Captivate Me (Book One: The Captivated Series) (21 page)

When I’d made it to the tree line,
radiant and humming, I pulled out the piece of paper as Gabriel had
asked. Written in his lavish handwriting was a note:

To keep you hidden. I want
you to stay out of trouble until you come back to me. Repeat the
words when you want to be seen again:

Me custodire
.
Custodi me
latet.
Nolo
videndum
.
Sed cum
rursus
repetere hoc
incantatores
,
donec
loquar
eis iterum
demonstrare
vera sui
.

The spell! He’d given me
the spell. Now… I just needed to figure out how to say the darn
thing. I’d never spoken Latin before.

* * *

After three pitiful tries to speak the
foreign words, I decided to go for it and head back to the school
regardless. Fortunately, I made it back to my dorm wing unnoticed,
but I didn’t know if it was the spell or the fact that I still felt
the need to slink along the walls and hide in corners when I heard
the reverberation of footsteps down the hallways. I couldn’t risk
being seen.

Pausing outside our door, I repeated
the words before making my way in. I imagined Anna was fast asleep
inside, mumbling incoherently about Ronnie and food products again.
Even in her dreams, she was consumed by him. I could definitely
relate, and I hoped my dreams would involve Gabriel again tonight.
A love-sick grin plastered across my face as I entered our room.
This first stage of love is what I’d been witnessing in couples
around me but never completely comprehended – a heart recklessly
open and knowing no boundaries. Now, I understood.

I quietly shut the door behind me, and
as I tip-toed toward my bed, I froze with fear, my joints locking
into place. A silhouette sat slumped on the edge of my bed. I
debated screaming but couldn’t will my mouth to move.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice
said.

Levi.
My fear gave way to dread. Shit. How long had he been here
waiting? Minutes?
Hours?

He stood, moving into the morning
sunlight pouring through the blinds behind him, but his face was
hidden in the shadows. My eyes moved to a bouquet of flowers limply
hanging from his right hand. His left hand clenched a note in a
death grip.

“Who’s Gabe?” he asked crossly,
crumpling the note in his fist, “I’m guessing you were with him all
night?”

I gasped – a foreign
sound, as though it had come from someone else. The note was the
one Gabriel had left me. He must have found it under my bed along
with the pile of flowers. This
wasn’t
happening.

I couldn’t reply, my lips still frozen
along with my body. The only thing that seemed to work was my heart
as it hammered against my breastbone like a blacksmith tempering
steel. I glanced at Anna, praying her headphones were in and she
couldn’t hear any of this.

Levi shifted on his feet as he waited
for me to say something. The movement allowed a beam of sunlight to
wash over his features, a fiery pink flash highlighting the hard
lines that had settled on his face. He looked broken, desperate…
pissed, but his eyes were heavy with sadness.

A film of tears washed over my eyes as
I looked back down at the bouquet. After what had happened at
breakfast yesterday – him finding the flower – he’d probably come
to my room to bring me his own flowers and fight for my affection,
but this wasn’t a fight he could win. And by the myriad of emotions
registering on his face, I think that reality was already setting
in.

“Tell me why,” he said, conceding to
the fact that I wasn’t going to explain who Gabe was. By saying
nothing, I’d already told him everything.

Dropping my eyes to the
ground between us, I forced my lips apart, but nothing came out. I
wasn’t ready for this yet – crushing his heart into a fine powdery
dust. I couldn’t even remember what I’d decided to say to him. All
of this was so much bigger than him, than me.
What do I do?

After releasing Gabriel’s letter to
the floor, he took a step toward me. “What does this guy have that
I don’t?”

I needed to say something,
anything, but my damn lips wouldn’t cooperate again.
My heart
, my thoughts
replied. That’s what Gabriel had that Levi didn’t – my
heart.

The first tear rolled down my cheek –
the first of many. My throat closed tight as I held back a sob
trying to claw its way out.

With one more step, he was a tense
foot away. “I’ve seen it in your eyes, Kat,” he said, his voice
softening and catching at the same time.

God, no. Please don’t cry,
Levi. I can’t take you crying over me.

“I’m losing you, aren’t I?”

I tried to suck back my tears as they
streamed down my face in ribbons, but they continued pouring over.
Speaking definitely wasn’t an option now. I couldn’t if I wanted
to.

“I saw it in your eyes at breakfast
yesterday morning. Something’s changed.”

Everything’s
changed.

He swiped the clear trails with his
thumb. Whatever was left of his anger had floated away, only the
sadness lingered. “I’ve only had you for a few days – the best days
of my life – and you’re already drifting away.”

I dared to meet his eyes and hold his
gaze, hoping my regret and sorrow and pain shone through, saying
what I couldn’t.

“Please say something,” he pled, and
his jaw tensed as he fought to keep his own tears back.

“I-” I choked on the word.

He took one last step,
dropping the flowers, his body inches away – intimate, burning.
“What do I have to do to make sure we don’t fail?” he whispered,
determination flashing in his eyes. “I don’t want to… I
can’t
give up on this.
On us.”

He tilted my chin up, and I let him.
Before I knew it, his lips were on mine, kissing with a fervor I
didn’t know he was capable of. My lips responded, awakening and
kissing back, and our fizzled-out chemistry reignited as our heads
weaved in a delicate dance. But it left as soon as it came, fading
back into nothingness. I pulled away with a remorseful scowl. His
shoulders slumped with defeat.

“I’m sorry, Levi,” I whimpered, and
although I meant them, the words seemed too few, too small to cover
what I was putting him through. He deserved better.

His expression morphed from desperate
sadness to resigned absolution. He knew now. It was over. He was
living his fears, and I hated myself for it. For putting him
through any of this.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

He nodded, running his hands over his
head with a sigh. “So am I.”

We lapsed into awkward silence, the
hollowness of the air nearly suffocating me.

“Guess I better go, then,” he said
flatly and lumbered to the door.

I took a step after him, wanting to
call out to him to wait; I knew there was more I wanted to say, an
explanation I had worked out, but his surprise visit had caught me
off guard, rattling me to my core, and I couldn’t remember. All I
could do was watch through a film of rippled tears as he left, and
before he shut the door behind him, he mumbled, “Keep the
flowers.”

* * *

After he’d left, my first
instinct was to run after him, plead with him to come back, and
tell him it would all be okay and he would find someone to fill the
holes I’d made in his heart. And then it came to me –
that’s
what I’d been
planning to say to him. That he deserved better. Someone that could
love him the way he deserved to be loved. He deserved a love like
Anna and Ronnie’s, like Sarah and Dawson’s, like mine and
Gabriel’s. Anything less would be settling. But any of that coming
from me, especially now, would only hurt him further. I needed to
leave him alone and let him nurse his own wounds.

Thinking of him storming back to his
room and telling Dawson and Ronnie about his traitorous,
cheating-ass girlfriend, I cringed, bile roiling in my stomach. I
knew the sweet Levi; the boyfriend side of him. What kind of guy
was the pissed-off Levi? Would he trash my name?

I numbly slid into bed and curled into
myself. I couldn’t worry about that now. What was done was done. I
just hoped half the school wouldn’t hate me come lunchtime. That
wasn’t the legacy I wanted to leave behind when I left with Gabriel
and his family in a few days. How I longed to hit ‘rewind’ and be
back in Gabriel’s arms, unaware that Levi was here waiting for me
to return with a bouquet of flowers that were as wilted as his
ego.

I fought back another sob. No more
tears.

Tossing onto my back, I
stared at the ceiling, my mind going blank. My psyche couldn’t
handle any more strong emotions. In the matter of an hour, I’d
experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. My mind
needed a break before
I
did.

Heavy and swollen from crying, my eyes
shuttered closed. I only had an hour or so to sleep, but I didn’t
care. My mind needed the reprieve, the sweet solace that only a
state of unawareness could provide. Besides, I was exhausted. In
every sense of the word.

* **

I threw the covers off and
perched on the edge of my bed. Something was wrong.
Really
wrong. But I
didn’t know what.

I scanned our dark room. It should
have been daylight. How long had I been asleep?

“Anna? You here?” The empty room
swallowed my words whole.

I glanced at the clock that blinked
12:00. Had the power gone out?

Frantic, I reached out from my bed and
opened the bathroom door with my mind. No Anna.

Shit.
Had she been kidnapped too?

I shuddered, mostly from
fear, but the air in our room was uncharacteristically cold. The
window wasn’t open, though.
Weird.

Wrapping the covers around
me, I hurried into the hallway, looked right, then left. Nobody.
“
Anna?
”

The air was even colder in the
hallway, my breath coming out in icy plumes. I pulled the blanket
tighter. My next thought was to check Sarah and Ivy’s dorm. Maybe
she was in there. I hurried as fast as my cocoon would allow and
banged on their door.

Nothing.

I banged again, louder.

Still nothing.

Shit!

Losing patience, I burst into their
room and shrieked, a wave of hot tingles shooting up my spine and
through my limbs. Sarah had been tied to her bed, ropes binding her
ankles and wrists to the bed posts. Her white tank top was slicked
with red, a ring of dark blood on her sheets. “Sarah!” I cried out,
dropped my covers, and ran to her side. I knelt, hysterically
appraising the damage. She lay unconscious, her chest rising
faintly, a nasty gurgling noise coming through the puncture marks
in her chest. Stab wounds? Pieces of pine straw jutted from her
hair, dirt smudged across her cheeks and clothes. Where had she
been? Who’d done this?

I coughed out a
wail.
Not my Sarah.
Maybe I could save her… she could still be saved.

“Sarah?” I choked out, tapping her
cheek with icy, shaking hands, “Wake up, girl. I need you to wake
up.”

She faintly moaned.

“Come on,” I said, now
working on untying the ropes, but I was all fingers and thumbs. I
could barely feel them.
Why is it so damn
cold?
“I need to get you to Nurse
Plunkett.”

Sarah’s eyes shivered open into slits
– as far as she could manage. Her voice came out raspy, a bead of
red dripping from the corner of her mouth. “Ivy?”

“No, it’s Kat. I’m here to save you.
You’re going to be all right.”

She wheezed – a god-awful sound. I
worked faster on the ropes, but not as fast as I’d have liked.
Stupid fingers!

“Kat,” she moaned.

I ignored her, concentrating on
getting her freed.

“Kat!”

I paused, leaning closer to hear what
she had to say. Her eyes struggled to focus. “It’s too late… I’m-”
She coughed, red spraying across my chest. “I’m almost
gone.”

“No it’s not,” I snapped and returned
my attention to the ropes.

“No, listen to me,” she said, reaching
out with her freed hand and clamping on to my arm. Her hands felt
like ice – colder than mine. Too weak to stay up, her hand slid
back to the bed.

I almost had her other hand freed.
Next were her feet. “Sarah,” I said, resolute. “I’m not going to
give up while you’re still breathing.”

“Dammit, Kat. Don’t worry about me.”
She coughed again, red pouring from her mouth. “Get yourself some
help.” The gurgles from her chest were sounding worse.

“No, I…” Why would
I
need help?