Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)

by Brynne Weaver

My gaze travels over his face, and I want to remember every detail, from his dark brows to his navy eyes and the faint lines at their edges, to the tiny mole on his cheekbone and the shine on his wet hair.

Most of all, I want to remember the warmth in his kiss when he presses his lips to mine.

When I look at her, I can’t seem to pry one emotion away from the others. They all intertwine when I think of Sloane Sutherland. Fear is fused with hope. Care with control, with envy, with sadness. It’s fucking everything, all at once. Even the desire to turn this feeling off locks with the need to nurture it. The totality of it devours me.

And it only grows with every passing moment. Sloane bleeds into every thought. When we’re apart, her absence is an entity. I worry for her. I dream of her. And yesterday, I almost lost her. Killing bound us together, and it’s a compulsion neither of us can live without. This need, and now this game between us, consumes me as much as she does.

Every time I think of her, my heart reminds me I’m not as dead on the inside as I thought after all.

“What? I think you’re beautiful. Like some kind of vicious, battle-hardened goddess of vengeance.”

I’ve never wanted to earn trust before Sloane. I’ve never cared about keeping it on a personal level, not for anyone but my brothers. And suddenly, Sloane’s trust is one of the most important things in the world to me.

Let me just survive the next two hours and then we’re going to have some words.”

Flushed and flustered Sloane might just be my favorite version of her yet.

I know I’ve done something I can never take back. Something I would never want to, even though most people would feel regret. But I don’t. I feel relieved. I’ve finally opened the gate where a monster lay rattling its bars on the other side, begging to be freed. Now that it’s out, there’s no way to close back in.

“Beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful to me,” Rowan says. He reaches from behind me to chase the tear from my skin with his thumb. The next pass of his caress follows the swoop of the bruise beneath my eye.

“That color doesn’t remind me of eggplant, for what it’s worth. It reminds me of blackberries. The best berry if you ask me. It reminds me of irises. They have the best scent of any flower. It reminds me of night, just before dawn. The best time of day.”

“You’re all the best things to me, Sloane. No matter how many bruises are in your heart or on your skin.”

“Something caught your eye, pretty boy?” I whisper. “Yes,” he says, his voice pained. “God, yes, Sloane. All of you.”

“I’ve been suffering for four years, Sloane. I’m begging you here. Get in the fucking bath.”

“You are the thing I most look forward to, Rowan.”

“I was scared when we started, afraid that I was making a huge mistake. But finding someone who could understand me for all the shattered pieces beneath the mask? I needed that. Before you came along, something was missing. You, Rowan. You were missing. You made it safe to feel seen. Safe to play on our terms. Safe to have fun, even though our fun might not be everyone’s idea of a good time.”

Let me in. I realize at this moment that I’ve always been in, in Rowan’s thoughts, in his plans, maybe even in his heart, and now it terrifies me that he could suddenly shut me out.

“I’m done running around this, Sloane. I’ve wanted you for four years. And you’re going to show me what I’ve been missing.”

“I told you already. Stop hiding. It’s not going to work with me, not anymore. You want this? You want me? Then fucking tell me, Sloane.”

“I met you. I didn’t want anyone else. Just you. I only want you.”

But she’s about to discover that I’m the devil she never knew she needed.

I’m muscle and scars blended with scripts and swirls of black ink. The same way I look at her and find beauty in the marks that are only temporary, she looks at me and I know she feels the same. There’s art in our scars. There’s wonder in the way we can heal.

“Something caught your eye, pretty girl?” The column of her throat shifts as she swallows. Her gaze drags up my body to collide with mine. “Yes. All of you.”

“You’re beautiful, Rowan.”

She’s everywhere, in every drop of my blood, in every spark of thought, and I want to fucking destroy her for it. To shatter her just like she’s broken me. Because she brings me to my fucking knees. I want to ruin her so that she’s mine, my beautiful disaster. My wild creature. My goddess of chaos.

He didn’t just open my cage, he shattered it, and the first breaths of freedom burn in my lungs.

“Did I get the raven you left on the table tattooed on my back?” His smile is teasing, but there’s a hint of shyness in it as he finishes my thought. “Yeah. Appears to be the case.”

Do you really think I just like you when I framed a drawing you left for me on a scrap of paper you tore from a notebook? The one I hung it in the kitchen so I can look at it every day and think of you? Do you think I just like you when I tattoo it on my skin? I play this fucking game every year and tear my heart out watching you walk away, only to do it all over again, and I like you?

“I would kill for you, and I have. I would do it again, every damn day. I’d turn myself inside out for you. I would die for you. I don’t just like you, Sloane, and you fucking know

It’s not a question. It’s not even a demand. It’s a need to be freed from a place where he thinks he’s been alone.

Put some of that bravery to use for yourself for a change.

“I knew you didn’t just want me to stay. You needed me to. I haven’t been needed like that in a long time.”

“I said the same thing that I told you just before I killed him,” he finally says. “That you’re mine.”

When that piece of the puzzle snaps into place, it aches a little, like my heart has to crack to make room for it to fit. It doesn’t seem like it could be true, but maybe Rowan really has been sure about us all along, about what we could be and what he wanted. He was patiently waiting for me to catch up.

Rowan sets his coffee on the counter. His blue eyes hold mine, the shade of the deep sea beneath the sun. There’s no teasing smile to light his skin, no amused smirk that dances across his lips when steps closer and stops in front of me. He watches the motion of his fingers as they trace the contours of my cheek. The rest of the world falls away. “No, Sloane,” he says. “I’m taking you home. To Boston.”

“But you have a standing reservation at 3 In Coach,”

Table twelve is PERMANENTLY RESERVED for: - any reservation under the name Sloane Sutherland

- a beautiful, black-haired woman with hazel eyes and freckles, 5’8”, probably alone, shy, looks like she wants to run Inform Rowan immediately of any reservations under this name or any guests fitting this description.

And then, in red text as though it was added at a later date: IMMEDIATELY. I AM NOT FUCKING AROUND.

I don’t know if this is going to work—living with him, working from home every day, being in a new city, trying to build this foundation we’ve made into something more. But I’m going to try.

And clearly, he adores you, too. He knows my baby,” she says, gesturing toward the booth as Meg lays the menus on the table. “A perfect Sloaney choice. Sheltered and equidistant between the exits.”

He permanently reserves the booth he knows you would want at his popular restaurant. He beats the shit out of an emo pervert for watching you masturbate. He has some random neighborhood kid bring you groceries. Who the fuck are you kidding? You don’t just ‘more than like’ this guy.

But this time, there’s no look of shock, only a warm smile and his arms spread wide. “Get over here.”

“Our place,” Rowan corrects, and loops an arm over my shoulder to guide our way back to the booth. “Our cat. I can’t wait to be kitty litter influencers together, what a great side hustle. We’re gonna be rich.”

And across the full front of the restaurant, stretching over the door and the awning, a massive sign in block letters. Butcher & Blackbird.

But I am everywhere too. In the huge black leather wing, the intricate feathers spread across a wall above the booths, the exact spot where I would want to sit. In black-and-white paintings of ravens by local artists, a butcher’s knife or meat cleaver incorporated into every one. It’s not just me. It’s us.

“I love you, Rowan,”

“I love you too, Sloane. So fucking much. But the restaurant was probably a giant clue.”