Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 12

I kick the space behind me, my arms feeling heavier with each stroke. I vaguely hear Belladonna and the swim coach shouting as I break for air, but I dip back under. This morning marks my return to swimming, and I’m being well and truly punished.

At least Belladonna didn’t make me swim in the loch again.

Lungs crying out for air, my fingertips finally hit the end of the pool. I place my forearms on the tiled edge and see that Abbie, a second year from Hemlock, has beaten me to it. Colette hits the tile next, and then the others. Belladonna shakes her head at me. “Six thirty, Winters. Six. Thirty. I think my nonna could swim faster than you right now.”

I tug my hat off my head and try to catch my breath. “Harsh.”

“We have Loughborough, Bath, and Glasgow here for a tournament next month, and you’re supposed to be our best for the four hundred. If you fuck it up, you’re off the team.”

“Watch out, Bella, she’ll strangle you,” says the Nightshade student in the lane next to me.

Colette rolls her eyes, wringing out her blonde hair. “Shut up, Honor. You’re just mad she can swim better than the rest of us.” She leans over the lane divider rope and grins at me. “Do you want to watch a movie tonight?”

“Like…a movie? At the cinema?”

“Well, we can’t be bothered to drive an hour to the theater, so we’ll watch it here. But my driver picked up some clothes for me from Inverness and he came back with popcorn and everything.”

Threads of color leach into my graying heart. “I would love that. I would really love that.”

“Yay! Wear your pajamas. Vincenzo, Jack, Ariana, Alex, Hattie, Magda, and Jenna are all coming!”

The threads slither back out. “Oh. I…I’m not on great terms with Alex, I’d rather not.”

She pouts as we both push ourselves out of the pool and dry off. “Oh, that’s a shame. I’ve really missed you this week.”

I’m grinning like a fool as I slip into my flip-flops. Her words mend a little part of my soul that tells me I matter. “I missed you too. It’s complicated with Alex.”

Her slight German accent intensifies as she clasps her hands together. “Oh, I know complicated. My last boyfriend had a wife.”

“What? Oh my god.” My lover isn’t actually my lover, I just said that to avoid a murder investigation, but his father had a hand in my parents’ death. It doesn’t have such a good ring to it.

I grab my bag from the benches, watching the pool’s surface ripple silently. Ironically, the swimming pool at Sorrowsong is my favorite pool I’ve ever been in. It’s modern-day technology, elegantly wrapped in classical charm. A top-of-the-range, heated pool sits inside an ornate Victorian conservatory, sparkling glass panels held in place by black iron struts. If Belladonna didn’t guard the keys like a dog, I’d be in here every night.

A rare shard of sun pierces through the thin sheet of cloud over the valley, illuminating my path back to the castle after my final lecture of the day. After two days of heavy rain, it feels like the Highlands have nothing left to give. The trees sit in quiet stillness, and the mist is clear enough for me to see the sea in the far distance.

It’s silly, but I needed that reminder. Needed to remember that there’s a world outside Sorrowsong. All my favorite things; the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden, the quiet bookshops of Edinburgh, the lambs in the fields back home; they’re all still rattling on in my absence. And if I miss them too much, I can always visit them.

There’s something about Sorrowsong. A spell that seems to be cast over it that makes you believe that the only hallways in the world are eerie and cobwebbed, that libraries simply must be poorly lit, and that ghosts lurk in every shadow. But it isn’t true.

I feel a little bit lighter and a little bit stronger.

I wander around the castle walls under the gaze of the crumbling gargoyles, waiting for a bar of signal to appear on my phone. I’m halfway down to the tarn when I finally get any, and I redial an old number.

The voice on the other end is gruff from a life of smoking. “Papadopoulos.”

“Nicholas? I rang you the other week and⁠—”

“And I said I don’t want to talk to you people.”

“Wait!” I beg. “I don’t work for Green. I promise.”

“Fucking journalist,” he grumbles bitterly.

“No,” I interrupt, before he can hang up. “I’m not, I swear. I have one question and that’s it. The week before the crash⁠—”

“It didn’t crash, it was scrapped due to age.” He sounds like an automated robot.

A six-year-old helicopter scrapped? Seems likely. “Okay, fine. In the days before it was scrapped, it was checked by someone with the initials M.S.”

“You don’t get to bring Mike into this. He was the victim here, okay? He was a good guy. Stop fucking calling me.”

“My parents were in the helicopter,” I blurt out, desperate.

There’s a long pause. A drag of a cigarette, and then another pause, until he finally breaks the silence. “You’re Andy Winters’s little girl?”

“Yes,” I whisper, furiously wiping a hot tear from my cheek. “I just need some answers.”

“I can’t tell you what you want to know,” he mumbles back. “I have a little girl too. I can’t…I can’t take any risks.”

“I know. I get it. I just…I miss them.”

“He…he was excited, that day. For the burgers.”

A sob rips through my throat. A memory as mundane as burger buns on a chopping board, and it’s enough to bring me to my knees on the damp earth beneath my feet. “So was I,” I manage, my voice hoarse.

Seagulls squawk on the other end of the line, a child’s laughter followed by a splash of water. I picture him somewhere sunny, maybe in Greece, and it warms my heart.

I hope he forgets about all of this one day; that all his children ever know is comfort and warmth. “Look…Mike….Mike is dead. I can give you his daughter’s number, Laura. She lives in Inverness, but she might not want to speak with you.”

“Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I repeat, scrawling the number as he recites it.

“Please don’t call me again.”

“I promise.”

The line goes dead, the trees around me silent and still. I dust off the knees of my tights and stand, letting out a shaky exhale. I feel nauseous, my stomach flooded with adrenaline, hope, nerves, and dread.

Someone has a hold over Nicholas. Someone is desperate for him not to talk. I’ve always known it wasn’t just a simple crash, but the confirmation that something is amiss is a weight off my shoulders.

Forget quitting. I’m not leaving Sorrowsong. Not until I’ve finished what I came here to do.

I trudge back up the muddy path, arriving back in the central courtyard just as the rugby team returns from training. Vincenzo beckons me over, shouting my name.

“Could your shorts get any shorter, Vincenzo?”

He grins and pulls them farther up his giant thighs. I swear he’s chipped another tooth since last week. “Is that a request? Because I’ll do it. You’re coming to our movie night, right?”

My eyes flick to Alex who is pacing on his phone a few meters away. His hair is damp, hanging over his forehead. Mud obscures the tattoo that sits above his left knee, but I think it might be another bird. If I knew him better, I’d say he looks stressed. “Um…I’d better not. I have loads of classes to catch up on.”

“Come on, Pheels.”

“We’re not doing ‘Pheels.’ That is not a nickname. And no, you know how it is between me and Alex.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that. He’s a good guy beneath the whole dark and broody thing.”

Oh, if only you knew. I hold my tongue as Alex rejoins us. “I have to go to New York.”

Vincenzo’s face falls. “What? When?”

“Now, tonight. Business emergency.”

Business emergency. My jaw tenses. Alex will leave Sorrowsong as a darker-haired, tattooed version of his father, and that enrages me. Vincenzo clicks his fingers at me cheerily. “Looks like you can come after all.”

Neatly sandwiched between Vincenzo and Colette in Alex’s giant bed wasn’t where I thought my evening would end, but I’m not really upset about it. I wasn’t delighted to be using Alex’s room, but after the fourth cider, Vincenzo started making sense. It does have the biggest TV, after all.

The Breakfast Club blares on the fifty-inch screen, mingling with the sound of Colette’s popcorn rustling and quiet chatter from her friends watching from the floor.

It’s all so wonderfully ordinary, I feel almost giddy.

As I finish what may or may not be my seventh drink, my phone lights up with an email from Alex.

_____________________________

From: Alex Corbeau-Green

Subject: Rearrange (verb) change (the position, time, or order of something)

Date: Friday 11th October 21:19 BST

To: Ophelia Winters

I’m going to be on a flight back into the UK for our social psychology session on Monday. Can we catch up on a call tomorrow instead?

—ACG

____________________________

The message is overly formal, as ever, but the subject line makes me smile. My alcohol-riddled brain doesn’t see any issue with that. He’s just a man. I’m just a woman. I’m allowed to think he’s pretty and hate him all at once. I hit Reply, but my phone is snatched out of my hand by Colette before I can type anything.

“No,” I screech, grappling for the phone as Colette hammers out a response and hits Send.

_____________________________

From: Ophelia Winters

Subject: RE: Rearrange (verb) change (the position, time, or order of something)

Date: Friday 11th October 21:20 BST

To: Alex Corbeau-Green

Omggg. Why so formal?!

We’re not in a business meeting.

Ophelia xx

Sent from your bed.

____________________________

“Oh my god, Colette, you are the worst,” I grumble, as she gives it back.

Vincenzo peers over and grins. “Bet he’s kicking his feet on the plane.”

“Shut up.” I only get halfway through my damage control email before his reply pops up.

_____________________________

From: Alex Corbeau-Green

Subject: Hypocrisy (noun) the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case

Date: Friday 11th October 21:21 BST

To: Ophelia Winters

“So formal” because you blocked my number. Block this email, too, and we’ll resort to fax or telegram.

Enjoy the bed. There are Jelly Babies in the left bedside table.

—ACG

P.S. Catastrophically drunk before 10 p.m. is embarrassing.

____________________________

I love Jelly Babies. Right now, I love Jelly Babies more than I love my pride. I pull open the bedside table and yank them out. Popping one in my mouth, I tip my head back and let out a contented sigh. Alex’s bed is the best. Cocooned in a soft mattress and crisp cotton sheets, I burrow further down into the duvet and bask in the unfamiliar bliss of companionship.

I let my heart be mended by the glorious lack of silence and the heat of other bodies around me.

For the first time in a while, I let my body drift into a restful sleep.