Nightshade (Sorrowsong University, #1)

by Autumn Woods

“I need to finish him off. I’m doing all of us a favor.” Vincenzo pulls me into the library, away from the gathering crowd in the foyer. “Over Ophelia? She’s just a girl. Let it go.” “He called her a psycho.” Vin pales slightly. “Your mama?” “Yeah.”

“Mr. Corbeau. Good morning.” “There are videos of her online again.” “Ah yes. I’ve seen.” “So what the fuck do we pay you for? Get them taken down.” “I’m working on it, sir.” “Well work faster. I can fire your team just as easily as Cain can.” “I’ll have them down today, sir.”

I swear my heart stops beating. Dread shoots up my spine like a bullet, my feet breaking out into a sprint beneath me. She’s far enough away for me to jump to a hundred conclusions as I run. She’s dead. She drowned. No. She’s the best swimmer I know. She can’t have just drowned.

Don’t die. Don’t leave me. You occupy my mind. Those stupid crosswords. You’re those for me. You’re the cage for my thoughts.

I cover Ophelia with her towel and my hoodie, but not before I spot the finger-shaped bruises on her neck. I swear, I’ve never felt a fire like it. “No, don’t.” I can’t trust anyone. “Ophelia’s been drowned.” “She’s drowned, or been drowned?” “Just fucking talk me through it. She’s hardly breathing.” “Open her mouth and breathe for her.”

“God, Ophelia. Wake up,” I whisper between them. I start the compressions again. “Please wake up.” Wake up, Maman. It’s me.

Belladonna must’ve texted Vincenzo, because he’s running toward me with blankets in his arms.

I pull her frozen body onto my lap, wrapping her in blankets. “I have you,” I whisper against the dirt on her forehead. “You’re okay.” A quiet sob escapes her lips, her whisper barely audible. Her head leans into me the smallest amount. “I’m cold.” I tighten my arms around her limp frame and don’t intend to ever release them. I feel like I could vomit. “I know. I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”

Vincenzo presses her freezing finger against the button of her phone and opens up her meager list of contacts while I dry her skin. He rings her dad, but it goes straight to voice mail. He hits Dial on her mom’s contact. It rings three times. Then four. I’m frustrated with them. Angry with them for not picking up. Don’t they care?

I can’t look away from the bruises on her neck, blinded with rage. “Ophelia, who did this to you?” I don’t get my answer. She’s fast asleep in my arms.

I carry her back to the mansion, hiding her face from curious watchers. I put her in my bed until Belladonna arrives, because I don’t know what else to do. Vincenzo tucks a Glock into his waistband and leaves on a manhunt.

I sit with her head in my lap, a bowl of warm water beside me as I wipe the cuts and scratches across her face clean. I can’t bear not knowing who it was. I need her to wake up. I brush my lips against her hair and tell her she’s okay, and that she’s doing fine. That I have her where no one can get her.

I’ve known it since I almost ran her over in the car. Since I first watched her swim, since I found out she must be the only person under the age of fifty to wear mittens, since I found out she does puzzles to escape the gray cloud of her own, since I watched her close and reopen the lid of her laptop to try to fix every IT issue under the sun. Since I heard her in her room, laughing and sobbing at a movie in the same thirty-minute period. I could go on forever. I’m obsessed with her. Desperate for her. But I could never be good for her, and for reasons she doesn’t make clear, she doesn’t want me to love her.

“Can I help you?” I offer, stroking her hair but careful not to touch her. She shakes her head, her voice broken and hoarse. “I’m trying to stay away from you.” It sounds like a lie, no conviction behind her words, but pointing that out won’t do either of us any favors. “I know. Just let me help.” I glance at my watch. It’s almost seven. “Let me help you until midnight. Tomorrow is a new day. We can go back to how we were.”

“We tried calling your parents, but we couldn’t get hold of them.” She shrugs, bottom lip trembling. Her gaze is glassy and unfocused, blinking like the bathroom is too bright. She looks like her spirit is broken. “They’re bad at phones. They don’t understand them.” “I’d never have guessed, looking at your technological prowess.”

A tear runs down her cheek. I brush it away with my thumb. “I’ll call them later. Don’t worry them.”

“I don’t like you,” she repeats. “This isn’t…this doesn’t mean anything.” I sense her panic, though I don’t understand it. I ache to kiss the freckles on her shoulder where the towel has slipped off. “Ophelia, this doesn’t have to be anything more than one heartbeat helping another.”

“Belladonna says you saved my life.” “Not without her help.” I move behind her, running a brush through the copper waves that run down to the small of her back.

“I’ll thank you one day, when I’m grateful.” I can’t help it. I rest my forehead against her shoulder blades, taking comfort in the rhythm of her heart beneath her skin. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Ophelia feels like finding another human after months in the desert. A light permeating the thick black cloud. When my wayward mind wanders, it staggers back home to her. She’s everything I’ve be...

Sofia, the emails, this; she’s had too much on her plate. I put the phone down before I snap it into two.

“I believe you have a stalker, Twist. I’m just trying to work out who it is so I can help you.”

“Do you want to come out?” She nods. The wide, innocent look in her eyes almost knocks me back to my knees. “You won’t look down?” I fix my eyes on hers. On the color of caramel and Scotch whisky. On the brown lashes that fan out above them, clumped together with tears. “I won’t look down.” I don’t break eye contact as I help her up on shaky legs. As I steady her shoulders while she runs the towel over her naked skin. I don’t break it as I lay out my sweatpants for her to step into, or as I tie them at the waist. I don’t break eye contact, and I don’t want to. I want her trust.

I drop a text to Rocco, Vincenzo’s father, asking him to get his men to keep an eye on Ophelia whenever I’m out of the country. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she repeats. Not to you.

“Why’d you drop out of Yale, Alex?” I’m in uncharted territory, unsure whether to trust her when she clearly doesn’t trust me. “Why’d you lie about your parents?” Fresh tears pool on her lashes. I swipe them away with my thumb. “If I told you, you’d judge me for not telling you sooner. I can’t get close to you. Can’t trust you with my heart. We just won’t work together, Alex. I have to stay away from you, I just can’t find the strength to.” Welcome to my world.

“Until midnight you can.” “And then we won’t speak again?” “If that’s what you want.” It might finish me off, though. She sighs. “My life is boring. I don’t have a big family, or an eight-bedroom mansion. I don’t have big, exciting holidays or lavish Christmas plans. Or any Christmas plans, really. My parents aren’t fancy government officials.”

“I left Yale because my mother was—is—unwell. I stayed at home for two years to try to…fix her. She didn’t cope well with me moving out, and my father didn’t make her treatment a priority, so I left. Someone had to be at home to help, and I was happy for it to be me.” “You switched from architecture to business when you came here.” “I switched from pipe dream to practicality.”

“I know what I need to do. I just can’t do it.” She’s holding her breath. “Which is?” The cloud fills every corner of my chest, constricting my veins, shrinking my lungs. “Find her a live-in facility.” Away from my father. “But my youngest sisters are eight and ten. They’d go from breakfast in her bed to weekend visiting hours.” Her hand wraps around mine. “Your father?” My father. The monster bangs on its cage inside me, desperate to get out. “The only comment my father has made on the matter for months is that she’s bad publicity. He used to love her. Not so much now.”

“How did it all start?” My fingers tangle in Ophelia’s hair. “It was gradual. The fame ate at her. It still eats at her. She spent so long in the spotlight. Every mole, freckle, hair, outfit, gram of fat on her body blown up on the front covers of magazines for years on end. After Josie was born, she had seven children. Her body had changed. I watched the lines on her body be picked apart in a way that lines on my father’s were not; in a way that men’s bodies are not. She started to believe what they said. That she’d lost her value, that she had expired. She started getting more erratic. Chopping her hair off, burning clothes that were out of season. The media call it ‘high maintenance.’” She holds me like she thinks I’ll snap, but I won’t. While they need me, I’ll be unbreakable. “And what do the doctors call it?” “Depression. Bipolar. Severe schizophrenia.”

All I can remember is him. The warmth of him. The desperation in his voice as he begged me to wake up, and the desperation I felt when I couldn’t open my eyes for him. The feel of his lips against mine. Not erotic, but primal. One body breathing life into another. And then the way he ran the hairbrush through my hair in the bathtub. The way it filled an aching hole in my chest, a desperate need to be cherished. And the way he spoke about his mother.

He pulls the yellow sticky note from my forehead and peers down at it. “Shawn Miller.” “What?” “It really captures how much of a wanker he is.”

“Why haven’t your parents visited?” My hands pause where they pack up my things to leave. “What?” “You were five minutes from death, and they’ve not come to see you.” “It’s complicated. They’re…not around to visit me.”

“Don’t.” “Don’t what?” “Don’t kiss me.” He cocks an eyebrow, walking his hands over the bed until I’m lying on my back and he’s hovering over me. “No? And why not?”

“Did you miss me?” Yes. I ignore the question, but I only feel his wicked grin widen against my throat. “Did you miss me, Ophelia?”

“One down. Seven letters. First letter O. I’ve had a long day, and I want her for dinner.” Holy fuck.

“Two across. Eight letters. First letter A. The quality of being unpleasantly proud.” “You think I’m arrogant?” I think he’s one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. “Yeah.”

“Tell me you missed me.” I look back up at him, at the hunger in his gaze. “I’d rather choke you.” His eyes smolder, lips part. “You could’ve told me that was an option.”

“You got selective hearing, sugar?” I laugh at the nickname, stroking my chin as if deep in thought. “Yeah, and…oh man. It looks like you’ve not been selected. Good luck next time, though.” “You’re a fucking nightmare, Winters.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll find it and I’ll fix it for you.” “Can you fix the fact that I don’t like you?” He doesn’t call me out on my lie, instead tapping my phone screen beside us to see the time: 4:32 p.m. “Like me until five. Then we can go back to before.”

“We can be friends?” I offer, to assuage my guilt. I cringe as soon as I say it. It sounds dumb, and neither of us wants to be friends. “Friends who fuck each other’s brains out?” he offers, like it’s a business negotiation. “Friends who say hi in the hallway.” His smile lightens the mood, tone unserious. “Friends who fuck in the hallway?”

My eyes land on the brown folder at the bottom of the drawer. The folder from the red box. The folder I’ve been looking for.

“Ophelia, you don’t even know what a page break is. You just hit Enter fifteen times. I spent the whole coursework deleting them all. If a caveman were here, he’d say you were even shittier at technology than him.” “If a caveman were here, he’d probably say oog or ugg.”

I’ve not seen Alex in days. It’s harder than I expected; I have no good reason for missing him, but I do. I miss the way he laughs at my bad moods and runny nose. I miss his quiet belief in everything I do.

From: Alex Corbeau-Green Subject: Begging (noun) ask someone earnestly or humbly for something Date: Friday 21st November 16:48 BST To: Ophelia Winters Unblock my number. This is getting old.

From: Ophelia Winters Subject: RE: Begging (noun) ask someone earnestly or humbly for something Date: Friday 21st November 16:49 BST To: Alex Corbeau-Green There’s nothing humble or earnest about you.

From: Alex Corbeau-Green Subject: Not focusing on my workout anymore Date: Friday 21st November 16:49 BST To: Ophelia Winters Meet me under the rugby stands. I’ll get on my knees and show you just how humble I can be.

I’m going to die. I can’t untangle my fucking earbuds. A pair of heavy footsteps lands beside mine. “Why are we running?” Oh great. I swear he must be having me watched. “Leave me alone.” “How’s that going?” asks Alex, nodding down at my earphones. A low rumble reverberates through the air around us, my fingers desperately trying to undo the knots in the wires. “It’s not funny,” I snap, hands shaking too hard. He takes the earphones from my hands, making quick work of the wires and handing them back to me. “Your audiobook addiction is getting out of hand.”

Even with the music, I know when the helicopter is landing. I press my palms over the earphones as I hurry in the direction of the mansion. The floor vibrates beneath me, rattling me down to the marrow in my bones and knocking the breath from my lungs. Alex must notice, because his hands settle over my shoulders to stop me in my tracks. His eyes hold mine, silently asking me, telling me, not to let go. Gently, softly, a pair of warm hands settle over mine, dulling the last of the noise. I’m so stunned by his gesture, I barely notice the touchdown. He presses my forehead to his chest, letting the outside world bleed into empty nothingness until all that’s left is him and me.

“Sorry. Just wanted to listen to Sinatra. Love the guy.” He doesn’t mirror my amusement. “What happened?” I chuckle again, like an antisocial clown on his first day of the job. What the fuck is wrong with me? “Just a funny moment.” “A funny moment.”

“Are you afraid of helicopters?” “Yes.” “Is that why you don’t like me?” He probably said it as a joke, but it’s the closest he’s ever been to hitting the nail on the head. “Pretty much.”