Chapter 29. Alex
ALEX
I reverse into Carmichael’s spare parking spot just as the rain begins, filling the mild September air with the rich scent of damp earth.
It takes a little over three hours to drive from our house to Sorrowsong Castle, and I’ve experienced all four seasons in that time.
I can’t believe it’s a year since I parked my car in this space for the first time, a bedraggled, miserable redhead in my passenger seat.
My life is unrecognizable from where it was then. Gray has split itself up into all the other colors. Ophelia has stitched a silver lining into the black cloud that lives in my head.
The first six weeks in Scotland have been as chaotic as I expected.
The girls are adjusting, some better than others.
Fleur and Evie have gotten into hiking. Mia forages for cooking ingredients in the expansive gardens of our home.
Charlotte and élé are nervous about school.
My mom is more at peace than I’ve ever seen her, free of the shadow that my father cast her in, free of the memories that plagued the house in Manhattan.
She’s not cured by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not cured by any stretch of the imagination. But it feels like we’re in the shallows, no treading water necessary.
I leave my bags in the car, finding Belladonna waiting for me at the drawbridge, almost smiling.
She’s a chronic overachiever, top of her class—top of the university—so for her to have to stay here an extra semester because she skipped an assignment to travel back to New York when my mom collapsed is not something I take lightly.
The Morellos represent everything I’m trying to cut out of my life, yet I’d rather die than lose them.
She drops a set of keys into my hand, followed by and an access card to the Nightshade mansion. “Might’ve shuffled rooms around a little. Have you told her yet?”
“No. But I’m really hoping she’s pleased.”
“She’ll be pleased. All she’s done this week is mope.”
Sounds like my girl.
I never hated Sorrowsong, not the same way Ophelia does. But I suppose that makes sense—it was built for people like me, people rich enough not to fear the law.
The forests beside me are fading into a hundred shades of copper and gold, busy with red deer and foxes.
The castle is a masterpiece in gothic architecture: ceilings held aloft by ribbed vaults and windows that arch into the sharpest of points.
Shadows cling to every statue, the light of the day starting to fade.
The Victorian glasshouse is glossy with rain when it appears between the pines, the iron hinges creaking when I pull open the door. It’s even darker inside, but I spot her immediately. She’s flying through the water, lost in her own world like she always is when she’s swimming.
I don’t know how long I watch her glide across the surface. I’ve never really been able to keep track of time around her. When my love-drunk mind eventually convinces my legs to move forward, she’s stopped to check her time on her watch.
She startles, alarm melting into shock when she sees it’s me.
“I … uhh … what?”
“Hey,” I say, not even trying to bite down my grin. “I’m Alex.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Why are you here?”
My darling girlfriend. Always so pleased to see me.
She must read my thoughts, because she tosses her goggles onto the edge of the pool and says, “I mean, hi, obviously. But also … what?”
I lean down and hold out my hand for her to shake, like we’re strangers. Like she isn’t the air in my lungs and the reason they still function. “I’m new here.”
She’s laughing now, like I’ve lost my mind. I think I have. British roads will do that to a man. Her hand slips inside mine. “You … you what?”
“I just started my second year. Figured I’d come and ask the hottest girl here on a date.”
“At Edinburgh, Alex. You’re about two hundred miles out.”
“At Sorrowsong.”
Her face turns pale, I see what I see every time anything good presents itself in her life: the glimmer of soaring hopes, and the way she extinguishes them, just in case. “I don’t understand.”
“I ate my pride a while back. Called Carmichael and begged him to let me finish the degree I started at Yale here.”
If the pool wasn’t shallow enough for her to stand in, I’d worry she’d go into shock and drown. Her words are stuttered and confused when they come. “But your mom. Your sisters. The drive is over three hours.”
Her hand is still in mine, her whole body frozen.
“I’ll go home every weekend, every holiday.
I’ll go home when my mom needs extra support.
But she’s doing great at the moment, the girls are starting school this week.
They’re the ones who encouraged me to do this.
And it beats a seven-hour flight to New York, any day.
It’s two years. I’ll survive two years of scenic five a.m. drives if it means I get to wake up and fall asleep next to you. ”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Closes it. Laughs. Holds up her free hand in a what the fuck? motion.
She yanks me into the pool before I can stop her, and my whole body sinks beneath the surface.
It’s supposed to be heated, but the cold reaches beneath my clothing and snatches my breath away.
When I emerge, she’s breathless and giggling, freckles rapidly disappearing in the rosy flush creeping over her cheeks.
My hands gravitate to her waist, dragging her to me. Heat from her skin sinks into mine, thaws my heart, warms my blood. Her forehead presses to mine, and our lips are painfully close to touching.
“If this is a prank, it’s a cruel one,” she says, her voice barely audible over the water that laps around us.
“And if it’s reality?”
“Then it’s far more than I deserve.”
I grin, holding her face in both my hands with my mother’s words echoing around my mind. “We deserve each other.”
Water trickles over her bottom lip, sticks her brown eyelashes together. “You’re staying in the Nightshade mansion?”
My hands slide down her back, picking her up so her legs wrap around my hips. “Got us a really good room. But we’ll keep your current one, too, in case you need time alone.”
“This cannot be real.”
I see it in her eyes, the disbelief that she deserves a happy ending, the need to deny herself good things, to erect walls around her heart.
But that’s okay, because I am patient. I’ll disassemble those walls brick by brick if I need to. Let her add bricks, if it makes her feel safe. If it takes me two years, 730 midnights, to convince her she deserves joy, then it’ll be 730 midnights well spent.
“I love you,” I murmur, the words sitting on the tip of my tongue so frequently these days that they must’ve tattooed themselves there.
She peppers me with kisses, like she can’t get enough of me. Each one is like a hand reaching back in time, mending that child in me who wanted nothing more than to be accepted by his father.
Her hands roam over the wet white fabric of my shirt. “Fuck. I love you more.”
Her mouth turns hungrier, teeth sinking into my bottom lip. I swallow her moan, letting it sink lower and lower until it’s a hot ball of need at the bottom of my abdomen.
She pulls away, eyes swirling with desire. “Is it socially acceptable to fuck in a communal swimming pool?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re the one with … experience.”
“I forgot everything that came before you when you wore that backless dress on your date for Shawn.”
“Ah. How could I forget. The Great Cryptocurrency Lecture of First Year.”
“Say, Ophelia,” I say, doing my best Shawn impression, “I know you’re just trying to survive the day, but have you tried diversifying away from traditional financial assets?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Shawn,” she replies, batting her eyelashes at me. It’s sarcastic, but it still makes me hard. “Have you tried folding yourself in half and inserting yourself into the paper shredder?”
My laughter echoes around the huge glass structure, the quiet tinkling of rain starting somewhere above us.
“I think Belladonna would put me in the shredder if she knew we fucked in here,” I say to Ophelia’s great disappointment. “Changing rooms?”
“Tetanus sounds like a great way to start the year.” She drops her eyes to my wet shirt, her chest rising and falling with each heavy breath. Her fingers skate over the fabric that covers my shoulder, and her forehead crumples into a frown at the unfamiliar shadow beneath. “What is this?”
“Take a look,” I whisper, watching her delicate fingers undo a few more buttons until she can peel the shirt from my skin. Her eyes widen at what she sees, but I can’t drag mine from her.
Her touch traces the robin on my left shoulder, wings spread wide as it takes flight with the other birds that sweep across my body. It’s the only one with any color: a streak of orange down its chest. “When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“Alex.”
“You’ve painted the world in color, Ophelia. It’s the least I could do.”
“And you taught me to fly,” she mutters, under her breath. Her eyes return to mine, full of life. “You’ve got it bad, Corbeau.”
Hopelessly, calamitously bad. “And you, Winters.”
Her mouth is hot and wet when it finds mine again. “Ah, fuck it,” she mutters, sliding the straps of her swimsuit off her shoulders.
She’s everything. She’s the words, the clues, the black spaces that hold the whole puzzle together. She’s every color in my paint set, and the brush that turns them into something beautiful.
She’s the one thing I was once too scared to dream she’d be:
Mine.