Daybreak (Sorrowsong University, #2) — Chapter no 17

Chapter 17

OPHELIA

The house isn’t much different than when I left it just after New Year’s, save for the overdue bills on the doorstep and the fresh layer of mold on the damp windowsills.

It’s eleven degrees outside, but somehow inside feels even colder. I wrap my flimsy brown jacket tighter around myself, the thick white socks that sit over my tights doing nothing to dull the sting.

It hurt coming back to this house before Christmas, with its empty bookshelves and dusty furniture, but now, where memories of Alex and me sit between the grief and the decay, it’s somehow even worse.

I didn’t see what Morello’s people did to clean up the scene; I just walked, mute and stiff back to Belladonna’s car.

I let their questions wash over me. Are you hurt? Would Laura have been working with anybody? Does she have family we need to silence?

Where do you want to go now? Can we clean the cut on your hand?

I only had one answer: Please don’t take me back to Sorrowsong.

Instead, I had Belladonna’s men bring me some clothes and my laptop and drop me here, not that I’ve bothered to change. My leggings are caked in mud and there’s blood beneath my fingernails that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to truly erase.

I’m disgusted with myself. Disgusted at what I did to her. Disgusted that I was so desperate to leave the snake pit of loss and loneliness and anger and despair that I climbed out of it and took the ladder with me.

I ignore my phone ringing incessantly on the chipped laminate worktop in the kitchen. It takes one, two, three tries for my shaking fingers to plug in

the kettle, another two tries to prize open the rusting tea bag tin and throw

one into my dad’s favorite mug.

I don’t know what to do.

Sorry wouldn’t cover it, even if she was still alive for me to apologize to.

My tears drip onto the white envelopes as I slice them open. Water, gas, electricity, tax. They amount to almost nothing, but so does my bank balance.

And I’m currently in no state to call the care home and ask for a job.

I hiccup a sob as I bring the mug to my lips, the steam scalding my nose,

red and raw from crying.

Tea is pointless without milk.

I flip my phone over, daring to look at the screen. Ten missed calls from Colette. Ten more from Divya and Magda. Four from Vincenzo. Three from Mack, two from Brendan. One from Belladonna.

Endless calls from Alex.

It should warm my heart. It’s all I’ve hoped for.

But it’s a reminder of Laura, of what her phone must’ve looked like: empty, save for anonymous messages to a girl who let her down.

I put down the phone before the tears really come. Before the regret and the desolation and the self-loathing that I’ve held in for the past eight hours finally hit. It reduces my knees to jelly on the small, square landing at the top of the stairs, folds me at the middle, spreads a migraine like hot oil through my skull.

For the first time in four and a half long years, I stagger into the larger of the two bedrooms and pull back the pristine covers, slipping beneath the duvet with puffy eyes and a broken heart. My scream of frustration is muffled by the pillow. “I need you,” I sob into the dusty fabric. “I need you both, and you aren’t here.”

I AMBLE THROUGH the council estate, corner store bottle of milk dangling from my pinky and lollypop hanging out my mouth. I lasted four hours without a decent cup of tea before I gave in and shuffled my way down the street in what I am sure is a flattering combination of Alex’s sweatpants and my mom’s old sandals.

For the first time since my parents died, I find myself free of questions.

I know that my parents died as the result of some cheap, heinous deal to keep one of Cain Green’s many affairs under wraps.

I know Bancroft and my mother had an affair.

I know who texted the photo of Alex and me and Bancroft’s body.

I know that Brendan was able to recover Laura’s phone and erase all

traces of it.

I know everything.

So where is the satisfaction? Where’s the sense of victory I’ve chased incessantly for five years?

I’ve filled the answers to all my unknowns like the potholes on these shitty Scottish roads, but it feels like they’re only in worse condition.

I just need to get through today. Tomorrow I’ll tackle things like showering and eating and studying.

I nod at Mrs. Smith who lives on the corner, standing in her dressing gown with a cigarette between her lips. She nods back, setting her cup of tea on top of the green wheelie bin beside her. “You got any dishwasher

tablets spare, Winters?”

“Haven’t got a dishwasher, Mary.”

She coughs, a heaving, wet cough that racks her whole body. “You

should get one.”

“Probably.”

“Is it true? You went to that posh castle school?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

I pause just past her house, in almost as much disrepair as mine. A heavy sigh has my shoulders sinking. “The food’s good.”

“I bet.” She exhales a thick plume of smoke. “If you see Steve, ask him if he has a dishwasher tablet spare.”

I don’t know how I did this for four years, survived off petrol station bread and my own tears. When I round the corner onto the gray pebble dashed terrace that I call home, my feet come to a stop.

I should be pleased to see him, to discover he hadn’t flown back home yet, but there’s something about that car being here. A hundred-thousand- pound car parked between houses that cost the same. Wheels that probably cost a month’s rent each while Mary is trading the items in her kitchen cupboard for dishwasher tablets.

When I reach the ridiculous Land Rover, it’s empty, but the lights are switched on inside the house, something I didn’t bother to do.

The door is unlocked. I kick my sandals off on the peeling vinyl flooring and drag myself into the kitchen.

Alex turns to face me, the room plummeting into silence. He looks tired.

He rakes his eyes down my body, and whatever he sees is enough to fill them with something that looks a lot like sadness.

Great.

“For the sake of my carbon footprint, Ophelia, we are really going to have to work on our communication issues.”

I kneel to place the milk in the fridge, but it looks ridiculous now, surrounded by fresh fruit and yogurt and cheese and ready-made meals that Alex has already put there.

The yellow light from the bulb in the fridge swims from the tears I can’t keep at bay, the guilt that sits on my shoulders too heavy for me to stand.

I brace a hand on the bubbling floor in front of me, curling my other against my heart, because it hurts. If it were anyone else stood behind me, I’d be embarrassed about the mangled sob that tears its way out of my throat.

“You can’t just switch all my lights on,” I cry, like that’s the issue here.

“I’m trying to keep my bills down.”

A hand settles on my lower back, rubbing a gentle circle. “Let me help with—”

I sit back on my heels, the two of us kneeling in front of the fridge in this tiny kitchen. “You can’t just throw money at everything to fix it,” I snap, even though it’s harsh. He’s exceptionally good at not throwing money at me, at not making me uncomfortable in that way.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I forgot,” I hiccup, through my tears.

“Forgot what?”

“I forgot this.” I wave my hand around the house, then toward the faded picture of my parents pinned to the door. “I forgot them. I forgot Mary from down the road, and I forgot Laura. And you’re all just so out of touch, and I got so used to all the luxuries that I fell out of touch, too.”

“Ophelia, you’re not someone who’s used to luxury things.”

“That’s not what I’m referring to.”

I don’t mean the cars, the handbags, the shoes. I mean real luxuries.

Friends who care, who show up with chalkboards and snacks whenever something needs to be planned, friends who will drive you places at four in the morning just because you ask. Alex. Alex who loves me so much and so deeply that the chains of my past feel looser now.

Luxuries Laura might’ve had, if I hadn’t deserted her.

His eyes soften with understanding. “Being loved and accepted for who you are isn’t a luxury you don’t deserve.”

“Someone died because of me.”

“I don’t know who Laura is, but I know that you are not the villain in her tale. You didn’t decide her fate. You’re giving yourself way too much

power in her life.”

“Stop it.”

“We’re not doing that. You’re not depriving yourself of kind-ness because you think you don’t deserve it.”

My shoulders shake, chest aches. “Please stop.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I gave up on revenge for a relationship with you is what happened,” I bite out, angrier at him than I really mean. There’s only one person I’m really angry with. “I let myself get consumed by you.”

“Who is Laura?”

Self-loathing is a dull blade somewhere inside me, clawing its way from the inside out. “She’s me. She’s me if I hadn’t met you.”

He rises to his feet, and I hear the clatter of a mug against the counter, the spluttering of the kettle. And then he’s gone, footsteps sounding upstairs before the sound of water filling the bath.

It only makes what I’ve done feel worse.

I’M ON MY third episode of MasterChef, ridiculing the way Clare from Birmingham has made a roux even though I haven’t got a single idea what a roux is, when Alex finally joins me on the sofa after what felt like a hundred work meetings. Fresh out of contact lenses, he’s in those reading glasses, the ones that appear so rarely and yet feature in almost every single one of my daydreams.

Following what can only be described as a catastrophic breakdown overnight, today I feel all out of fight, like the still quiet after the storm

when the sky couldn’t possibly rain anymore.

“She’s put rosemary in a roux,” I say, because I don’t want to talk about anything else.

His legs join mine on the coffee table in front of us, lifting my hoodie to check on the bruises that stain my ribs from my fight with Laura. “What the fuck is a roux?”

“Dunno. But I bet you’re not meant to put rosemary in it.”

“What an idiot.”

“Literally.”

He stares at the TV with mild disinterest, watching a contestant putting potatoes through a sieve with so much gusto that sweat is beading on his forehead. Alex is restless, the muscles beneath the ravens on his forearm flexing as he spins the gold ring on his index finger. There’s a darkness about him that reminds me of that first day we met outside the Sorrowsong gates, like there’s a storm brewing just beneath his skin.

I lean over to scratch my fingernails through his hair, watching his eyes drift shut and the tension dissipate from his shoulders just a little. “Talk to

me.”

“We’re never going to catch my father.”

“You will. He’s just slimy.”

“He’s too smart. Too well connected. I don’t think there is a police force, airport, government authority, or crime group anywhere that he doesn’t have a contact in … Why are they mashing potatoes through a sieve?”

“I gave up trying to understand this TV show when you were on your first cigarette. That ginger guy just compressed a tomato.”

He sighs, like it’s genuinely the TV program that’s distressing him, and not everything else. “What is the point of it all?”

“Dunno,” I say, putting a biscuit in my mouth. “You’ll get your father, Alex. It’s a waiting game.”

“I just want to be done with him. We’ve been through enough. We’ve waited long enough.”

“It feels like that, but three months isn’t that long.”

“When you had to wait three months for a new book to release you said three months was the longest time period imaginable. And when I said, ‘What about four months?’ you told me to mind my own business.”

I did say that, but I don’t admit it. “Oh dear. Deteriorating eyesight and

memory. You’re a lost cause, Corbeau.”

“I am.”

Somehow, we’ve ended up horizontal, spooning on the too-narrow sofa with the TV blaring. A contented silence settles in the dated living room as we watch Clare make a mess of plating her dauphinoise and pretend the world isn’t burning around us.

When the judge says he appreciates the rosemary that went into the roux, Alex turns the TV off like a disgusted football fan, covering my ears until the sound stops, like I’m a child and he doesn’t want me to hear something inappropriate. “That’s bullshit. Don’t listen to them, baby. You were right about the roux; they were wrong.”

“I’m going to email in and complain.”

He sighs, his body tense behind me. I rotate where I lie on the sofa, so we’re almost nose to nose. I think we’re both delirious from lack of sleep.

“We’ll get through this, Alex. And then we’ll get through the next thing.

And the next.”

He smiles, and it makes my heart skip a beat. “I’m tired of things.”

“Tough luck. Life is full of things.”

His smile is soft, finger tracing down my nose. “Thank you for being mine.”

“Thank you for coming to that life drawing class.”

“I’m irrational. I can’t bear the thought of someone else drawing you.”

I bite my lip. “Jealous, Alex?”

His hand moves down, thumb pressing against the spot where my pulse hammers in my neck. “I’m sick with envy at the wind that slips through the holes in your knitted sweaters, Winters. Jealous doesn’t cover it.”

“You don’t need to be.” My grin is involuntary, but it feels so good. I like jealous Alex.

His eyes are alight again, no longer endless pools of desperation. I run my finger over the scar beneath his eyebrow. His father’s handiwork.

I hate Cain Green for so many reasons.

His throat works with a swallow, stare fixed on the world beyond my yellowing curtains. The sun is setting outside, copper shards of light illuminating the crumbling terraces on my street. A plane cuts through the haze, and like he’s reading my mind, he says, “I have to fly home soon.”

“I know.”

“I have no idea when I’ll next have time to come to see you.”

“You deserve so much more than what I can give you.” I’ve been trying to listen to fear-of-flying podcasts so I can come visit him, but my fear runs so deep, braided with so much trauma, I’m getting nowhere. “The distance is just another thing, Alex. We’ll get through it.”

He’s tense, muscles taut as though he’s holding something in. “You should know what you’re getting yourself into with me. I need you to be

sure.”

“I do know.”

His lips brush mine, soft and tender. “I come with an unwell mother.”

“I know.”

A kiss lands on my jaw. “And custody of six girls who are really great but also really, really mean. After you graduate, when we’re finally able to be together, the youngest girls will still be with me.”

“I know.”

Another kiss, this time on my collarbone. “And a tired, miserable brain.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure if I ever want kids.”

“Neither am I.”

“I’m exhausting to be around on my lowest days.”

“I want you. I want all of your baggage, too. I love your mom. I love the girls. I want everything about you.”

The relief on his expression almost brings me to my knees. He really thinks I don’t understand. That I’ll run when his homelife gets too hard, or when his depression gets worse.

“I want the messy life, Alex. The big fights, the small ones, the leaking washing machines and the car breakdowns and the grumpy teenage girls. I want a normal life, full of people and all their issues.”

Now he’s full-on smiling. “I want that, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He swallows, brushing a tear from my bottom lashes. I didn’t even realize it was there. “I want a cottage, and an overgrown garden. I want long, lazy afternoons between your thighs. I want to watch you go gray. I want fresh flowers, and an old wife. And if we did have children, they’d never fear the sound of their father’s footsteps.”

I feel a second tear fall, slow and silent as it trickles across my cheek.

For someone who refuses to think about his future because he struggles to believe he’ll have one, the magnitude of his confession isn’t lost on me.

“We can have all of that. We just need to get through the things.”

“I can hold on.”

“Hold on until midnight. Tread water until midnight.”

I feel his smile against the top of my head, arms tightening around me.

“Until midnight.”

WHEN I WAKE, Alex is sitting on the end of the bed in a black hoodie and those rugby shorts. His bags are packed at his feet, and disappointment I have no right to feel swirls within me.

I’m exhausted. A night of dreams about Laura and the forest have left me feeling worse than I did when I went to bed.

“I have to leave in half an hour for my flight.”

“Okay,” I croak, trying to keep my tone cheerful. “That’s okay.”

Something in his expression tells me there’s more.

“Brendan has my father on CCTV about five hundred yards from our

house.”

Dread punches me in the gut.

“In New York?”

“Yeah. Last night. He’s masked, but it’s definitely him.”

“Shit, Alex.”

“There’s security at the house, but …”

“I’m glad you’ll be there soon,” I say, heading into the bathroom to brush my teeth, trying to process this snippet of news.

I really, really need Alex and his sisters to come out of this unharmed.

I splash my face with cold water, mildly horrified by my own reflection.

If I was being kind, I’d say Alex and I have both looked a little … disheveled, lately. Only, he’s pulling it off. His hair is messy in a hot, bedhead kind of way. The tiredness on his face makes him look older— sexier—and the whole grumpy, broody vibe he has going on is only making me more flustered.

Me? Not pulling it off so nicely. The color of my skin has gone beyond paper white and into the blue spectrum, and I’ve prodded at the lonely hair on my chin for so long it’s now a spot.

But when I return to the bedroom and sit against the pillows, Alex looks at me like I’m everything he’s ever hoped for and more.

The mattress dips under the heavy weight of him, and his hands land either side of my head. He hovers over me, all parted lips and long, dark lashes as he drinks in the sight of my tired, too small camisole.

I’ll never get bored of this view.

His work laptop chimes nonstop from the side table, until he leans over and slams the lid shut with so much enthusiasm that I can’t contain my laugh.

“How is the world of private jets and stock market crystal balls?” I ask, while my pulse drums in my throat. I wonder if I’ll ever stop having this visceral reaction to him, the same reaction I had the first day I met him.

Like I’ve wandered right into his trap but never want to leave.

I’m putting wallpaper and ugly furniture into this trap, making it a home.

He’s playful despite the tiredness around his eyes and the darkness that weighs him down. He tugs his hoodie over his head, tossing it aside and falling back down onto two thick forearms. My brain has left the building.

“My crystal ball is proving quite useful.”

“Oh yeah?”

He nuzzles my neck, inhaling my scent. He’s hard against my thigh.

“Mmhmm.”

“And what does it say?” I ask, expecting him to tell me some mind- numbing shit about supply chains and staff turnover rates.

“That you should ride my face.”

I laugh in surprise, looping my hands round the back of his neck. A fire burns somewhere in my lower stomach. “And?”

“And then my dick.”

I wiggle my hips beneath him, turning his next exhale into a quiet growl.

“Hm. Doesn’t sound like it’s very helpful with the stock markets. Might be broken.”

He hooks his leg between mine, flipping us so I’m straddling him.

“Baby, I haven’t given a shit about the stock market—or anything else for that matter—since the day I found out you own stockings.”

His hands encircling my waist, he slides me back a few inches and bends my knee so that his thigh presses, hard and firm, between my legs. I

can’t help my smile. It’s like our first night together, the first time we finally gave in.

It feels like we’ve come such a long way, and somehow no distance at all. Still in love, still just out of reach of a happy ending.

Oh God. I’m going to miss him.

I’d take Alex in any form I can get him; if it has to be video calls and nights stolen from his airport layovers, then so be it, but I won’t pretend it doesn’t gut me that we won’t get to wake up beside each other like all our friends in relationships do.

He runs his thumb across my jaw, tender and reverent like he always is with me. “What’s going on in that head, Twist?”

I let out a shaky exhale, pushing out all my negative thoughts with it. I don’t want to sully our last half hour with my God-given pessimism. I roll my hips against him, pulse sticky, stomach clenching. “I’m thinking it could be really dangerous to disobey the crystal ball. Don’t want to tempt fate.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, hands gripping my thighs so hard that it sends a delicious, warm pain through my lower half. “Sounds sensible,” he drawls, playing along. “For safety reasons, you should come on my face.”

“And your dick.”

“You’re a real beacon for the community.”

“Exactly,” I say. My laughter turns into a yelp as he slides his hands under my thighs and drags me toward him until my knees are either side of his head.

He pauses slightly, before a soft laugh tickles my inner thigh. “You know, when Harwood has me picturing my happy place, it’s right here.”

And with that casual comment that feels anything but casual in the way it buries itself deep into my heart, he tightens his arms around my thighs and makes me forget everything.