Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy #1)

by Brynne Weaver

It’s so easy with him, even when I don’t want it to be, just like when we sat in the diner a year ago. Despite how hard I’d tried to force my attention elsewhere, it kept coming back to him.

He looks at me in a way that no one else does, as though he’s not just trying to decipher my thoughts and motivations. It’s as if he’s trying to memorize the smallest details in my skin, to uncover every secret trapped behind my flesh.

“For Lachlan, it’s not a pastime. It’s a profession.”

I bt his book is sad

“We were teenagers when we left Sligo and came to America. I remember Lachlan buying the tickets. Three in coach. It was the start of another life for us.”

The cheeky fucker

And for some reason, that felt like a relief, a break from the constant pressure of searching for danger lurking in shadow.

A hiker went missing that way last year and was never found. Wasn’t the first time, either.”

She likes to pretend she doesn’t really want to get to know me, but every time her eyes fuse to my scar, a little crease flickers between her brows.

No. But also yes.

Felt

A wave of confusion and worry and jealousy crashes through my chest. In one fell swoop, I’ve been filled with a fucking ocean of it. What the fuck?

How the fuck Lachlan put together that there’s a serial killer in the area, I have no idea.

“Rowan, you feckin’ eejit,”

I hear her mattress creak. And then a gentle buzzing sound. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I whisper, dragging my hands down my face.

I’m starting to lean away when I hear a single word pass her lips. Rowan.

I step back and scan the room for something I can use to destroy the fucking wall before I have to resort to using my bare hands.

lips. “I fucking knew it.” A heartbeat later, Sloane is marching past me.

All the pieces click into place, the picture coming into view. The car in the river. The plates from New York. When the right victims made the wrong decisions and wound up at the Cunningham Inn, he watched them. And sometimes he killed them. He watched Sloane. Maybe he would have tried to kill her too.

The thought that he could have hurt her collides with another realization, stopping me dead in the parking lot as Sloane storms forward on a paved path that winds around the side of the hotel, leading toward the caretaker’s house. “That emo wannabe fuckboy with the pink tie is the killer? And you went on a date with that wanker?”

Im kicking and screaming

“Get fucked.”

My grin is feral as I eat the distance between us.

Good line

So I do what any sane person would do. I jump on the fucking hood.

I deliver hit after hit. Glass crumbles with my repeated blows. It bites into my knuckles. It slides into my skin when I punch through to the other side and drop the rock to reach for the steering wheel.

“Rowan, tree!”

“Rowan,” she whispers. “Mine.” Her eyes shine in the moonlight. “Okay.” She nods in my grip. “He’s yours.”

“Stay here,” I say, and with one finger at a time, I release her from my grasp.

My pace quickens when I spot my prize as he limps from the vehicle.

“I’m going to love every fucking second of this,” I say.

Me too

“A fucking clip-on? What are you, twelve?”

Im dead

“Second, and this is the most important part, so listen up, motherfucker.” I raise his trembling body off the asphalt until his ear is next to my lips. “That woman you were watching …?” My fingers tighten around his throat as he desperately nods. “She is mine.”

I drop Francis on the pavement and tumble after him into madness.

And I keep hitting. Even when he seizes. Even when he drowns in his blood. Even when he dies. I’m beating on a hunk of ruined flesh when I finally stop.

Brutal.

This mess of torn flesh and exposed bone? This is in my soul. I’m fucking feral at the core.

The breath I take feels the same as it does after you dive too deep, unsure if you’ll reach the surface in time. The relief is cellular when the air hits my lungs.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Lachlan and I killed him. It was the same night he gave me this scar. Smashed my face with a broken plate.”

“I have no regrets about where I am.”

had fun. I feel … good. Better. Like this is what I needed. So … thank you, Rowan.”

But for the next three days, every time I think she might disappear, she proves me wrong.

I’m 100% positive that I hate you

And I’m 100% positive you’ll love me one day

And every day, I look forward to it. Every day, it warms me up, lighting places that have always been dark.

bent on one knee, like he was about to swear an oath. A knight cloaked in silver and shadow.

pick up Winston to plop the perpetually disgruntled feline on my lap.

Kitty!!

when Lark’s family took me in and repaid a debt they never owed.

I would die for Lark

My chest aches. It does every time I remember the way he called my name like a broken prayer.

Beautiful

“He can show you the world …” she sings. “Glittering something shiny … ‘I think our love can do anything that we want it to.’” “You did not just mash up a butchered version of Aladdin with The Notebook. You have the voice of an angel, Lark Montague, but that is atrocious.”

Shes me

“I’m in a dry spell. You’d think there would be some hot musician types on the road but they’re all way too emo. I just want to be tossed around a bit. Manhandled, you know? Call me a dirty little slut and I’m all for it. These cry-into-the-mic types aren’t doing it for me.”

She really is me

And I continue thinking about it. … For three more months.

I could probably walk the place blindfolded and I’ve never even been inside.

Big fucking trouble by the name of Lachlan Kane.