ROWAN
Sloane’s figure is little more than a silhouette as she runs up the hill toward an old black house, the steep peaks of the roof jutting toward the moon like javelins. Wedges of yellow light spill from the windows, down the steep garden and the path that cuts through it, giving me just enough illumination to spot my quarry.
My grin is feral as I eat the distance between us.
I run full-force into Sloane and take her out in a rugby tackle. We twist in the air so I suffer the brunt of the hit. Grass and gravel grind into my forearms as I slide to a halt and roll us over to pin her beneath me.
Sloane’s heavy breaths flood my senses with ginger and vanilla. She blows a lock of hair from her eyes and glares at me before she squirms beneath my weight. “Get the fuck off. He’s mine.”
“No can do, Peaches.”
“Call me that again and I swear to God I’ll chop your balls off.”
“Whatever you say, Blackbird.” I grin and give her a swift kiss on her cheek, the feel of her soft and yielding flesh branded into memory the moment my lips touch her skin. “See ya.”
I push away and run, the delicious sound of her frustrated protest the most beautiful melody behind me.
My heart thunders and my legs burn as I sprint up the steep hill. I’m nearly at the low, wrought iron fence surrounding the house when the sound of an engine cuts through the night.
Francis is running.
I detour and follow the line of the fence toward the driveway where light tumbles down the asphalt from the vehicle in the garage. I reach the edge of the pavement and scoop up a rock from the border just as the garage door slides open and the car barrels out of the building.
So I do what any sane person would do.
I jump on the fucking hood.
Sloane yells my name. Tires screech. I lock eyes with the driver as his panic collides with my determination.
With my body flat against the hood, I grip the edge of it with one hand and smash my rock into the windshield with the other. I don’t stop, not as we pick up speed, not even when the car swerves as the driver attempts to dislodge me. 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.
A panicked cry rises above the chaos.
“Rowan, tree!”
I pull my arm free of the windshield and let go of the hood to slide off the vehicle and land hard on my side. My grunt of pain is swallowed by a symphony of metal as the front bumper folds around an oak.
I’m on my feet in an instant. Heavy breaths tear from my chest. Rage descends like a red curtain as I watch the slow, labored movement of the disoriented driver within the smoking hunk of metal.
“Jesus Fucking Christ, Rowan, are you—”
Sloane’s concern is cut short as I wheel on her to snatch her throat in my sticky hand. I crowd her space, push her backward with every step as alarm and defiance churn in her eyes. She grips my arm with both hands but doesn’t try to fight me as I force her away from the car. Only when she’s off the driveway and shielded by the deep shadows of a tree do I stop. But I don’t let her go.
A percussion drums behind me, a metronomic thump drowned by the veil of my heartbeat ringing in my ears as I stare down into Sloane’s glassy eyes. The delicate column of her throat shifts beneath my bloody palm.
“Rowan,” she whispers.
“Mine.”
Her eyes shine in the moonlight. “Okay.” She nods in my grip. “He’s yours.”
I draw her in closer and glare into the inky abyss of her fear and fortitude, not stopping until her warm exhalations fan across my face. The slices lining my forearm burn as her chest grazes the ruined flesh with every breath. “Sloane…”
A groan of warped metal and a string of curses end the pounding behind me.
“Stay here,” I say, and with one finger at a time, I release her from my grasp.
I take one final look at her, my blood little more than a glistening black smear on her skin, before I pivot on my heel and stride away.
My pace quickens when I spot my prize as he limps from the vehicle. One foot scrapes behind him, a broken arm clutched to his chest. He turns as my footsteps draw closer, his eyes wide as they land on my wicked grin.
“I’m going to love every fucking second of this,” I say.
Francis is already begging for mercy when I grasp the back of his shirt. I clutch his hideous pink tie in my fist to strangle him with it but it pulls free of his neck.
I glare at the fabric balled in my fist. Then at Francis. Then back again. “A fucking clip-on? What are you, twelve?”
“P-please man, let me g-go,” he begs beneath me. Tears glass his eyes as I toss the tie onto the driveway and grip him with both hands.
My rage burns my throat but I swallow it down. “Tell me what you were doing in the wall.”
His eyes flick to our surroundings, maybe hunting for Sloane, maybe searching for a savior. “I wasn’t g-gonna hurt her,” he says when his attention lands on me. “I was j-just watching.”
His fear is like a drug that invades every cell in my body, every desire coursing through my veins. A slow grin creeps across my lips as he struggles when I shift my grip and catch his throat. “Two things. First, I don’t fucking believe you. I think you were going to watch her and then your plan was to kill her. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Francis.”
“No, I swear—”
“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’m sure he begs. But I don’t hear his pleas. They’re fucking useless words that won’t save him now.
I drop Francis on the pavement and tumble after him into madness.
My first blow hits his jaw. The next strikes his temple. One fist after the other. Jaw. Temple. Jaw. Temple. I miss and shatter his nose with a satisfying crunch and he wails. Blood spews from his nostrils to coat my knuckles. His jaw breaks next with a pop. Broken teeth slice his lips and fall to the driveway like chips of porcelain. Like memories I want to forget. So I fight them away. I grit my teeth and hit harder.
The scent of blood and piss and asphalt. The gurgle of choked breaths. The slip of his split flesh against my fists. It’s fucking fuel. I think of him watching her. I think of her face. 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. Breaths saw from my lungs as I place one hand on the warm asphalt and stare down at my knuckles where pain throbs with every heartbeat. It’s a welcome sensation. Not because I deserve it, but because he did, and I fucking delivered. Destruction with my bare hands. Suffering where it was meant to be found.
Only now does a sliver of fear burrow into my chest.
“Sloane,” I call to the shadows.
I’m met with only silence.
“Sloane.”
Nothing.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
A fresh wave of adrenaline floods the chambers of my heart as I lean back on my heels and scan every shade of darkness that surrounds me. The excitement of the kill is washed away as a tidal wave of panic rolls in.
I’ve fucking scared her off.
She probably ran back to the hotel to grab her belongings and book it out of here. The screech of car tires will likely be the next thing I hear as she leaves and never looks back.
And can I blame her?
We’re both monsters, after all.
Different monsters, thrust together in the cage I’ve created.
Sloane is calculating, methodical. She waits and weaves a web and nets her prey. And while I like to stage a scene from time to time, to display some theatrics, this kill right here? This mess of torn flesh and exposed bone? This is in my soul. I’m fucking feral at the core.
Maybe it’s best that she gets as far away from me as she can.
Even still, it burns in my chest, a hot needle that’s slipped between my ribs to lodge in the very center of my heart. It’s a place I never thought could feel pain or longing anymore. But it does.
I drive a sticky hand through my hair as my shoulders fall.
“Goddammit, Rowan, you feckin’ eejit.” My eyes press closed. “Sloane…”
“I’m here.”
My gaze meets the shadows as Sloane emerges from their grip. 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.
I don’t move as she comes closer, her steps tentative, her body illuminated by the dim light that spills from the ruined car, her throat still streaked with my blood. Her gaze takes in every detail, from the film of sweat on my face to the swollen flesh of my hands. Only when she’s assessed me and stopped by my side does her attention fall to the cooling body on the driveway.
“You okay?” she asks. She looks to me with a flicker of a crease between her brows.
I want to reach for her, to feel the comfort of her unfamiliar touch. But I don’t. I just watch.
“He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with bird-like grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your Cubism era. Cool.”
I still don’t answer. I don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s the mounting physical pain. Or it could be the waning adrenaline. But I think it’s just Sloane. The echo of the loss of her and the relief of her presence.
Sloane gives me a faint, lopsided smile and lowers to my level, her eyes soldered to mine. Her grin doesn’t last. Her voice is quiet, nearly a whisper when she says, “Cat got your tongue, pretty boy? Didn’t think I’d see the day.”
A breath shudders past my lips as a drop of sweat falls from my hair to slide down my cheek like a tear. “Are you okay?”
Sloane huffs a laugh and her dimple pops out next to her lip. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Her words hang unanswered in the air as my gaze drops to the body. Surprise ignites in my chest when her delicate fingers alight on the back of my hand, her touch feather-light as she traces a streak of blood that drips from a split over my knuckle. “I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine,” I say with a shake of my head. We both know it’s a lie, just like we know her words were too. She was going to leave. I have no doubt.
But she didn’t. She’s still here. Maybe not for long, but at least for now.
“This is going to take a while to clean up,” Sloane says as her hand leaves mine and she stands. Her gaze travels the length of the corpse next to us before it flows to the battered car. “Good thing I’ve still got a few days off. We’re probably going to need it.”
Sloane extends her hand and I stare at the lines crossing her palm. Life and death. Love and loss and fate.
“We?” I ask.
“Yeah, we,” she says. Her smile has a softness to its edges. Her hand moves closer, her fingers spread wide. “But we’d better start with you first.”
I slip my hand into hers and rise from the black road.
We leave Francis on the driveway and head to his house in silence. He lives alone, but we’re careful nonetheless. We split up and sweep through the home to meet once more in the living room when we’re sure it’s clear.
“Is this where you were tonight?” I ask as I cast a glance around the room. It’s decorated in much the same way as the hotel, with antiques and faded paintings, furniture with worn upholstery but shining wooden framework, the details polished. Sloane nods when my gaze lands on her. “Doesn’t really seem like his style.”
“Yeah, I thought the same. He talked a bit about his family. He said they’ve been here for generations. Sounds like he was trapped by the ghosts of someone else’s past,” she says as she stops at the mantle and leans toward an old railway switch lantern.
“It’s the right kind of house for ghosts, I guess.”
Sloane turns to me and flashes a quick, faint smile before she nods toward a hallway. “Come on. Let’s get you fixed up.”
I trail after her like a wraith at her heels. We stop at the bathroom where she motions for me to sit on the edge of the tub as she gathers supplies from the medicine cabinet. She unpacks a roll of gauze, readies bandages with antibiotic cream. When everything is laid out, she saturates a sterile pad with isopropyl alcohol and kneels in front of me to clean the split skin on my knuckles.
“You’re going to wind up with some scars,” she says as she dabs at the deepest wound, leaving an uncomfortable sting behind.
“Already got some.”
Sloane looks up from her work. Her gaze falls to my lip before it returns to my hand, her touch so gentle despite the suffering I know she could mete out, if she wanted to.
I watch in silence as she takes the first bandage from the counter and fits it over the torn flesh before she preps another gauze pad, starting the process over again with the next cut.
“My father gave it to me,” I say. Sloane’s gaze flicks up to mine with a question in her eyes. “The scar on my lip. The one you keep staring at because it’s so damn sexy.”
Sloane huffs a laugh. Her hair shields most of her face from view as she keeps her attention on my hand, but I can still see the blush through the spaces between her raven strands. “I thought I told you once not to let your prettiness get to your head,” she says.
“Just had to check that you still think I’m pretty.”
Sloane keeps her head down but gives me a flash of her eyes as they roll. I grin when they fix to me with a vicious glare. “I also told you that you’re the worst, and that still rings true.”
“So cruel, Blackbird. You wound me yet again,” I say as I press my free hand to my heart. This wins me a smile before she hides her face away. Sloane places the next bandage on my knuckles and I don’t have the heart to tell her they’ll probably fall off in the shower I intend to take tonight to soothe my sore shoulders. I resolve to steal the package of remaining bandages when we leave so she won’t know.
“Is he still around? Your dad?” she asks to break me away from thoughts of what else might be here worth taking, some little memento of our first game, perhaps.
“No.” I swallow. Secrets I never share beg to be released whenever she’s around, and it’s no different with this one. “Lachlan and I killed him. It was the same night he gave me this scar. Smashed my face with a broken plate.”
The motion of her hand slows as Sloane watches me. “And your mom?”
“Died giving birth to Fionn.”
Sloane’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep, heavy breath. Her bottom lip folds between her teeth as she holds my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Wouldn’t have wound up here if everything hadn’t happened the way it did,” I say. I fold a lock of her hair behind her ear so I can see her freckles. “I have no regrets about where I am.”
And there it is. That blush. A pink so addictive that it haunts me. I want to hoard these images of Sloane, her face flushed, her eyes dancing, her smile desperate to be freed.
“You’re the worst. You know that, right?”
“Technically, I’m the best. Because I just won.”
Sloane might groan, but she can’t help but huff a laugh too. “And I’m sure you’re going to remind me of this regularly.”
“Probably.”
“You know, even though I didn’t win, which totally sucks, by the way,” she says, pausing to narrow her eyes at me before her expression softens into a faint smile, “I had fun. I feel…good. Better. Like this is what I needed. So…thank you, Rowan.”
She smooths the adhesive of the last bandage over my skin with a slow pass of her thumb and then her touch falls away. Then she rises and backs away to stop at the threshold of the door, her hand curled around her arm.
“I’ll go start on the driveway,” Sloane says, and with a final flash of an unsure smile, she disappears.
I wait for a long moment. Her quiet footsteps lead to the front door and then all sound in the house dies away.
She could slip away into the night. Leave all this behind. Do whatever it takes to never be found.
But for the next three days, every time I think she might disappear, she proves me wrong.
