The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam (Hart and Mercy, #3)

by Megan Bannen

No one would ever grieve Rosie. It was like that saying about always being a bridesmaid and never a bride, except she was always the mourner, never the mourned.

It was the curse that got her. She didn’t speak whatever language he had uttered, but she knew a salty word when she heard one, and Rosie was inclined to like people who cussed. In her experience, the foulmouthed tended to be honest and authentic. Maybe that was why she stepped forward and offered, “Need help?”

Saltlicker had long been a divisive entity in the Tanrian Marshals Service. Roughly a quarter of the force found the stallion “spirited.” The other 75 percent hated his ass. Rosie fell into the latter camp.

Maybe it was easier to believe that love could last forever when you were confident that your own life could not.

“I find that processed meat and craft beer pair well with existential despair,” said Zeddie.

He saw her and he understood her, and he wanted the woman he saw and understood. Rosie felt soft and beautiful under that gaze.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, they fit together. In a world where women were supposed to be small and men were supposed to be strong, Rosie had spent too much of her life bemoaning the fact that she towered over everyone she had ever dated, when what she really needed was a guy who was as vast on the inside as she was on the outside.

“Perhaps kings and gods make better kings and gods than parents.”

There’s a kind of pain that ends and a kind of pain that goes on and on.

Rosie forced herself to let go of him, because that was what you did when you loved someone whose end had come: you let them go.

“Not all moms bake cookies and behave themselves. Doesn’t mean we’re not good mothers, am I right, my darling rose?”