Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 15

I’ve managed to avoid Alex since last week. I canceled our next study session without reason, working on the project alone instead.

And on my laptop and a USB stick, a long report into the series of events behind my parents’ death is nearing completion. But I know if I even found a journalist willing to look at it, they’d ask me for concrete proof. My proof is stuck inside a tape player in Inverness.

I tug my Doc Martens over my fluffiest socks, slinging a brown scarf around my neck. I told Colette I’d join her in watching the second home rugby game of the season. She doesn’t really understand the rules, but she loves to watch men in short shorts roll around in the mud.

Frosted leaves crunch under my boots as I join Colette, Magda, and Hattie where they wait for me outside the Nightshade mansion. Magda is the daughter of an American property tycoon and a Polish fashion designer, and Hattie is the daughter of a racehorse trainer, very distantly related to the king. They all look runway-ready; Colette and Hattie with bouncy blowouts and Magda with fresh braids.

I did my hair nice yesterday, but then it rained. Now half of it is up in a feeble effort to make it look less frizzy.

We wind our way around the outer perimeter of the castle, past the swimming pool, and onto the row of sports fields. A seating stand is already filling up with the burgundy colors of Sorrowsong and the occasional Nottingham fan in green. Rubbing my chilly hands together, I settle onto the metal bench of the stand with a warm sense of nostalgia softening my heart.

I used to sit and watch football games with my dad in the winter. He’d yell at the referee over a steaming cup of Bovril, and I’d nod my agreement with a mouthful of chocolate buttons and a stomachache.

The rows of freezing spectators clap as the players jog onto the mud bath that we’re calling the pitch. “Oh my god, Ophelia. Your man looks hot.”

“He’s not my man,” I mutter, refusing to look at him.

Magda leans over, removing the lollipop from her mouth with a wet pop. Her brown eyes twinkle with curiosity. “But how was it?”

Colette huffs. “She’s being super coy about it all. Won’t tell us anything.”

I blush, even though I haven’t so much as touched Alex. “That’s just…private information.”

Hattie, a second-year veterinary medicine student, peers over the line of players as they finish taping up their legs. “Which one’s Vincenzo?”

I blow on my flask of tea. “Number four. Second row.”

“That means he’s really fast and really strong, right?” asks Colette, and I laugh into my drink. I don’t think she can decide whether she’s in love with Vincenzo or her driver.

I recognize Alex and Vincenzo’s friend, Jack, a second-year medical student as he warms up. He’s the fly-half, giving orders to the rest of the team. Clearly, his quiet personality, oversized knitted jumpers, and perfectly pressed slacks have been hiding how athletic his frame is.

As the match gets underway, I bury my chin further into my scarf and allow myself to watch Alex play on the back line. He’s the outside center, and the number thirteen on the back of his shirt seems fitting enough.

White tape wraps over the patchwork tattoos on his biceps, black strapping over his left knee. His shorts sit high on his muscular thighs, already streaked with mud. My stomach tightens as he dips low, tackling his Nottingham counterpart at the hips and sending him flying back.

Magda fans her face, all hot and bothered. “Wow. Look at them all fighting. You know, they’d cover a lot more ground if they just threw the ball forward and not backward.”

I hide my smile in the scratchy wool of my scarf. “It’s a wonder they’ve not thought of that.”

At the sound of the referee’s whistle, I wrestle my phone out from my ninety-five layers of clothing and open my latest email. It’s another Shakespeare quote.

_____________________________

From: Alan Sine

Subject: Could it all have been different?

Date: Sunday 19th October 9:10 BST

To: Ophelia Winters

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

_____________________________

I read it once more. After last week’s visit to Laura, the quote rings true. But the email doesn’t make me afraid anymore. Only annoyed.

I picture Carmichael having a creepy little chuckle to himself as he sends them, trying to burden me with the responsibility of my parents’ death. I will not take it. As the players gather around for halftime, I send “Alan” my first reply.

_____________________________

From: Ophelia Winters

Subject: Get a hobby, Alan.

Date: Sunday 19th October 9:29 BST

To: Alan Sine

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.

—Jane Eyre

_____________________________

The bench dips slightly as a large frame sits beside me. “Hey, Hemlock.”

I cringe internally. That name started losing its appeal the second Carmichael put me into Nightshade, but the night Sofia died really put the nail in the coffin. “Hey, Shawn.”

He pulls his Burberry jacket tighter around himself and smiles down at me. I wish he conjured the same visceral attraction as Alex does in me, but maybe it’ll grow. “Still good for dinner tonight?”

“Can’t wait.” I can wait, actually. I’m kind of dreading it. I accepted in a moment of loneliness, when the idea of being a sad, Wall Street trophy wife sounded quite good.

This is my first real date as a…as a woman, I guess, even if I still feel like a sixteen-year-old girl sometimes. He’s taking me to a fancy restaurant with a tasting menu half an hour away from Sorrowsong.

A gust of wind breezes by, but not a single blond hair moves on his perfectly gelled head. “Wear a dress for me.”

As with most things Shawn says, there’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s nothing right with it, either. But I want to give him a chance. Plus, the more I think about him, the less I’ll think about Alex and his little sisters.

I’m not sure I even have a nice dress here with me.

Colette all but falls off her seat as one of the Sorrowsong players lifts Vincenzo by the hem of his shorts high enough for him to snatch the ball during the opposition’s lineout and toss it to the fly-half. Alex darts through two green shirts, running with Jack past the twenty-two meter line.

Nottingham’s flanker slams into Jack with a force I’m sure would break my ribs, but not before he tosses the ball to Alex. He catches it with one arm, squeezing it to his chest as he breaks into a run. Before I know it, I’m on my feet beside the others, watching him weave between players, fake left to avoid a tackle, and dive over the try line for another five points to the home team.

I keep my emotions contained amid the roar around me, but Shawn pumps his fist into the air. “Fuck yeah! Touchdown!”

I don’t even bother correcting him.

Eighty minutes ends with a raucous cheer as Jack sails a drop goal between the posts for a 23–19 win to Sorrowsong.

The players bundle into a rowdy circle at the base of the stands, but as my eyes skim over Alex, his land straight on me. They don’t leave mine as he pulls his black and white mouth guard out, or as the back of his hand slowly wipes the mud from his lower lip.

Something about the action makes my scarf feel like one layer too many.

Pulse drumming in my throat, I break eye contact first, gathering my things and following the lines of people off the rattling stands.

I slip and slide my way through the mud at the back of the stand, past the fabric that hangs from the top row.

A tanned hand pulls me through the black mesh and onto the browning grass beneath the rows of seats. Footsteps hammer on the metal above my head, a titanium-white smile reflecting back at me.

Shawn might as well lick his lips with the way he stares at me. I peer over my shoulder and through the mesh, at my friends wondering where I went. “What are you doing?”

“I just can’t wait.”

“To what?”

“To kiss you.”

Anxiety scratches at my throat, a battle forming between my desire to say I’m not ready and the ugly fear that I’ll become boring and undesirable once I’ve said that. “Later.”

He pulls me closer by the ends of my scarf, one hand drifting to the outside of my thigh, just beneath the hem of my skirt. “I love this outfit on you—holy fuck, are these stockings?”

I shut my eyes and whisper a silent wish that the ground would swallow me up. I am comically behind on my washing, hence the stockings. They were a mistaken purchase last month.

When a sinkhole fails to open below me, I swing my eyes back open.

They’re met with emerald green.

Alex freezes in his tracks as the black mesh falls into place behind him, staring straight at me. “Hold on. I gotta go,” he says, into the phone pressed to his muddy ear.

Shawn turns around and holds out his fist. “Hey, bro. Amazing game.”

Alex graces Shawn with a brief glance but returns his gaze to me while he quickly sends a text on his phone and chucks it into the gym bag on his shoulder. Shawn returns his fist to his side. “Far be it for me to criticize your game, bro, but you couldn’t have picked a shitter spot for it.”

Shawn laughs, but Alex seems unable to summon a smile. “You’re totally right, man. But we have nicer plans tonight, don’t we, Ophelia?”

“Yeah,” I mumble, staring at the grass at my feet. Why is it always the woman left feeling ashamed? Why do I feel dirty, when Shawn looks so goddamn proud.

Shawn frowns down at his buzzing phone. “Huh. Vincenzo just texted. Says it looks like my bedroom door is open. I better go. See you at seven.”

“What the fuck, Ophelia?” snaps Alex the second he’s out of earshot.

“What?” I fire back, even though I know exactly what. I wrap my arms around myself, the October chill seeming colder all of a sudden.

A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Here’s a crossword clue for you. Two words. Five and six. First letter S. A massive wanker who pays for a tanning bed in the Scottish Highlands.”

“Shawn Miller.” Man, I love crosswords. I couldn’t hold the answer in even if I wanted to. “He’s nice to me. He asks me about my day.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re worse than my sister,” he mutters under his breath. His exasperated sigh contracts the broad chest muscles beneath his wet rugby shirt.

Not that I notice.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your standards are on the floor. If he asked you to split the bill fifty-fifty you’d thank him for paying his half.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” I frown at him, eyes flicking up to the bleeding gash above his eyebrow.

He sticks out his bottom lip, tone dripping in dry humor. I hate that it’s endearing. “It hurts.”

“Not more than the silver spoon stuck up your arse, surely?”

“Maybe even a little bit more.”

I shake my head, at the end of my tether. Why am I talking to Alex, anyway? I turn around and head through the tear in the mesh and onto the field outside. I stride toward the silhouette of the castle through the late morning fog, grateful not to hear him follow after me.

Shawn is slimy but harmless. Alex, however…Alex has an unexplainable darkness to him that seems so deep rooted that it forms the makeup of his entire being. Every smile is a sinister threat, every casual comment is garnished with a vengeful look in his eye.

If I didn’t know about his sisters, I’d say he seems like a man with nothing left to lose.

“Honestly, I wouldn’t even be that trusting of those articles. I think now is a great time to invest in cryptocurrency. I mean, just think about it.”

Shawn’s voice trails off as I stir my elderflower cocktail with the glass rod. I’m so bored, I’ve counted the peas that surround my salmon and velouté three times. As a woman without a return-on-investment kink, this first date is not going well.

I’ve said Wow, that’s crazy three times and he’s still going.

The restaurant is exceptionally beautiful, set in a small cottage looking out over the choppy waters of the Northern Minch. The atmosphere is warm, mostly filled with couples and small families, but I recognize a few groups of Sorrowsong students, too. The menu is a proud display of all the treasures that Northern Scotland has to offer.

Shawn and I should get along. We’re both the best first years on the swim team, we share some modules, we both like food.

Although I’ve never met someone who proudly claims to hate food, so I strike that off the list.

But still, we have things in common.

So why am I thinking about pulling a wooden stick from the olives and inserting it into my retina?

On the plus side, I’ve got the best phone signal I’ve had in weeks. The first two movies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy are already downloaded, and The Return of the King is at sixty percent. My weekend is sorted.

“I’ll help you get started if you want.”

I smile around a bite of food, which I have to admit is delicious. “That’d be great.” If they accept Monopoly money as currency.

“You seem quiet.”

I shift in my seat. In all honesty, I’m self-conscious. I’m in a borrowed green dress with makeup that’s not mine, either. I never dress up, and Shawn hasn’t said anything at all about my outfit. I’m worried I look ridiculous. Coupled with the fact that he’s only managed to not talk for a cumulative total of forty-eight seconds since we got here, his observation doesn’t come as a surprise.

“You’re just…very chatty, and this food is really good.”

He has the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. I’ve just had such an interesting life, you know? I’m really blessed. What about you? Got any secret hobbies?”

I blush. “Well, I like puzzles. Crosswords, Sudokus, cryptic crosswords. They calm me down, you know?”

“Okay, I can see why you were quiet now,” he replies, a condescending expression on his face. I chew the inside of my cheek and stab some food onto my fork. There’s few feelings worse than someone making you feel stupid for your interests.

My mind wanders back to my conversation with Alex. A massive wanker who pays for a tanning bed in the Scottish Highlands. The thought makes me laugh, and Shawn looks pretty proud of himself.

His lecture on inheritance tax makes me consider ending it all, but the deconstructed sticky toffee pudding is a welcome hand that pulls me back from the metaphorical edge.

As we both order an espresso to finish, Shawn excuses himself to go to the bathroom and I allow myself to check my phone.

No one’s here to judge my sins or my pathetically confused emotions, so I let the only notifications make me smile.

Shawn reappears, sinking into the chair opposite. “I think the soap in the bathroom is cheap soap in expensive bottles.”

Christ. “Maybe people kept stealing it?”

“Who steals something as boring as soap?” He sniffs his hands and wrinkles his nose. “Anyway, I heard a rumor about you and Alex.”

I wave my hand in the air like some sort of flailing seal. “It’s nothing, I swear. We’re not together.”

“Okay, good.” He leans in a little. “Between you and me, you really don’t wanna go there.”

My interest piques. If Shawn knows anything about Cain’s shady business practices, it would make my whole year. I bet his and Alex’s parents know each other. “Really?”

“Bad genes. His mom is batshit crazy.”

I don’t know how, but I instantly know it’s an insensitive choice of words. “What makes you say that?”

“You haven’t seen?” He tugs his phone from his pocket and loads an internet search. I recognize his mother immediately. Most people would. She was one of the most famous models on Earth in the early 2000s. In the thumbnail, she’s in a chic white shift dress and boots, her waist-length hair a little messy.

I take his phone in my hands, my heart beating a little too fast. I feel like I shouldn’t be looking, but this is on a trashy but public news site. Anyone could see. I could’ve just stumbled upon it myself.

Pressing on the white Play button, a shaky, hand-filmed video of his mother appears, taken the Friday before last. Right before he flew back to New York.

The video loads at a slow pace, until the thin frame of Elise Corbeau starts to move. She sweeps her arm over the jewelry counter of a luxury department store in Manhattan, screaming something about none of the gems being the perfect color. Diamonds worth more than my existence bounce across the marble floor like cheap beads from a shitty bracelet. My stomach sinks to the bottom of the Minch as I watch a security guard pin her to the floor.

“She’s been like this for years now. That family is so high maintenance.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see that this isn’t high maintenance. It’s an illness.

The phone drops from my clammy fingers onto the linen tablecloth, and I wish I didn’t watch to the end. I wish I didn’t hear as she cries out for someone to get her eldest son and not her husband.

I wish a steady patter of rain didn’t quash the anger-fueled fire that has kept me alive these last few years.

I wish that for the first time in four years, I didn’t feel completely lost about what I want to do.

Alex can eat his words about Shawn. He paid the eye-watering bill very happily. I managed to get a whopping three sentences in on the drive home, and he walked me to the mansion doors. And he didn’t seem too mad when I said I didn’t want to do anything physical at all.

God, maybe my standards are on the floor.

Phone flashlight guiding my way, I climb the winding stairs of the Nightshade mansion feeling too many emotions to count.

I can do normal things. I can date. Maybe I’m not emotionally stunted, after all. Maybe I can be capable of love.

I text Colette with a summary and Shawn with a thank-you as I hit the third floor.

I don’t want to go out with Shawn again. Whether I dislike Alex or not, I don’t like the way he talked about his mother. The video played on repeat in my head the whole way home.

I think about his last-minute trip back to New York. To the little blonde girl on his webcam.

What was her birthday like? Did her mother get to be there? Or her father?

Did the responsibility of making her feel cherished land on Alex’s shoulders? Is he the steady parental figure in their lives?

An odd combination of confusion and melancholy stings the corners of my heart.

Candles flicker on the walls of the hallway as I fish my key out of Colette’s clutch bag. A small storm pooling in the base of the valley is making the power choppy. The sound of a woman wailing carries over the hills and through the rafters of the mansion.

“How was the date, Twist? Did he wear Velcro shoes?”

I slap a hand to my chest as Alex comes out of his bedroom and locks the door. He slowly takes in my skintight dress and rubs a palm over his mouth like he’s desperately trying not to say something. “And you say I lurk.”

His expression remains stony. “How was the date?”

I can’t even meet his eyes. I know things he wouldn’t want me to, and I feel guilty for that.

And most of all I feel guilty for something I haven’t done yet.

I realize I haven’t even answered the question. “It was…nice.”

“Nice?”

I unlock my door, but don’t open it. The silence weighs heavy between us. “Yeah, nice.”

If he was sober when Vincenzo was texting me, I don’t think he is now. He’s standing behind me, close enough that his chest kisses my back each time he inhales. “He didn’t deserve it.”

My shoulders tense. “The date?”

“That dress.”

I hate that his words hold the power to light little candles of confidence in the back of my mind. “Don’t say things like that.”

“You look beautiful.” He says it so simply, like it’s not an opinion but a fact; not up for debate.

“The dress is Colette’s,” I whisper. I can’t hear my own words over my sticky pulse. I don’t dare tell him that I spent half the date imagining him pulling it off me, not Shawn.

“It was made for you.” He says, voice thick with desire. I press my thighs together. “Did he pay?”

The heat building between us fizzles out. It’s information he doesn’t need to know, information he has no right to know. I’m frustrated, panicked about the way his gaze alone makes me feel completely naked in the hallway.

A depressing fact sinks its claws into my brain.

Something in the way Alex looks at me, something beneath the anger, makes me feel pretty.

“Did he?”

“Why do you care?” I snap, replaceing the sense to push the wooden door open.

His next words are throaty, feeling like warm honey on my exposed back. “Ophelia, I’d start a Crowdfunder for the pigeon that shat on my car last week if I found out it had gone on a date with Shawn Miller.”

I don’t know if it’s the video, the cocktails, or the fact that I don’t feel so insecure in his company, but my lips press into a reluctant smile as I look back over my shoulder. We’re almost nose to nose. “What about the pigeon that would pee in your cup holder?”

The devastating curves of his lips form a smile of their own, but beneath his black lashes his eyes are clouded with that omnipresent darkness that seems to follow him around.

“I’d leave that stupid, ginger pigeon on the rainy path outside the university gates.”