Page 24 of Butcher & Blackbird

You know what I did this morning?

*deep sigh*

I decorated my toaster strudel.

Fascinating. I’m riveted.

Also, toaster strudel? Isn’t that meant for hormonal teenagers who need significant quantities of processed sugar to function in the AM? I thought you were a grown-ass man.

A man who appreciates mass-produced flaky pastry and icing that can be used to spell “WINNER” in vanilla-ish frosting.

I’m 100% positive that I hate you.

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

It’s been six months.

Six months since I last saw him. Six months of daily messages. Six months of Rowan telling me about how he’s celebrating his win. Six months of memes and jokes and texts and sometimes calls, just to say hello. And every day, I look forward to it. Every day, it warms me up, lighting places that have always been dark.

And every night when I close my eyes, I still picture him in that sliver of moonlight on the driveway in West Virginia, bent on one knee, like he was about to swear an oath. A knight cloaked in silver and shadow.

‘I think you were going to watch her and then your plan was to kill her,’he’d said. Francis begged for mercy in the grip of Rowan’s hand. And whatever Rowan said next was just a whisper, but those words unleashed the demon at the heart of him. There was nothing between him and the rage that burned him from the inside. No mask left to hide behind.

“He really beat the shit out of him,” I say to Lark as I glance one final time at our latest text exchange before setting my phone aside. I place a bowl of popcorn between us and pick up Winston to plop the perpetually disgruntled feline on my lap. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Lark, too. In her typical fashion, she was offered a last-minute opportunity to tour with an indie band and seized it, and has been bouncing around from one small town and hipster city venue to the next. And she looks happy for it. Glowing.

“Was it hot?” she asks as she piles her long golden waves into a haphazard bun at the top of her head. Somehow, it always comes out perfectly messy. “Kinda sounds hot.”

“Pretty hot, yeah. Had me worried for a minute, though. I’m used to…controlled. And this was raw. Definitely the antithesis of control.” My gaze falls to the crocheted throw beneath my legs, one that Lark’s aunt made for me the year we left Ashborne Collegiate Institute, when Lark’s family took me in and repaid a debt they never owed. I stick my fingers in the little holes between the looped yarn, and when I look up again Lark is watching me, her clear blue eyes fixed to the contours of my face. “I nearly left him there.”

Lark’s head tilts. “And you feel bad about that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he would have left me if the situation was reversed.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

My chest aches. It does every time I remember the way he called my name like a broken prayer. The defeated slump of his shoulders is a vivid image in my mind, even now. “He seemed so vulnerable, despite what he’d just done. I couldn’t leave him like that.”

Lark’s lip twitches as though she’s holding back a smile. “That’s nice.” She nibbles at the corner of her lower lip and I roll my eyes. “It’s sweet. You stayed. You made another friend.”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe a futureboyfriend.”

I bark an incredulous laugh. “No.”

“Maybe asoulmate.”

“You’re my soulmate.”

“Then a best friend. Withbenefits.”