She squeezed his hand to pull him to her for one last kiss. She held his face between her palms and melted into him. Every time her eyes flickered open, his were watching her. And she loved it.
At last, he backed away, and stood in the doorway gazing at her, his eyes still doing as much to make her heart race as his lips had done a moment before. When he slinked back into the hallway and closed the door behind him, Luce drifted off into the deepest sleep.
She'd slept through her morning classes and had awoken in the early afternoon feeling reborn and alive.
Not caring at all that she had no excuse for missing school. Only worried that she'd slept through meeting Daniel. She would find him as soon as she could, and he would understand.
Around two o'clock, when it finally occurred to her to eat something or maybe pop in on Miss Sophia's religion class, she grudgingly crawled out of bed. That was when she saw the two envelopes that had been slipped underneath her door, which set her back severely in her goal of leaving her room.
She had to tell Cam off first. If she went to the lake before the cemetery, she knew she'd never be able to make herself leave Daniel, If she went first to the cemetery, her desire to see Daniel again would make her bold enough to say to Cam the things she'd been too nervous to say before. Before everything had gotten so scary and out of control last night.
Pushing through her fears about seeing him, Luce started across the commons toward the cemetery. The early evening was warm, and the air was sticky with humidity. It was going to be one of those sweltering nights when the breeze from the distant sea never got strong enough to cool things down. There was no one out on campus, and the leaves on all the trees were still. Luce could have been the only thing at Sword & Cross that was actually on the move. Everyone else would be released from class, herded into the dining hall for dinner, and Penn - and possibly others - would be wondering about Luce by now.
Cam was leaning up against the lichen-speckled gates of the cemetery when she got there. His elbows rested on the carved vine-shaped iron posts, his shoulders hunched forward. He was kicking up a dandelion with the steel tip of his thick black boot. Luce couldn't remember seeing him look so internally consumed - most of the time Cam seemed to have a keen interest in the world around him.
But this time, he didn't even look up at her until she was directly in front of him. And when he did, his face was ashen. His hair was flat against his head and she was surprised to notice that he could have used a shave. His eyes rolled over her face, as if focusing on each of her features required effort. He looked wrecked, not beaten up from the fight, but simply as if he hadn't slept in a few days.
"You came." His voice was hoarse, but his words ended with a small smile.
Luce cracked her knuckles, thinking he wouldn't be smiling much longer. She nodded and held up his letter.
He reached for her hand, but she pulled her arm away, pretending she needed the hand to brush the hair from her eyes.
"I figured you'd be mad about last night," he said, pushing himself away from the gate. He took a few steps into the cemetery, then sat cross-legged on a short gray marble bench among the first row of graves.
He wiped the dirt and brittle leaves away, then patted the empty spot next to him.
"Mad?" she said.
"That's generally why people storm out of bars."
She sat down facing him, cross-legged too. From up here, she could see the top branches of the enormous old oak down in the center of the graveyard, where she and Cam had had their afternoon picnic what seemed like a very long time ago.
"I don't know," Luce said. "More like baffled. Confused, maybe. Disappointed." She shuddered at the memory of that seedy guy's eyes when he grabbed her, the sick flurry of Cam's fists, the deep black roof of shadow ... "Why did you take me there? You know what happened when Jules and Phillip snuck out."
"Jules and Phillip were morons whose every move was monitored by tracking wristbands. Of course they were going to