Inside is a folded paper napkin. And inside that, another taped present.

“Oh my God, Rowan. You kept this…?” she asks with a chuckle of disbelief as she reads my handwriting scrawled below the logo of a melting ice cream cone on the napkin.

Butcher & Blackbird 

Annual August Showdown

7 days

Tie-breaker by rock-paper-scissors

Best of five

Winner takes the Forest Phantom 

“Hold on a second,” I say when she’s read each line out loud. “It’s missing something. Hand that over for a second while you unwrap the other one.”

“What are you up to, weirdo?”

“Maybe I want to blow my nose on this highly sentimental piece of tissue. Just hand it over, Blackbird.”

Sloane laughs and shakes her head with confusion, but she passes the napkin back to me and I take my pen from next to my tools to write out a new line, all the while sneaking glances at her to keep watch on her progress as she unwraps the other gift. Like it has every moment I’ve been with Sloane, my heart fucking pounds the entire time, like it’s going to carve itself free of its cage of bones.

When she’s about to pull the final piece of tape from the wrapping around the gift, I place my hand over hers, the napkin folded between my fingers. If she can feel a tremor in my flesh, she doesn’t say.

“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.

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EPILOGUE

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THE PHANTOM

The 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. 

I swallow the distaste for this environment that has engulfed me for the past week. My gaze drifts from one end of the street to the other, but it always returns to the door across the street and the curve of gold letters on the glass.

My watch alarm beeps. Twelve noon.

Lord, I ask for your blessings to be poured out onto me, your humble servant. Lift my hand against my adversaries. Send back upon them every wrongdoing and injustice they have loosed upon me, your faithful disciple.

Amen.

I open my eyes and resume my vigil from the cafe patio. My tea has cooled, the book splayed before me remains unread. My fingers tap in time to the music that echoes in my head. A hymn, one my mother used to sing.

Let sinners take their course,

And choose the road to death

The door opens across the street. A tall man with an athletic build holds it open for a woman with raven hair. Her gaze flicks to her surroundings. ‘The Killers,’ her black t-shirt says.

My blood heats.

But I, with all my cares, 

Will lean upon the Lord;

I’ll cast my burdens on his arm, 

And rest upon his word

As they step onto the sidewalk, the couple turns to speak with another man who lingers behind on the threshold of the door. Black tattoos cover his hands and his muscled arms. He’s not as tall as the first man but more powerful in build. The protector. The fighter. I can tell—the way he stands, the way he grins, the coiled readiness in every move. A snake, always ready to strike.

They exchange words I can’t hear, smiles I can’t feel. The second man clamps his hand over the shoulder of the first. Their foreheads press together before they separate. The first man then walks away hand-in-hand with the woman. He places a kiss to her temple and she grins. I watch them stroll down the street and turn the corner. For a long moment, my gaze remains there, trapped on their absence as though I haunt their footsteps, a ghost lurking in their shadows.