Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 27

Alex pushes the tip of the shovel into the mossy earth, stacking both gloved hands on top. In the navy forest around us, his eyes are supernatural. He brings his chin to rest on his knuckles, peering up at me with a boyish grin that has no business being so endearing at a time like this.

“So what does this make us? Study buddies that bury bodies together?”

I can’t fight my smile. That feels like a lifetime ago. “The day I bury a body with you, Alex, is the day I’ve lost my mind.”

He flutters long, black lashes at me. “You lost your mind, angel?”

“I lost it the day I got into your car.”

His grin pulls in his dimples. “Really? I think I found mine that day.”

Butterflies flutter somewhere behind my navel. Over his shoulder, a masked-up Vincenzo waves Bancroft’s hand at me. Just his hand. The rest of him is still on the floor, being doused in some chemical by his bodyguard. Another of Vincenzo’s scary mafia men is scrubbing my blood out of Bancroft’s office. Another is penning a false, cryptic suicide note. Vincenzo drops the severed limb onto the freezing ground.

I do have limits, and detached hands are well outside of them. I turn away and gag, trying to unsee the spectacle that lies in the center of the glade.

What a fucking mess.

Vincenzo is right. Something in me has changed. I’m stronger, more resilient than I was before. Covered in Bancroft’s blood marbled with my own, shivering in a forest I never thought I’d venture into, I feel like I can do anything.

That’s not to say I’m not planning on sobbing into a tube of soggy Pringles in the shower for two hours when I get back, because I am. There are things Bancroft said to me in the forest that I’ll never unhear, old wounds that have been torn wide open.

Alex keeps me turned around, gentle kisses landing on the top of my head while they finish turning Bancroft into some sick and twisted salad. I don’t look. I don’t need a reminder that I have become everything I hate.

I pull his jacket tighter around me. I killed a man. I could go to prison. I should go to prison.

But more than that, what horrifies me most is the fact that when I finally slid the knife into his abdomen, a sharp thrill overpowered the dull wave of disgust. I’d be lying if I said ridding the world of another evil didn’t feel good.

Manslaughter? Six out of ten. Enjoyed it—might not do it again, though.

Bancroft half dissolved and buried in varying locations around us, Alex steps behind me. The scorching heat beneath his shirt penetrates through his jacket, melting onto my skin. He makes me feel like everything might work out fine in the end. “I’m not going to bother asking you if you’re okay, I’m just asking you not to shut me out when you spiral.”

“I won’t.”

“Let’s go home,” he whispers.

“Home?”

Each gentle kiss on my hair mends another crack in my heart. “Wherever you want, love. It’s home if we’re there.”