“I fixed it,” I say, my eyes flicking to the napkin. “Read that first.”
She holds my gaze for a moment before she takes the paper and unfolds it, her movement careful and slow. I watch her eyes shift over the words. Her lips press tight. When she reads it out loud, her voice is unsteady.
“Marry Sloane Sutherland and love her forever, if she’ll let you,” she whispers.
Those big hazel eyes are glassed with tears when she looks up at me. I take the little napkin back. She pulls the last piece of tape from the black cloth and unfolds it to reveal the engagement ring, a blue-gray sapphire set in gold with delicate leaves that climb toward the stone.
And I drop down on one knee.
Sloane swallows. A burst of nerves flood my veins and I’m about to launch into all the things I want to tell her when she says, “Did you just propose on a napkin with a ring you stuffed in a guy’s eye hole?”
I blink. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out for a moment that feels about as long as eternity.
“You know, it seemed pretty cute in my head, but in hindsight…maybe it’s too much?”
She shakes her head.
“Not enough?”
She shakes it again, a few tears jostling free of her lashes.
“Just right?”
“It’s fucking perfect,” she sobs.
“Oh thank Christ.” A long breath whooshes from my lungs as I press my palm to my chest. I clasp my hand over hers, the ring clutched in her shaking grip. “I thought for a minute that I had royally fucked it up.”
Sloane makes some kind of strangled squeak. She starts bouncing. First just little bobs, but they get bigger with every second that passes.
“You seem excited, love.”
An unintelligible, garbled sound escapes her lips.
“Shh. Man-guy is trying to propose here.”
“Rowan—”
“Sloane Sutherland, my beautiful Blackbird. From the first moment I met you, you changed the course of my life. I can’t remember anything being fun or exciting or new without you. I can’t remember feeling anything but numb until you burst into my world in your smelly little cage of orzo pastas,” I say, smiling when her laugh breaks free amidst her tears. My grip firms around her trembling hand. “I can’t envision the future without you in it. And I don’t want to, not ever. So marry me, Sloane, and we’ll go on crazy adventures forever, and fuck shit up, and be best friends and do karate in the garage and make love every day and grow old together. Because I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather spend all those moments with than you.”
I pull the ring from her grasp and hold it at the end of her finger.
“What do you say, Blackbird? Will you marry me?”
Tears streak across her freckles as she nods, her voice tight when she says the words I’ve been waiting months, maybe even years, to hear. “Yes, Rowan. Of course I’ll marry you.”
I slide the ring on her finger and she no more than glances at it before she barrels into me, nearly knocking me to the floor as she grasps my face between her palms and peppers my skin with whispered yeses and desperate kisses.
“I love you, Butcher,” Sloane whispers when she pulls away to look into my face. Then she slants her mouth to mine.
She doesn’t have to say it, because I feel it in every touch and weighted glance. It bleeds into the kiss she presses to my lips, as though it lives on her tongue when it sweeps over mine. But those words still sink into my chest, another layer of an unbreakable foundation.
Sloane slows our kiss and when we part, she grasps my hand to tug me to my feet. As soon as I’m up, she drags me toward the darkened corridor that leads to the exit off the kitchen and the doctor’s collection of expensive cars. “Now let’s go do karate in the garage.”
“By ‘karate’ do you mean I’ll bend you over the hood of Doctor Stephan’s Porsche and fuck you blind until you beg me to stop?”
Sloane tosses a wicked grin over her shoulder. Her dimple pops out next to her lip as she gives me a wink and leads me toward the shadows. “Follow me and find out, pretty boy.”
Maybe I was right. We’re not normal people. We are monsters.
But if we’re monsters, we’ll thrive in the dark.
Together.
EPILOGUE
THE PHANTOM
T he city disgusts me.
The scent of the polluted sea. Exhaust from a passing bus. The breath of people who spill their putrid thoughts into the vile air. The city is a cesspool of decay.
Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord.