Daybreak (Sorrowsong University, #2) — Chapter no 6

Chapter 6

ALEX

“Hi.”

Five days of rehearsing my speech for Ophelia, and those are the two letters that come out of my mouth.

I’d like to reach out and snatch them back from the space between us, but I can’t.

She’s frozen in place, staring at me like she’s half a second away from running. “Ophelia, I—”

“Hi?” she whispers, voice hoarse. Just the sound of her aches. “Hi!?”

A lump forms in my throat, sliding down my esophagus until it’s a

heavy stone in my stomach.

I’m so fucking sorry.

I run a hand through my hair. “Not my finest work. Fuck, Ophelia.

Please hear me out.”

“No,” she croaks, shaking her head. “Please, no.”

I take a step forward. She takes one back. We’ve been here before, on this same path, right after she hid under Carmichael’s couch. Only then, I felt like I was finally on the edge of having her. Now I’m inches from losing

her forever.

“Please let me talk.”

“You left me,” she bites out. The very tip of her nose reddens with anger, and I want to ask her how she could dare to do something so endearing while not allowing me to touch her. “You and I are doomed, Alex.”

Right people, wrong universe. That’s what she thinks about us.

It’s bullshit. I need it to be bullshit.

“Come on a drive with me.”

Her spine straightens, shoulders squaring. A determined look solidifies in her gaze, and there’s the woman I fell in love with. She’s so beautiful.

“I’d rather put myself into a blender.”

“I can put some rotating blades in the car, if that’d help.”

“Only if you put your head through them.”

“Oh, you know very well that I’d put my head wherever you ask me to, Ophelia,” I reply, much too quickly.

That has the pink tinge of her nose spreading over her freckled cheeks, and suddenly the low fog that hugs Sorrowsong castle doesn’t feel so cold.

“I … that is not … I didn’t mean it like that.”

She’s flustered. The thrill it gives me is dizzying.

I take two cautious steps toward her. She doesn’t bolt, but she does look like she might snap my neck. At least her hands would be the last ones to touch me. “Just let me talk.”

“The time for talking has long passed, don’t you think?”

“No, not really.”

“You’re impossible.”

I chance another step toward her. “Determined.”

“Desperate.”

Another step, and she’s so close I could almost touch her. “Lovesick.”

She flinches at that one, and I’m finally close enough to her to see the hairline cracks in this steely facade she’s put up. She’s pale. The circles beneath her eyes are vicious, every shade of purple a knife to the heart. The hard shell of anger is chipping, and I can see the hurt beneath it.

I’ve been so wrapped up in work, in my sisters, in my mom, in my dad’s disappearance that I hadn’t really appreciated until now what I’ve done to her. Lured her in, spent months convincing her to open up to me, threw it all

back in her face.

Jesus fucking Christ, I’m so sorry.

I can see it now, her rebuilding that wall I spent so long dismantling. But I can’t let that happen. And maybe she’s right, maybe I am desperate, suffocated by the black cloud that just won’t shrink, no matter what I do. I thought I was doing the right thing by staying away, but it might actually be worse this way around.

The idea of losing her is one thing too many.

“I shouldn’t have left.”

Her laugh is cold and disbelieving. “And it’s taken you this many weeks to realize that?”

I tilt my head back and blow a long breath of smoke away from her, silently asking the universe for help. “That’s not true.”

She’s on a roll now, her tone utterly incredulous. “And the phone number thing?”

“I know, I’m sorry. I had to deactivate my old number. Some-one leaked it. I was going to text you. I tried to text you, I just …”

“Didn’t.”

“Get in the car with me.”

I just need her to get in the car. She can’t run if we’re in the car. The lines between kidnapping and romance seem to be getting increasingly blurred, but oh well. One to tell at our wedding: I held her hostage in my car and forced her to fall back in love with me.

Ophelia shakes her head, so I give up on being fair. “I’ll tell you Mack’s updates if you get in the car.”

That gets her attention. Whisky-colored eyes turn wide and curious.

“Why? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

“Tell me here.”

“No, because you’ll run.”

“This is blackmail.”

“It’s negotiation.”

“Fucking hell,” she grumbles, storming over to me.

It’s the greatest victory I’ve had over the past month. My hand lands on her lower back, but she slaps it off as soon as my fingertips make contact with the damp fabric of her jacket.

She’s furious. “Touch me again and I really will shit on your dashboard this time.”

I stuff my hand into my pocket, trying to distract myself from the desperate need to feel the warmth of her skin. “Duly noted.”

She stops in the parking lot, where I unlock a black Land Rover, parked beside Belladonna’s Bronco. “Where’s the dark green one?”

“Uhm …” I scratch the back of my neck, remembering I really am trying not to get a restraining order. Better not tell her I sit in it most nights.

“It was a rental, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” she mumbles, looking a little disappointed. Hope inflates between my ribs. Maybe she thinks about that night as often as I do.

She shoves my hand aside when I go to open the passenger door for her, yanking it open herself. Her expression is thunderous. “No, Alex. I’m not …” Her tone switches from angry to the kind of patience you’d give a toddler who’s struggling to understand something, which feels even worse.

“I’m not yours anymore.”

I hold two hands up and step back, trying to act like that statement wasn’t a serrated blade to the neck. She goes to get into the car but stops, turning to face me. “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk about us. Don’t take this as a reunion. Tell me about Mack and then let me out of the car.”

“Okay,” I whisper. I don’t allow myself to feel disappointed. It’s more time with her than I deserve, and I know she’s just protecting her heart.

If anything, I respect her for it.

She climbs into the car, and I walk around and do the same. She’s as far to the left of the seat as she could possibly be, shoulder pressed against the window.

Still, with her in the car, safe and unharmed and within arm’s reach, I take my first full inhale since the second week of January.

“That morning, when I woke up and saw what had happened—”

“You’re already in violation of rule two.”

A ragged growl of frustration leaves me as I start the engine.

“Seriously?”

“I’m not here to talk about us. And there’s no need to drive anywhere.”

I reverse out of the parking spot, ignoring her protests. If I drive away from the castle for the whole Mack story, we’ll have to fill the silence for the journey home.

“This is kidnapping!” she shouts, reaching down to fiddle with the gear stick. I hit the brakes. I told her months ago that I wanted to kidnap her, so she can’t really claim ignorance.

“Ophelia, what the fuck are you doing?” I ask, as she probably mangles

the transmission of the rental car.

“Putting the car in reverse.”

“When we’re doing twenty miles per hour?”

She lets out a cry of frustration, flustered and angry. A red tinge sweeps over her pale face, and I fall in love all over again, painfully and violently.

“Why is this thing so hard to move?”

“Because my foot isn’t on the clutch.”

“Put your foot on the clutch, then.”

“I’m all right, thanks.”

She tries the passenger door—locked, obviously, that’s rule number one of kidnapping—and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Alex!”

My tone is butter soft. “Ophelia, my darling.”

She goes quiet as I drive out of the university gates and onto the bumpy country lanes beyond. The roads are icy, but the car has four-wheel drive. I revel in the feel of her, the heat of her body, the cinnamon smell of her hair, the sound of her breathing. “I’m so angry with you,” she says, eventually.

“Yeah, well I’m not delighted with that article you put together and failed to tell me about,” I say, now that I have her trapped. “But I thought we could discuss this like adults.”

She laughs bitterly. “Where was this logic when the article went live?

Tell me about Mack.”

I rub my palm over my jaw, the stress I’d momentarily forgotten coming back tenfold. “Brendan traced the texts you’re getting back to Sorrowsong.”

“I know. The pictures of me are taken here.”

“They’re sent from here, too.”

If I thought she couldn’t get any paler, I was wrong. “But … that would mean … your father is here? In Sorrowsong?”

God, I hope not. The thought has kept me up at night, but it feels so remote, so unlikely. “What makes you so sure it’s my father sending these?”

“I’ve barely spoken to another human for four years. Surely, I can’t have many more enemies. It has to be him. I mean there are other options but … he’s the only person who’d want me ruined.”

My expression must betray the fact that I disagree, because a long, tired sigh mists the window on her side, her solemn gaze fixed on the naked branches outside. “You don’t think it is.”

“I think it’s beneath him, tormenting you like this.”

A small smile cracks her frosty expression, and there’s that little glimmer in her eye. “Wow. Thanks. Gonna add not hot enough to be cyberstalked to my list of attributes.”

“You’re definitely hot enough to be cyberstalked. Too hot, even.”

“Aww,” she says, swishing her hair. “Maybe if you got a haircut, you could be cyberstalked, too.”

My laugh bubbles out of me, surprising us both. I don’t need to look in the rearview mirror to know I look a mess. I run both hands through my hair, trying to rescue it. “Better?”

Her smile is soft when she reaches out to pull a lock of hair out of place, letting it hang over my eye just how she likes. When her finger grazes my skin as she withdraws her hand, I swear I feel a crackle of electricity. My heart stumbles around a heavy, thick beat. I hear her breath catch in her throat. Somehow, we’re close. So close I can see each and every one of the freckles that are scattered across her nose, cheeks, forehead, chin.

So close, I can hear how her breathing has changed, dragging air into her lungs through the hot, heavy tension in the car.

Her tongue darts out to wet her lower lip, and maybe the world isn’t such a terrible place, after all. Maybe everything will work out.

She catches herself, shaking her head as if trying to dispel this intoxicating atmosphere. “There,” she rasps, her throat hoarse when her eyes flick back up to my hair. “You’ll get a threatening text in no time.”

And just like that, the bubble bursts. The love and the lust and the desperate hope, they all seep out of the car and into the crisp air beyond when she turns away from me.

I swear I almost see the world outside turn grayer, more muted in color.

I’m not naive enough to think that being with Ophelia will simply cure me, but she’s a million and one little reasons to keep going, neatly wrapped up in a holey jacket and moth-eaten scarf.

“Colette says you’ve shut Vincenzo out.”

My hand pauses where it turns on the heater beneath her seat, the question taking me by surprise. Guilt swirls somewhere between my ribs.

Vincenzo deserves better. I’ve shut everyone out. “I haven’t had time for friendships, lately. I haven’t had time for much except …”

“Treading water,” she finishes for me, when I cannot find the words.

I breathe out a soft laugh, but it’s devoid of humor. It’s the perfect analogy. I’m not making any forward progress, not getting anywhere. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to start the day with an aim that isn’t just getting through it.

Making no progress has never felt so exhausting.

I undo my top button, suddenly too hot, the conversation uncomfortable for me. “Back to your stalker,” I say.

She either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t listen. “Promise me you’ll keep treading water.”

“You said we can only talk about the investigation.”

She stares at her lap, fiddling with the friendship bracelet my sisters made for her. I trace my fingers over my matching one, the braided rope smooth and worn. “Shutting me out, shutting your friends out, I know you think it’ll make things easier. I know your depression convinces you that shutting people you love out is the right thing to do, because it’d be easier to disappear if no one would come looking—”

My voice comes out soft, pleading for her to be gentle with my fragile mind. “Ophelia.”

“It’s lying to you, Alex. Shutting people out will fix nothing. Believe

me, I tried it for four years.”

“You and Harwood would be friends.”

She gives me a look I’ve missed so much. Amused exasperation, I think.

But she drops the topic, which I’m grateful for. “I’m not afraid of your father, Alex. If he really is here, I wouldn’t run.”

God. Even the thought has me white-knuckled around the steering

wheel. “Well, you should.”

“He doesn’t scare me.”

Too stubborn for her own good. But then again, that might be why I fell in love with her.

“I need you to cooperate with Mack, Ophelia. Anything he asks, tell him. If anything happens to you, anything suspicious, any strange mail or emails, anyone says anything unkind, you tell him straight away.”

She snorts. “Plenty of people have unkind things to say about me.”

This is true. The reaction to the article has been broken and backward.

The only person who has received more hatred at Sorrowsong and on social media than my father—the man with a rotting mess for a heart—is Ophelia.

It’s the story of my mother’s life, and I hate how much it’s become Ophelia’s. The media will hold anyone accountable except those who are truly responsible.

Men like my father play chess with real people’s lives, and it’s always them who come out holding the medal.

The family divider, the torturer of an already sick woman, the disrupter of six little girls’ homelives, the betrayer of Alex Corbeau-Green. An elaborate painting has been constructed of Ophelia this past month, and it isn’t flattering. Each brushstroke is a new way to pick her apart. I’d throw every penny I can into having it taken down, but like with what people say about my mother, there isn’t a net big enough to catch it all.

Ophelia is the strongest person I know, but I see the heavy weight of it, the abuse, the texts, the attention. I want to pull over and wrap her so tightly in my arms that we both forget what it feels like to be splintered into so many pieces.

I can’t keep the pain out of my plea. “Please don’t believe what they say, Ophelia.”

“I try not to.” She shrugs, and though the tears that she blinks away gut me, it’s the fact I can’t pull her into my lap that delivers the killing blow.

She should still be mine. None of this is the way it should be.

“Ophelia.” Her name is a desperate prayer. I slow the car to a stop in the middle of the deserted road, trying to recall the worst things I’ve read about her in the past few weeks. It’s no wonder her parents couldn’t put up with her any longer. I’d get in a broken helicopter, too. If that’s what people say online, I can only imagine it’s worse in the private confines of Sorrowsong’s dark hallways. “Shit, Ophelia.”

“I don’t need you to defend me.”

“I know.”

“Can you just drive?” she begs. “And talk about your father and Mack?”

She needs a distraction, and I’d do anything for her, so I talk. I tell her about Brendan, how even he is struggling to get anything about the article leak. I tell her about Mack, about his time in the military, about how he’s tracking down my father, how Brendan hacks into CCTV feeds all over New York City in his search.

I don’t turn around to go back, not until she’s completely out of questions.

I slow to a stop in a passing place on a narrow lane sheltered by trees.

Fat droplets of rain and the occasional twig hit the windshield. The radio crackles quietly over the soft sound of Ophelia’s breathing.

“I’ll be careful if you will,” she says, looking up at me.

This is horrendous. To be this close to her and not allowed to touch her, not allowed to trace my finger over each freckle to see if she’s gained any more since I last lay my head on a pillow beside her.

I deserve punishment for my actions, but this is torture. “I’ll be careful, Twist.”

She smiles at the nickname, but it’s soft and sad. “How is she?”

“My mom?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s okay. She’s actually starting a trial for a new treatment soon.”

Her expression brightens, warm and genuine. “Oh, that’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” I rub my forehead. “I mean, I think so. It’s not without its risks, but leaving her on the trajectory she’s on isn’t going to do anything.”

“I’ll be crossing my fingers for her every night.”

I force a smile. It’s hard to talk about my mother. She’s going to die too young, and I’m so deep in denial about it. In my visions of a future with Ophelia—wedding or no wedding, kids or no kids—I picture my mom there throughout it all. But she won’t be.

I’m just trying to snatch years back from the cold grip of her weakening body, battered by too many drugs taken too young, too many years with her declining mental health ignored, too many letdowns by my father. “I’ll tell

her.”

“Alex, she’ll—”

“Don’t,” I manage, tone harsher than I mean. I’m tired of that stupid promise. She’ll be okay. People say it on autopilot with zero thought behind what they’re actually saying. “Don’t tell me she’ll be fine. Please don’t tell me she’ll be fine. Can we talk about something else?”

“Yeah,” she says, but the car descends into silence. Between us, our meager bingo card of acceptable conversation topics is exhausted.

Everything else is covered in red tape.

I stare out the window, at the rolling hills and distant Munros that peek between the trees. Ophelia turns down a call from Colette, typing out a text.

She puts her phone back in her pocket, but neither of us speaks.

It’s awkward, this silence. And it’s awkward that it’s awkward—that we’ve gone from being two people who couldn’t make a silence awkward if our lives depended on it, to being two people with nothing left to say.

I start to speak, and so does she. We both stop. I watch her cheeks turn

pink, her freckles lost in her blush.

“Sorry, what were you going to say?”

That I love you more than life itself. “You go first.”

“They started putting crispy onions on the mac and cheese in the dining hall.”

I huff out a breath, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “And your review?”

She picks at her fingernails, forehead creased in a frown. I wish she’d look at me. “Not good. Why must we over complicate everything? First it was chives, and now this. They keep trying to be clever with things. What were you going to say?”

“I was actually just wondering how the mac and cheese from the dining hall is at the moment.”

Her laugh heals something inside me. “Oh, you were?”

I lean my head back against the seat, heavy gaze on her. Her T-shirt is tight beneath her jacket, molded to her chest in a way I’m struggling to look

away from. “Mmhmm.”

“Can you drive me back now, please?”

“My lawyer asked me to cut ties with you.”

Her whole body goes rigid, her lungs stall around her next inhale. “Not before you left, surely?”

“I left because I felt like dying. But it’s the reason I didn’t call you after

I landed in New York.”

“You blocked my number.”

“Mack deactivated the number.”

“That’s not an excuse. You could’ve texted me.”

“I know.”

She’s holding her breath, staring out of her window. She can’t even face me. “If you’d have just woken me up, Alex …”

“I know.”

“I didn’t publish that article.”

“You wrote it,” I counter, regretting the low blow immediately. She doesn’t need any more guilt over what happened. She’s already taken a share of the blame. I can see it in the slope of her shoulders, in the shadows beneath her eyes, in the reddened, raw skin around her fingernails.

I know she didn’t release it. Seeing her now, I don’t know how I could have ever doubted it, too untrusting of the world to let myself believe that good things are genuine, that good people won’t let me down.

“Yeah, I wrote it,” she whispers, like a dying confession. I can hear the pain in her voice, and despite my effort, I can’t drum up any anger over it.

Not anymore. I don’t know what it is—maybe it’s watching my mother’s health slipping down the drain, maybe it’s the defeat in her eye, but I just can’t waste another hour resenting Ophelia when I could be loving her instead. “I wanted to break your father. I wanted him to lose everything. I wanted his family shattered, his business bankrupt. I wanted this. All of this. I wanted your mom to suffer because I wanted him to suffer.”

“You didn’t.”

She whirls around to face me, eyes alight with anger. “I did. Don’t you see? This is exactly what I prayed for, night after night. I wanted your family to break.”

“Not like this. You didn’t want it like this.”

“It’s no different, Alex. You and I are doomed.”

Her pessimism is usually charming, but not now. “Stop saying that.”

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip to stop it trembling. “And I was wrong. But you left me. You didn’t give me a chance to speak, to explain.

And now you’re asking me for the exact same thing.”

The second sentence is so full of anguish, I almost hear her heart crack when she says it. “I had to do what was right for the girls.”

“But you could’ve just woken me,” she says, raising her voice. Her eyes are glassy, shrink-wrapped by unshed tears. She’s fighting so hard not to cry in front of me, to save it for someplace else, someone else, and that might be the only thing worse than watching her fall apart. “We buried a body together, Alex. We killed someone, and then you left me to cope with that alone.”

Fuck. If she notices me wince at her words, she doesn’t let on. The list of ways in which I failed her grows longer, the regret that’s eaten away at me for weeks gets heavier.

Maybe the monster my father nurtured inside me is bigger than I’d hoped, because I hadn’t considered that at all, hadn’t really considered Bancroft as anything more than a photo that needs burying.

I hadn’t thought about how she’d cope with what happened to Bancroft, how it’d affect someone who isn’t used to all of this … mess.

“Just tell me how I can fix this.”

“You can’t fix this. I’m trying to just … I’m trying to move on with my life and now you’ve shown up here and ruined what little progress I’ve made.”

I shut my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest. “I can’t move on.”

She wraps her jacket tighter around herself. “That’s not my problem.

You’re living thousands of miles away. It’s hardly been any time.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve, and it pulls my chest tight. “We just need to

give it more time.”

I don’t want to give it more time.

I just want her.

I think back to that dreadful morning, waking up beside her with the first few streaks of sunlight washing their way across the valley. It was so serene. So quiet. With Bancroft buried, I’d woken up with an unfamiliar lightness.

And then I’d checked my phone, seen the chaos. It’s that moment, those horrible next couple of hours that cost me this. Cost me her.

I did what I knew to be best for my family, but it feels so wrong.

I ball my fists to stop myself from touching her.

“Ophelia, I don’t think I ever really believed you published the article.

Maybe for five minutes, before I’d given it any thought—”

“That’s not what this is about.” She rubs her forehead, smoothing out the lines of her frown. It’s something more and more people seem to do in my presence, lately. Her bitter laugh fogs the window beside her. “God, Alex … how can we ever trust each other again? How could you survive being asked to choose between your family and me again?”

“I won’t choose.”

She turns to face me. Her feet have slipped from her boots, white knitted socks perched on the edge of the seat, and my traitorous heart decides now is the time to fall in love with her for the hundredth time.

With her chin resting on her knees and my pulse a stuttered, desperate beat, I think she might be about to agree. To give me the second chance I

don’t really deserve. But she opens her mouth and says, “Please can you drive me back now?”

I let out a defeated sigh and turn the car around in silence.

“How’s … how’s work?” she asks.

“As shit as I always knew it’d be. How’s Sorrowsong?”

“It’s okay,” she says, quietly. She hates it there, I know. “It’ll do.”

“Did you pass your exams?”

“Yeah.”

I can’t help my smile. I glance down at her while I drive. “You did?”

The little bit of pride in her expression makes my grin widen. That’s my girl. “Yeah.”

“That’s amazing, Twist. You’re amazing.”

She’s stronger than she gets credit for, just like Harwood reassures me.

“I need you not to come back again, Alex,” she says calmly. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I lost my parents, and I said I’d never open myself up to that sort of loss again, and I understand why you felt like you had to leave that day. And I’m not angry at you. I forgive you, even. But my heart can’t take it happening again. And you deserve not to have to choose

between us ever again.”

“I won’t leave.”

She shakes her head. “In what alternate universe do you and I get a happy ending, Alex? One where you don’t have a family tying you to New York? And I don’t have a whole load of baggage and a complete inability to open up to you? One where I’d be comfortable dating someone in the spotlight? One where I’d be happy to just hop on a plane and move to New York? Or Paris? One where you wouldn’t resent me for what happened over the past few weeks? Where we really trust each other?”

“You’re giving up on us before we’ve even tried.”

She looks like I’ve slapped her when I glance to my left. “We’ve tried.

This year won’t be the only time in our lives that things get hard. Other terrible things will happen, and I don’t trust that you won’t leave me again.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”

I keep my gaze fixed on the road ahead, letting her words sink in.

She wants someone more stable. She needs someone more stable. She needs to look after her mental health, and I, of all people, can understand that.

“Okay,” I whisper. We’re plunged into silence. Not awkward this time, but final. Neither of us is scrambling for things to say.

I pull into the Sorrowsong parking lot a short while later. It’s raining again, harder this time. I kill the engine, pull an umbrella from the back seat, then round the front of the car to open the door for her.

She steps out of the car and under the umbrella I’m holding. I hate how sad she looks. “We’re just in the wrong universe, Alex.”

“Yeah,” I say, flatly. I force a small smile, hoping it makes her feel better. She doesn’t bat me away when I brush the tear from her lower lashes before it has a chance to fall.

“I love you,” she whispers, like a goodbye.

I smile, letting my thumb trace her jaw. I swallow my own tears down.

We didn’t get a goodbye in January, but this feels like it. It’s agony. “I love you more, Twist.”

She shakes her head, lip trembling beneath my fingers. All I can think

about is kissing it. “You don’t.”

“I do.”

“It’s because I love you that I can’t do this.”

“I get it,” I say, because I do. She’s protecting her heart and mine the only way she knows how. “And it’s because I love you that I’m letting you.”

I let myself touch her. A featherlight touch over her cheeks, her neck, her nose, her lips. I let myself brush the damp hair from her forehead. I can’t live without her. The thought is insurmountable.

Her eyelids drift shut, face leaning into my touch so lightly that I wonder if it’s a product of my hopeful imagination. Her lips part on an exhale that seems to leave her lungs in slow motion.

It would be so easy to press my mouth to hers, to glide my hands beneath her wet jacket and press her against me. Her hands tighten where they grip my shirt, her tongue darting out to catch a raindrop from her bottom lip. I swallow my groan down, completely drunk on desire without so much as a kiss.

Her pulse drums beneath my thumb, hard and fast and in perfect time with mine. She looks back up at me, and the look in her eyes lets the penultimate thread of my self-control slip. The cold, stiff air has turned hot and humid, thick with tension. Fuck. I glance to the back of the car. The

windows are tinted, back seat more than big enough. She must feel my arousal, because her thighs press together beneath her skirt.

We’re teetering on the edge, toeing the border between goodbye and hello, tame and feral, respectful and something so much more tempting.

My lips hover over hers, separated by half an inch.

Time seems to grind to a stop.

But that half an inch between her and me holds so much. So much trauma, so much reverence, so many reasons that closing the gap would hurt her heart. Desire is like a drug in my veins, dizzying my thoughts, shortening my breaths, but my respect for Ophelia overpowers it all, so I step back.

The tension bursts like an over-inflated balloon, running into the waterlogged earth at our feet.

The air goes back to frigid and bitter. My mood fades back to gray.

She catches herself, eyes wide like she can’t believe we almost kissed.

The look she gives me is grateful.

I straighten her jacket with a sad smile, opening her curled fist to slip my umbrella into her warm hand. “Stay out of trouble, Twist.”

She smiles, taking a few steps back. Away from me. Away from us. I can’t bear it, but I have to. “Promise.”

And then she’s gone again, hurrying away from my car and into the castle just like that first day we met, leaving me and my punctured heart in the torrential rain.

[DRAFT]

From: Alex Corbeau-Green

Subject: Ophelia (gone) Alex, you fool To: Ophelia Winters

A future without you in it doesn’t feel like much of a future at all.

AN HOUR PASSES, maybe two.

I sit in the driver’s seat in the Sorrowsong parking lot, smoking my way through a pack of cigarettes until only two remain. My head is tipped back against the seat when the rain that splatters my cheek from the open window suddenly stops.

I peek open an eye to see Vincenzo’s stupid, giant head filling the space.

The scar over his eye crinkles, a crooked smile brightening his face. He leans even farther into the car, like those overly friendly ostriches at safari parks that just want to eat all your food. “Hey, man. Why’d I have to hear it from Colette, who heard it from Ophelia, that you were here?”

He’s gone before I can reply, rounding the hood of the car and folding his ridiculous frame into the passenger seat. He leans over me to steal the penultimate cigarette, raindrops running over the dagger tattooed on his index finger when he cups a hand around the flame. His blue gaze turns to mine, never one to let his questions go unanswered.

Man, I’ve missed him.

“I’m not in the best of moods, lately.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“You and Colette, huh?”

His grin is face splitting. “She’s so hot. I … we … do you know what a spreader bar is?”

I wave my hand in a cut it off motion. “No details, please.”

“Your loss.”

“I sincerely doubt that. She your girlfriend?”

His face falls. “Nah. She doesn’t want that. We’re just …”

“Friends?”

“She texts me when she wants to fuck.”

“And?”

“Then we do.”

“And?”

“And then I go back to the mansion.”

This is a familiar pattern with Vincenzo. “And you’re fine with that?”

“Well … I’m hoping she’ll want to hang out more as time goes on. You know … go on hikes and stuff, meet my mom.”

“And have you spoken about it? Does she know you want a girlfriend?”

“Kind of. Probably. Yeah. She doesn’t want commitment.”

Christ. I’ve been so caught up in my own world, I forgot other people have relationship issues, too. “Then she probably won’t want to go on hikes

and stuff, Vin.”

“We’ll see.”

Vincenzo is a mass of contradictions. Trained by his father to be a ruthless killer, he also has this soft, gentle faith in the world that only people with a stable homelife and two loving parents can have. He has an unfair reputation as someone who sleeps around, but he’s desperate for a girlfriend. Something steady and reliable in his world of crime and chaos.

A hand squeezes my biceps. “You look good, bro.”

He might be the single most punchable human in my life, but I have to admit that it’s good to see him. “Thanks.”

“So … how did it go with Ophelia?”

I take a long drag. “We’ve split. Officially, now, rather than

unofficially.”

“Fuck. Like … forever?”

“Yeah.”

“She might not want to lose you completely. She might want to be—”

“Don’t say friends,” I bite out. He shuts up.

We smoke in silence, lost in thought. He opens and closes his mouth every now and then, like he wants to say something.

“How’s Elise?” Is what eventually comes out, but I can tell it’s not whatever is sitting on his tongue.

I’m grateful for Vincenzo. Grateful I never need to sugarcoat anything.

Grateful for his unwavering friendship. I hope I never lose it. “I think she’s dying, and I don’t think I can do anything to stop it.”

He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t tell me it’ll all work out fine. He just sighs, passing me the final cigarette. “I’m sorry. That fucking sucks.”

“It does.”

“The girls?”

“They’re good. They’re all stronger than I am. I don’t know how they stay so positive all the time.”

“Kids are crazy. Shit just bounces off them.” He reaches behind him for his seat belt. “There’s a kebab van near Ullapool that does the greasiest burgers. You wanna go?”

A greasy burger does sound good, and I haven’t eaten anything all day. I hand him my phone to plug it into the GPS. “Sure.”

I pull out of Sorrowsong’s black iron gates for the second time this afternoon, marveling at how my mood plummeted from hopeful to

completely lost in the space of two hours. I have no one to blame but myself.

A low fog is seeping across the landscape, clouding my already addled mind. After fifteen minutes of silence, I’m sick of Vincenzo’s loaded

inhales. “Just say it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you’re being a complete fucking fool, and I want to bash your face in.”

The engine purrs as we climb a hill against a sheet of rain. “Great.”

“You love her.”

“And she has asked me, respectfully, to remove myself from her life so

that she can move on.”

“She doesn’t mean it.”

I spare a glance at him while I drive us through a flooded road. I don’t like his tone when talking about her, like she’s a fool. “Are you suggesting she doesn’t know what’s best for herself?”

He throws up a tattooed hand in frustration. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. Neither of you knows what’s good for you. You’re both drowning in emotions and shit. But I’m an outsider with a better view, and I’m telling you, categorically, that walking away is the incorrect choice, and probably an irreversible one.”

“And I’m telling you that not walking away would be me completely disrespecting her wishes.”

He growls into his hands like I’m driving him up the wall. “You don’t give up anywhere else. You practically stalked your mom’s doctors until they agreed not to give up on helping her last year. You moved across the Atlantic when you thought it might help you take Green from your dad.

When I thought I was gonna die when we hiked Mount Suilven before Christmas, you dragged me up it. And now you’re turning away from Ophelia at the first obstacle.”

My laugh is hollow, devoid of humor. “That’s what you’d call this? An obstacle?”

“Yeah. In ten years, you’ll look back and see it that way.”

“My father letting her parents die is not an obstacle, Vincenzo. It’s a concrete wall.”

“You letting her parents die would be an obstacle. You are not your

father.”

It doesn’t feel that way lately.

“Look … it’s the Sorrowsong Winter Ball the day after tomorrow.”

Panic slices through me, the gash it leaves behind stained green with

envy. “Is she bringing someone?”

“Yeah, you dick. Me.”

“What the fuck?”

“I’m gonna ask her so some other guy doesn’t! She attracts attention, you know?”

I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles are the same shade as the snow-topped mountains that come into view. “I know.”

“So go to the ball with her.”

I am at the center of a media frenzy, and the talk of Sorrowsong’s dusty hallways. God knows how much more insufferable they’d all be if they knew I was here. “I can’t put her in the spotlight like that.”

Vincenzo looks like he might actually poke his eyes out with his

thumbs. “More than she already is?”

Fair point.

He flings his hand into my peripheral vision, curling his fingers in a beckoning motion. “Go on. Next excuse. Let’s work our way through them.”

“I have a dinner hosted by the Minister of Aviation tomorrow.”

Vincenzo sucks a breath in through his teeth. “Alex. Listen to yourself.”

“What?”

“Green over personal life? Green over one of your eight people?”

I’m not sure if he means it as a harsh slap, but it lands like one. A cold bucket of reality over my head.

When I flick my gaze up to the rearview mirror, it’s my father’s eyes that glare back at me. I glance away and run my hand over my jaw, over the day-old stubble there. “If she rejects me again … that’ll be it.” And I’ll be a fucking mess.

“And if you walk away, that’ll be it. Oh my god. It’s like your brain has turned to mush in there. Should you even be driving if you can’t even form a rational thought?”

Finally, I turn us onto a road that at least looks like a road. “Fuck you,

man.”

“She’s borrowing a dress from Colette.”

Fuck.

“Pretty sure she said it’s backless.”

Fuck!

“Ask her to be your date, Vinnie, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”