Title: Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)
Author: Eden Butler
Genre: NA | Contemporary Romance
Release Date: August 31, 2015
Synopsis
He doesn’t ask their names.
He doesn’t deserve to know them.
Ransom Riley Hale’s friends think his life is charmed: first string as a freshman on a championship-winning college football team. A father with two Super Bowl rings. A mother with platinum albums and multiple Grammies under her belt. But that brilliant shine on the surface hides the darkness beneath; it’s all Ransom has ever known.
Despite the shadows he walked in, once there was a blinding light fracturing the darkness. It brought the promise of hope and happiness. He’d been careless, filled with pride and stupidity and lost that light. Ripped it from the world.
Now, the shadows are dimming again. Aly King surges into his life threatening to pull him from the darkness. She is everything Ransom can never be again. Her light feels too warm, promises him that there is more waiting for him beyond the shadows.
But the shadows are relentless, resurfacing when he thinks he is safe, and Ransom knows he must keep Aly from them too before he pulls her down into the darkness with him.
Thick Love – Excerpt
“Dance with me,” I said. He only stared up at me blankly.
“I don’t feel like practicing.”
“I’m not asking you to practice. I’m asking you to dance.”
Ransom’s body stiffened when I picked up his hand, but he didn’t fight me. “Just be here with me. Me and you and the music.”
We came together in the center of my living room with that slow, soothing music wrapping around us. There was no Kizomba, no prequel to a seduction we both wanted to avoid. There was just Ransom bending low, arms around me, hand taking mine to hold against his chest. After a few seconds, the tension lessened, and his body did not feel as rigid. It felt peaceful, and safe, and simple—just two people, holding each other, swaying to the music.
His mouth hovered near my forehead and as we moved together with no form or practiced steps, Ransom’s grip on my waist got tighter. “I wish I could breathe again. I want that so bad.” The words were whispered, low.
I closed my eyes, reminding myself that I couldn’t touch him.
“Ransom. You can.”
He looked down at me and right then I saw just how lost he was. This realization didn’t come from flippant comments he made to me or desperate excuses I overheard him make. It was all there right in his eyes—the loneliness, the pain, as though each mistake he’d made was etched into the rise of his cheekbones and the worried, faint lines on his forehead. He was still drifting; he had been drifting for so damn long.
The pain in his eyes drew me in. There was nothing I could say that would make his hurt lessen. There was nothing that would take him from the lingering sorrow he’d created for himself. So I didn’t speak, didn’t give him advice I knew he’d never take. I just watched Ransom’s eyes, and felt the slow way he moved. And then with my hand on the back of his neck, I pulled his face towards me, I took his lips, kissing him, pouring into that kiss everything I’d held back from him since we first met.
This is who I am. This is what I want. That voice came from someplace hidden and secret inside me.
It was minutes, minutes of nothing but my mouth on his, nothing but two people finding solace in each other, before
I realized I’d messed up.
He didn’t seem to want me to pull away, but didn’t stop me when I did. Shaking my head, I smoothed the collar on his shirt, unable to look at him. “I’m…modi, Ransom, I’m sorry.”
Ransom pulled my chin up and smoothed his thumb over my cheek, down the slope of my chin before he returned his attention to my eyes. “I don’t think I am.”
It was a moment I thought I’d always wanted. Him looking at me like I was real, like he saw me, finally saw me. I’d seen that look once before, just as Ransom whispered my name and kissed me over and over the first time. It wasn’t the look of someone hopeless. It was open and raw and I realized right then that I’d give anything for Ransom to never stop looking at me.
But this was against our rules. This wasn’t how we were supposed to be. I took his hand, thought of pulling it away from my face but didn’t have the strength, liked how it felt on my face too much. “Friends don’t kiss, Ransom.”
A small nod, and his eyes narrowed. His grip around me tightened. The music around us swelled. “No, they don’t,” he said, still touching my face, inching closer and I knew, right then, he was definitely
not my friend.
Books in the Thin Love Series
About Eden Butler
Eden Butler is an editor and writer of New Adult Romance and SciFi and Fantasy novels and the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum. Her debut novel, a New Adult, Contemporary (no cliffie) Romance, “Chasing Serenity” launched in October 2013 and quickly became an Amazon bestseller.
When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.
She is currently imprisoned under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.
Please send help.
Tour Giveaway
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Have you ever read a book that you feel like you've not just been through a battle with but an epic war? You've been through blood, sweat, and tears and came out the other side not sure if you're the victor? Well, that's pretty much me at this point. I went through just about every emotion imaginable and not all of them were good. My first reaction after finishing was to contemplate fictional murder of an oh so frustrating character. But wait a minute...frustrating isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to one particular male in this book. That word is completely feeble and unworthy.
Having read Keira and Kona's story in Thin Love, I was familiar with Eden Butler's propensity for giving her readers a massive ball of angst wrapped up in a pretty package of beautifully flowing words. I was expecting difficult. Her stories are never a walk in the park, but I fell in love with her eloquent and profound writing. The way she can build these enduring characters that are imperfect yet somehow so beautiful in their human frailties. She doesn't sugar coat anything, and perhaps that's what makes her books seem so real and striking.
Love told me that Ransom was still lost, still drifting but sometimes he let me pull him closer toward the shore. Love reminded me that things were possible.
Love was louder than logic.
Thick Love is the story of Ransom Hale, Keira and Kona's son from
Thin Love. It's told in alternating POV between Ransom and the heroine Ally. If you've read Thin Love, you know that Ransom as a teen had serious anger issues. And it was foreshadowed that the loss of control over his emotions would cause him just as many problems as his parents. And it most certainly did in disastrous, soul shattering, irreversible ways. Ransom's thoughtless actions have brought him to a place where only crushing guilt and suffering exist. He can never turn back the hands of time and undo his actions, so he punishes himself by withholding pleasure from his life. He lives in darkness.
He has no idea that Ally has been silently observing his pain for years and harboring feelings that had no hope of being returned. Ally was a fantastic heroine. She's the type of woman who's resilient and strong, yet nurturing and patient all at the same time. And her dancing was so thrilling. So passionate and so much a part of who she was. Eden wrote such amazingly sensual dancing scenes between Ransom and Ally, they were some of my favorite moments in the book.
She moved like no one could touch her, like just her swaying hips and the strong, confident gait told the world she knew who she was and no one could mess with that.
They were incredible, drawing the sexual tension to a point just short of breaking and starting all over again, leaving me breathless in anticipation.
Ally was Ransom's rock and she stood tall against his need to distance himself. She was supportive and accepting of his struggle and it made for some very poignant scenes between them. As much as Ransom's stubbornness frustrated me, I can't say I never sympathized with him and hoped for him to find acceptance within himself. His martyrdom was a seemingly bottomless pit however and I wondered if he would ever allow himself a little piece of happiness.
"I'm not the bad boy who needs saving, Ally."
"Non, cheri," she said, scooting closer as though I hadn't hurt her twenty minutes before, as though she'd already forgotten how badly I'd fucked up.
"You're a good man who needs to forgive himself."
That voice in his head that haunts him was quieted with the comfort of Ally's force of will. Would he learn to step out of the darkness and into the light?
Just a random thought. Is it just me or did this not make a lot of sense?
(view spoiler)[ In the beginning of the book, Ally gives Ransom a lap dance while wearing a blonde wig and a mask. She's mysterious and completely unrecognizable even though he knows her from the dance studio where she works. After she walks out, she gets hassled by Ransom's drunk friend who tries to grope her. Note: she's still in her wig and mask. Ransom had no clue who she was and he sees her regularly. Flash to later in the book. Ransom gets into a fight with that same friend who makes a derogatory comment about Ally. After seeing her one time in the locker room, he somehow realizes that she is the girl in the mask. The girl he saw briefly while completely shitfaced drunk. WTF even...? (hide spoiler)]
After my initial frustration, I finally came to a place of acceptance with this book. Yes, I wanted to smash things and my tolerance levels of Ransom sunk to an exasperating low. But once again, Eden Butler concocted an unforgettable story. It's a story that I wouldn't necessarily classify as romance....
yet. This piece of the story was the structure of their relationship, only the beginning. And I'm hoping after that epilogue that the conclusion to Ally and Ransom's story will have less struggle and more joy. I know what she's capable of so I'm reserving judgement until then.
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