"Come on! You can do it!" he whisper-shouted up to her.
Body trembling, Ariana sat on the edge of the windowsill, her feet still planted on Thomas's floor. One leg at
a time, she drew her knees up to her chest. She pivoted her body and lowered her legs outside the window.
The sight of Thomas on the ground blurred beneath her.
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"I can't." The thought of her body free-falling from the window made her skin prickle with fear.
"I'm right here. Come on, Ariana," he pleaded. "Jump."
She screwed her eyes shut and hesitated.
I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't-"I won't let anything happen to you," Thomas said.
Ariana's heart flipped in her chest. Right. He would protect her. He loved her. She looked down at him, took a
deep breath, and shoved away from the window. Icy wind slipped past her and she landed, hard, against
Thomas's body. The sound of bone on bone cracked in the air as they both hit the snow.
"You okay?" Thomas winced. His face was contorted in pain. Ariana struggled her way off of him and knelt
next to his body in the snow.
"You're hurt."
"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Really."
Guilt seeped into her skin faster than the wet snow. "You're not. And it's my fault," she insisted. She lowered
her numb fingers to his ankle, and he tensed in pain. "We have to-"
"Right now what we have to do is get out of here," he interrupted. He scanned the back edge of Ketlar and
nodded at a huge evergreen that loomed over the far corner of the dorm, at a diagonal from the backdoor.
"Over there," he said tersely.
Silently, she pulled his arm over her shoulder and helped him to his feet. He dropped his head toward her
neck, his jaw tensed. The weight of his body scared her. If he couldn't take care of himself, he definitely
couldn't take care of her.
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Thomas lifted one foot off the ground and they moved quickly along the dorm to the tree, about thirty feet
from the rear of Ketlar. She helped him around the thick trunk, and they leaned against the jagged bark on the
side facing the woods.
Thomas closed his eyes. "The snow," he said, curling his hands into fists at his side. "You've got to cover it
up so nobody knows we were back there."