Nightshade: An Enemies to Lovers, Dark Academic Romance (Sorrowsong University Book 1)
Nightshade: Chapter 29

I sit up in bed. I think I slept too well. My eyelids are heavy, limbs aching. The cut on my hand looks better. Alex isn’t here, but all his clothes are. His laptop is still on the desk. Maybe he’s out for a run.

I roll and grab my phone to text him, faced with seventy unread messages.

Bitter ribbons of hate fill the screen. I scroll through insults, threats, and the odd person calling me brave.

What the fuck is going on?

I google Alex’s name and clasp a hand over my mouth. Article upon article upon article about his father’s long history of crimes kept under wraps greet me. I click on one, unable to watch the video of his mother. She looks nothing like the woman I spoke to at Christmas.

It’s the moment I dreamed of. The moment I lay awake and begged the universe for every night for years.

It feels fucking awful.

My eyes halt on the bottom line. Source credit: Ophelia Winters.

No, no, no. I swallow down the bile in my throat. This wasn’t me. Does Alex believe it was me? I run to my old laptop, open on the desk, and type in my password.

An unfamiliar email pops up, sent from my account. I stare at it in horrified silence, calling Alex. The line is busy, but I call again. And again. He doesn’t pick up. I dial Vincenzo, too, but he declines.

I run out into the hallway, traversing the quiet path to the castle at a pace I’ve never achieved. The Cortinar halls are quiet as I run into them, begging a student to let me in. I hammer on Colette’s door, waiting a tenth of a millisecond before doing it again. She opens it in her pajamas. “Was it really you?”

“No. Of course not.”

Her eyes are full of sympathy. “I didn’t think so.”

“How quickly can Eike get me to the airport?”

“Faster than most,” comes a gruff voice. Eike pulls on a black bomber jacket and sunglasses, swiping his keys from her desk.

Colette blushes. “I swear it’s not what it looks like.”

I feel like it’s exactly what it looks like, but now is not the time. “I’ll pay you back.”

She shakes her head, eyes full of worry for me. “Go, go. You two are too good not to work.”

Eike drives the whole way to the airport like a bat out of hell, both my hands holding onto the handle on the roof as the engine roars beneath us. He’s run three red lights and gone the wrong way down a one-way street, stoic expression completely unreadable beneath his sunglasses.

I can hardly breathe, hardly imagine what Alex is going through.

I’m worried what he’ll do to himself.

Several taxi drivers yell at us as Eike drives over the curb and into the bus lane at the airport, skidding to a stop outside the doors. I breathe out a thank-you, hurtling through the automatic doors and into the small foyer.

My eyes land on Alex immediately, going through priority security. He’s past the automatic ticket gates. I call him again, watching him turn over his phone and decline. Tears prick my vision. I shout his name, attracting attention from those around us.

He turns to face me. I almost sink to the floor. He’s been crying.

Agony lances through my heart. If someone could say goodbye with their eyes, he’s managing it.

I type out a text.

He looks down at his phone with a neutral expression. He doesn’t believe me. He looks so devoid of life, so devoid of hope. I put us aside and focus on him.

Three dots appear above my keyboard.

I hiccup a sob. It isn’t about the leaked evidence. It’s about him. It’s about the belief that someone could have fixed the darkness inside him.

I look up, dread clawing at my neck. I can’t see him anymore.

Undeliverable.

He’s blocked my number.

I stand there, helplessly calling him until long after I’ve watched the private jet take off. I dial Vincenzo again, my heart breaking. Why won’t he just let me speak?

I understand Alex’s bitter hatred of the world at that moment. It’s a cruel thief that won’t let him be mine, won’t let me be his. It watched us build a fragile paper house for two delicate hearts and put a match to it all the same.

He’s it for me. It sounds rash, but he is. But his shoulders are laden with responsibility that no twenty-three-year-old should bear, and mine are weighted by grief I’ll never be able to shake. We’ve both been fighting for so long, there’s no room for healing.

Right person, wrong universe.

My phone pings, and I’ve never unlocked it faster.

My pulse dulls in my ears, the floor ripples beneath my feet. It’s a Jane Austen quote.

The attached image is a fuzzy black-and-white photo, but I recognize the scene immediately. Bancroft’s broken form kneels before me and Alex in the dark forest, a knife glinting in Alex’s hand.

It’s exactly what it looks like. It’s a prison sentence. It’s my chance to get Alex back, swim at nationals, graduate, live a normal, ordinary life, all down the drain. More than that, it’s six girls losing yet another father figure.

My head swims, ink bleeding in at the edges of my vision. In the middle of the airport, the whole world fades to black.

Book two in the Nightshade series will be released in 2025.