs. “Right down there.”
She peered at Roland sideways. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
Roland grinned devilishly. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep it innocent. But you know how it is. I’m new in town; I’d like to make my presence known.”
“Dude. Stomp down on my heel one more time, and I’m seriously going to have to break your ankle.”
“Maybe if you weren’t hogging the entire beam of the flashlight up there, Shel, the rest of us could see where we were going.”
Luce tried to stifle her laugh as she followed a bickering Miles and Shelby across campus in the dark. It was almost eleven, and Shoreline was pitch-black and silent, except for the hoot of an owl. An orange gibbous moon was low in the sky, cloaked by a veil of fog. Between the three of them, they’d only been able to come up with one flashlight (Shelby’s), so only one of them (Shelby) had a clear view of the path down to the water. For the other two, the grounds—which had seemed so lush and well tended in the daylight—were now booby-trapped with fallen bristlecones, thick-rooted ferns, and the backs of Shelby’s feet.
When Roland had asked her to bring some friends tonight, Luce had gotten a sinking feeling in her stomach. There were no hall monitors at Shoreline, no terrifying security cameras recording the students’ every move, so it wasn’t the threat of getting caught that made her nervous. In fact, sneaking out of the dorm had been relatively easy. It was drawing a crowd that was a bigger challenge.
Dawn and Jasmine seemed like the most likely candidates for a party on the beach, but when Luce went by their fifth-floor room, the hallway was dark and no one answered her knock. Back in her own room, Shelby had been tangled up in some sort of tantric yoga pose that hurt Luce just to look at. Luce hadn’t wanted to break her roommate’s fierce concentration by inviting her to some unknown party—but then a loud knock at their door had made Shelby fall crossly from her pose anyway.
Miles, asking Luce if she wanted to get some ice cream.
Luce looked back and forth between Miles and Shelby and smiled. “I’ve got