Page 75 of Gifted

I bite back a smile. “Okay, fine. So let’s do it right.” I know he’s reading everything still erupting inside me and let my thoughts go.

I want you. So much. You know I’ve wanted you since the moment we met. I don’t need to read minds to know you want it too. Meet me in my room tonight. We can even do candles and rose petals.

He laughs and lets out a breath. “Rose petals? Where are you going to get those?”

I grin and shrug. “If it’ll put your mind at ease, I’ll figure it out.”

His beautiful smile almost makes the rejection worth it. “I don’t think you have me pegged quite right yet.”

“Not into rose petals? Oh right, you’re more about death metal and spiders, probably.”

He laughs again and takes my hand, studying it almost shyly. “Oh, really? I’m that bad?”

“Most of the student body thinks you eat kittens.” I look up at him, and my smile fades as I search his face. “Does that mean you’ll come?”

After a pause, he draws in a deep breath and kisses me—lightly. Safely. “I’ll come. But we’re going to talk first and figure this out. No promises. We don’t have the luxury of acting on feelings alone. There are things you need to know first before you can make this decision.”

I grunt and reach for the door. “You are seriously the weirdest guy I know.”

Chapter 13: Crush

I hope Daniel will be waiting for me in my room after dinner. I practice my smile on the way back to the suite. Adjust my hair, clothes, and breath. I rush into the common area and pull open my door.

Dark.

Empty.

Disappointment seeps out in a long exhale. Maybe it’s for the best. We can’t take risks while others are still roaming the halls.

But the minutes turn to hours as I wait, the hours to fear. He wouldn’t be cruel enough to stand me up. He can’t, and yet the alternative... I stare at the clock that keeps changing in its merciless climb toward morning.

“Where are you?” I whisper, trying to calm the rising alarm.

His face. His touch. His smell. His smile. It’s all there, filling my head, triggering chills and panic and—

An explosion in my skull.

Excruciating pain.

I cry out, grasping my head as memories pound through my brain. Blur after blur materializes into the missing images. Thoughts, emotions, it all comes flooding back in vivid detail. Maybe it’s my abilities, maybe the drugs diminished his, but the memories have returned. They’re back!

I ransack the new clues for any fragment that could lead to Daniel. So many paths, and they all point to one place. One awful room at the end of an icy corridor.

I shiver and hug my arms around a pillow.

Sleep eludes me for the rest of the night, and the journey to breakfast becomes a death march. My tablemates must sense my sour state and leave me alone to stare at my plate. The empty chair to my left screams louder than the animated conversations around me.

Daniel’s seat is empty at group too, and a thorough scan of the gym confirms his absence there as well. By the time I return to my room at the end of the night, I’ve been reduced to a moping puddle.

“You look terrible.”

I barely contain my screech when I see him propped up in what’s become his chair. I launch into him, clinging with everything I’ve wanted to give him for an entire day now.

He hisses in a sharp breath, and I pull back. “You look terrible, too. What happened?”

His silence is worse than a response.

“You were downstairs,” I whisper. He looks away and clenches his jaw. I take his hand, but the vision isn’t what I want.

---