Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)
Eden Butler
“Read this in one sitting! Without a doubt, my favorite dynamic of bad boy meets feisty good girl. Superb writing!”
—Penelope Douglas, New York Times bestselling author of Bully and Until You
“Thin Love is more than just a book. It’s more than a story. It’s a journey—an experience that grabs you by the gut and won’t let go until it’s ready to release you. And damn, what a release it is. Eden Butler nailed it.”
—Lila Felix, bestselling author of Love and Skate
“By far my favorite Eden Butler novel. Keira and Kona’s chemistry is electric and leaps off the pages!”
—Chelle Bliss, USA Today Bestselling Author of the Men of Inked series
“I felt so connected to these characters and this story that it almost felt too personal to share it with anyone. But rest assured, I will be shouting the praises of Thin Love and Mrs. Butler from the rooftops so that I can make sure others experience what I have.”
—Lori Westhaver, Red’s Book Blog
“Thin Love is a boundary-breaking journey. Butler’s pen flows thick with the many facets of life, love and the decisions you make to survive. Once you have stepped into Kona and Keira’s world, nothing will protect you from the heavy emotions that Butler produces. Pure, unadulterated reading magic!”
—Trish F Leger, Author of the Amber Druid Series
For the lion and the love that grew thick.
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
There are ghosts in the lake house.
Keira feels them breathing on her skin. They are filaments of memory, echoes behind the words of the woman she buried yesterday; disappointment and dread, fear, pain, tear-soaked pillows, impossible expectations required of the teenage girl she used to be. In the crevices and alcoves of this old place, Keira sees her younger self—awkward, curious, broken—filling days of neglect with imaginary friends.
The lake looms in front of her and the cool patio stone under her feet chills her skin, has her moving her fingers up her arms in a futile attempt at warming herself. The slide of slow currents, the slip of each wave against the dark sand, brings peace, relief, neither of which Keira had ever known in this place. Fireflies skid along the surface and the heavy limbs of cypress trees brush against the water. In the distance, toward the cityscape she can’t see, she knows there are beacons of activity that she might touch if she were brave enough to venture beyond these haunting walls. With each flick of her eyes, Keira calls more ghosts from the past, pulls them into her mind—unseen creatures lined on a hook.
Closing her eyes, Keira sees the priest’s face, the quick nod of his head that confirmed the woman in the coffin had been her mother. She’d have never believed it otherwise. The protruding collarbone and pallid skin on the woman’s small frame had been a shadow of the domineering mother Keira had left behind.
Sixteen years ago, in the city hospital with Keira’s bruised limbs throbbing like a burn, her mother had insisted she kill the baby growing in her belly.
Eighteen, the woman had said, was too young to be a mother.
She hadn’t been wrong, but Keira had been tired of her mother’s commands, her quick temper, those sharp slaps, and the insistences that had been drummed into her ears since childhood and so, at least that one time, a small rebellion changed her life.
It brought her son into this world.
The ghosts, the heartache of the past, had kept her from New Orleans. She’d been determined to never resurrect them, but her mother’s death called her back, forced her to return and when their plane touched tires on the tarmac, Keira felt the ghosts remerge—the pain of what she’d been forced into, the disappointment of what she set free, and the unbending betrayal of the boy she loved.
The past is a slippery vine of regret. It’s a reminder of what Keira had given up. And now that she is back home, her mother buried behind the walls of the old family crypt, Keira feels that vine tightening around her neck like a noose.
The click of the television in the room just beyond the open patio doors and the slick squeak of Ransom’s sneakers on the leather sofa pulls Keira from her thoughts and the mesmerizing current of the lake.
“Mom,” Ransom calls to her. “The draft starts in ten minutes. You watching?”
A chill has set in the home, carried through the broken seals of the windows with the spring rain and Keira pulls her cardigan tight around her as she follows the noise of the television into the den. “Of course.” Ransom’s drink leaves a wet ring on the mahogany coffee table and as habit, as conditioning, she places a coaster onto the wood surface. “Here.”
Her son smiles, brings into focus a dimple that carries in more echoes of the past. “She’s gone, you know. Why do you care about coasters?” She knows he’s right, knows that her mother’s presence is the largest ghost, the one she thought she exorcised years before. But this place is too familiar, too reminiscent of her. When she doesn’t answer him, ignores his comment with eyes on the screen in front of them, Ransom replaces his drink onto the coaster, letting the comment lie. “These jackasses are yammering about the Steamers’ rankings. We win the Super Bowl and still get no respect.” He nods at the television and Keira can only smile that he says “we” and not “they” as though he grew up in New Orleans and not Nashville.