by Eden Butler
Infinite Us
Eden Butler
Contents
Praise for Eden Butler’s Work
Also by Eden Butler
Author’s Note
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Family Tree
Discussion Questions
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Infinite Us
Copyright © 2017 Eden Butler
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Author Publisher.
Edited by Sharon B. Browning
Cover Design by Murphy Rae, Indie Solutions
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the any and all word-marks and references mentioned in this work of fiction.
“I loved this book! The hero is a tatted up Irish rugby player who has traveled to the states to play for college. Like the heroine he has a tragic past and when Autumn and Declan meet sparks fly! Nice to read a book that is anything but predictable.” —Kele Moon, author of the Battered Hearts series
“This book explores emotional heartache, but on different levels. It’s not just about romantic love, but about the love of family (and “family” takes on a whole new meaning. It encompasses friends, too). From disconnect to possible re-connect. From old scars that refuse to heal, to potential emotional mending. You’ll feel it, deep.” —Maryse Black, Maryse’s Book Blog
When I read the first book, Chasing Serenity, I had a bone deep knowing that Eden Butler was a special author. Her ability to pull you into her stories - the world that she creates, the characters that she molds, and her ability to immerse you into the emotions of those characters – is nothing short of spectacular.
—Mean Girls Luv Books
“There is a bold mission when [Butler] puts pen to paper to grab our attention, open our hearts, and engage our imagination. Butler didn’t hold back with crafting these characters from different cultures, tossing in some major adversity, and challenging them to dig deep for inner strength. At the end of the day, Thin Love is hearty blend for the soul.” —Michelle Monkou, USA Today
“Read [Thin Love] 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
“We LOVED this book [Thick Love] and would recommend it in a heartbeat!” —Totally Booked Blog
“Eden Butler has the gift to immerse her readers into plot [of Thick & Thin] that, albeit fairly light on steam, is heavy on heart. We fall for the characters, their culture, and their love story. I sincerely look forward to what's next in store with Eden Butler.” —Allison, The Reading Escapade Book Blog
“Eden is continually proving herself in the ranks of every genre of romance, no matter the plot, type or setting, she will pull you in. Prepare yourself.” —Trish Leger, best-selling author of the Amber Druids series
“When the twists and turns started coming, [in Crimson Cove] I had to hold on tight. Mrs. Butler did not hold back in that department. Great job.” —Jennifer Sons, Through the Booking Glass Blog
“A wonderful standalone that will entrance you and captivate you from start to finish. I cannot stress how much I enjoyed reading this. #oneclicknow” —Kawehi, Kawehi’s Book Blog
Crimson Cove is one beautiful, magical, amazing read that brought tears to my eyes, made me laugh, feel giddy, and let me experience the paranormal in a way I haven't before! —A Hopeless Romantic's Booklandia
Eden Butler’s writing is fantastic, poetic, and heartfelt. The type of books you remember. Love her! —Penelope Douglas New York Times bestselling author
SERIES
Chasing Serenity, (The Serenity Series Book 1)
Behind the Pitch, (A Serenity Series Novella)
Finding Serenity, (The Serenity Series Book 2)
Claiming Serenity, (The Serenity Series Book 3)
Catching Serenity, (The Serenity Series Book 4)
Thin Love, (Thin Love Book 1)
My Beloved, (A Thin Love Novella)
Thick Love, (Thin Love Book 2)
Thick & Thin, (Thin Love Book 3)
My Always, (A Thin Love Novella)
Swimming in Shadows, (A Shadows Series Novella)
Shadows and Lies, (The Shadows Series Book #1)
STANDALONES
Crimson Cove
Platform Four—A Legacy Falls Romance
I’ve Seen You Naked and Didn’t Laugh: A Geeky Love Story
Author’s Note
There are no political debates in this novel. There are no demands that you support one person over another or that the minutia of media fodder and the overwhelming worries so many of us face on a daily basis be dissected and explored. No resolutions will be offered.
This book, these characters, do something I think we all should—it explores love. It’s just that simple, just that complex. There are no boundaries for these couples, not ultimately, and what I hope you’ll understand about the nature of these kinds of stories is that they are vital. All of them. They are real and honest and sometimes very cruel. But they are very, very necessary.
You cannot call yourself a tolerant, compassionate person and see the differences in others as a threat to your own well-being. You cannot profess to love everyone as your faith or beliefs demand, and still think you are better, you are more deserving or that your privilege makes you right. It doesn’t.
These couples understand that love, honest, real love, transcends. It does not judge, it doesn’t set limitations or see differences. Love stretches, it strengthens and it is absolutely essential. It gives you hope for a better day, the one we pray is coming.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous [… ] it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Without love, we are pointless.
With it, we are infinite.
For more information on the titles mentioned in this book, discover Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen at the following:
Zora Neale Hurston - http://www.zoranealehurston.com/books/index.html
Countee Cullen - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/countee-cullen
“We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love.
That is our great glory, and our great tragedy."
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
For everyone who learned to love blindly.
May the world follow your lead.
#StayWoke
Epigraph
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Once there was an ordinary girl who held an extraordinary hope. She did not wish for things that went beyond the apothecary labor her father’s work provided their small village. But the girl still believed in the brilliant wonder that came with being loved. Love, after all, is a mighty force, born into every beating heart formed by the Almighty’s careful touch. The elders promised so and the girl knew that what the elders promised came to pass. It was that force, the same divine brilliance that brought her into being. The same Craftsman formed cells into limbs, bone and muscle, the braided bundle of hair atop her head as had fashioned to life kings and rulers, diplomats and paupers.
All, she decided, deserved to be loved greatly, fiercely and to see that fine love grow and strengthened. And so this ordinary girl found her great love. She held it tight, made of it all she could, cherished and beheld it like the precious thing it was—eternal, beloved and solely hers for the keeping.
But for the girl, like men and women before her, love was not an easily tamed beast. Sometimes it came to her, wrapped her in its clutches because it was greedy, because she did not mind being coveted. But then her husband or lover would defy the Almighty, incur His wrath and love would fall between her fingers like brittle petals from a wilted sunflower.
But the memory remained and went through her, twined beneath her dying sighs and into the ether.
Sometimes, love came when her body was changed, when her shoulders had widened and her chest flattened. It came when she was he. It came when he was seeking no more than a meal and found instead a love that fed his soul, nourished it same as his empty belly. And still, like all the lives before, all the forms inside which that great love breathed, of all the people he would ever be, that love died, sometimes slowly, sometimes not easily given up.
Other times, love came to him in the hungry touch of a girl that could never be his, the sweet forbidden touch that had his vagabond heart breaking when it ended, when death came and disintegrated all the hope that had built and settled inside his chest.
But the memory remained, passing into one life, onto the next, through bone and blood and cells that made up one life and then another.
Still, that love lived inside veins, inside the blood that moved through bodies, through all those bodies. For a brilliant time, perhaps for dozens like them, that love lived. For then. For now. For always.
And the memory endured.
Your grief and mine
Must intertwine
Like sea and river,
Be fused and mingle,
Diverse yet single,
Forever and forever.
“Any Human to Another” Countee Cullen, 1934
Nash
Midnight. There was darkness and the thump of a rhythm that wasn’t welcome when the aching started. Brooklyn was loud that night, full of chaos, adding to my insomniatic misery. But noise wasn’t the only thing keeping me up. My head felt thick with numbers and algorithms that coated my vision like some Pollock piece blurred with a toddler’s hand painting. My body? Stupid with tension—the kind of tight coil that twists your spine and keeps your shoulders from any damn thing but bunching pain.
The numbers, the darkness, the kindergartener’s chaos all fought for space inside my head, dimmed by the noise I heard above me. That infernal thumping, the hyper noise of a drumbeat from some clueless asshole’s speakers in the upstairs apartment that tamped out the jazz pouring from my headphones. Coltrane was wicked, the smooth slip of his sax like the voice of God; the heady mix of condemnation and praise, pain that both harmed and healed in every note. But even the long, sweet whisper of the sax couldn’t overcome the thumping of the trespassing drums from barging in, or keep out the noise of the crazy bitch singing out of tune one floor up. Had to be a woman. No dude’s voice could be that high-pitched or whining.
For the fourth damn night.
Insomnia had first become my side-piece in college. Every night for four years, the noise of frat brothers stepping in line to DMX and his gravely-voiced barks in “Get It On the Floor” in the quad, the Alpha Phi Alphas and Omega Psi Phis vying for bragging rights of who was the flyest with every step-dance they made and the general disturbance of new-held adolescent debauchery kept sleep from me. Those Omegas always won.
I’d trained my mind then, let the insomnia linger until there was an uneasy relationship between us—me tolerating the elusive hum of sleep and that affliction keeping me from it. I’d wrangle four hours of sleep, plenty for a Computer Science major, enough to ace my classes. Enough that I didn’t look like an old man when I left for MIT. By then, insomnia had become the ride-or-die chick that refused to leave me. Got tied down to that bitch. Now I wanted a divorce.
That racket from the apartment above was not helping.
The noisy upstairs female started a louder chant, something that reminded me of the weird mess my twin Natalie watched every Halloween with her friends when we were kids back in Atlanta. Some movie with three white chicks from Salem, singing about spells and sucking the lives out of children. The one with the redhead woman that my assistant Daisy says likes to burn Kim Kardashian on Twitter. That shit was funny, hell of a lot funnier than the movies she was in that made my mom laugh so loud when I was six. It was a Broadway phase she kept from my pops. Nothing like the witch mess from that old movie, that nonsense was crap. And that’s what my new neighbor sounded like.
Four nights. Four nights of this bullshit. Four nights too many.
Coltrane fell silent when I pulled the headphones off and moved across my apartment, not giving a damn that my t-shirt was wrinkled when I picked it off the floor and tugged it over my head, not caring whether or not that loud woman would get pissed if I interrupted what had to be some nightly juju ritual.
My skin pebbled in the cool air from the vents at the elevator ceiling but I didn’t shake or cross my arms to get rid of the sensation. It fed me as I slipped into the elevator, ignored the quick flash of my reflection showing the bags under my eyes, the streak of muscle that twitched when I stretched my shoulders. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to confront this chick, but I was tired and annoyed, and before I stopped to think about what I was doing, the elevator dinged and I stood right in front of 6-D’s door. There was a constant thump of a drum line bumping beneath the sliver of light at the bottom of the door; the only shadow I could make out slipped around that light, probably dancing to whatever voodoo junk pulsed from those speakers.
Coltrane was music. Spirit music. Deep, heart-aching music that seeped into your soul, filled in all the fragments that life left empty. This garbage? Hell no. This wasn’t music at all.
Two bangs of my fist on the door was all it took. I stood there, arms braced against the doorframe, loops of black tattoos, things I wanted to remember, things I could never forget, running over my forearms visible, moving as I twisted my fists on the wooden frame. I didn't care what I looked like, tall inked black man breathing fire at her door. Not worried that this woman might see something of a threat in me, wide shouldered, thin, wrinkled shirt, jeans slipping low on hipbones. Instead, I was focused on that mean ache of messed up calm and lack of sleep crowding in my skull. My stupid pissed off attitude amped up the longer it took this female to open the door. Waiting, I envisioned that I’d yell, I’d unload on her, then get the hell away before she could react, stalk back to my own apartment with my anger leeching out behind me. Then maybe Coltrane would work and I get at least a few hours’ sleep.
The drumbeats stopped. I heard footsteps, the turn of a lock. I was breathing anger through my nose, eyes glaring, like a bull ready to charge.
Everything changed in the second the door opened. With the smallest creak of a hinge, the softest slip of light, a perfect shadow was silhouetted in front of me, followed by what felt like a whip of wind moving through the park, of plastic beads and forgotten parking tickets on Bourbon Street the second Fat Tuesday ended, of the spray of waves that had crashed against the quay. It slapped across my subconscious. A whoosh
, a break of something that could have been a kiss, likely was a punch in the gut, though no one touched me. Before I finished one blink, there she stood, half a foot from me, staring at me like she knew me, like she’d been waiting on me to knock on her door.
“Oh. Oh no, honey.”
It was her. The girl I had seen through my window, and again a couple of times on the elevator. The girl, no, the woman, new to the building, who had not only caught my eye but caused me to stare even though I’m usually not so stupid as that. Once, coming home, I had noticed her walking a block in front of me, and had followed her like a stalker, not even realizing how creepy I must have seemed. Every time I saw her, it was like her presence had gripped me like a crazy moth to a flame, but I had been too wrapped up in my work and my own damned mind games to even consider that she was real, and approachable, and living nearby.
And now she stood in the open doorway, only inches away.
Her touch brought me from my gawking stupor. At least, it made me move. She touched me and it felt like a bolt of electricity. Fingers warm against my skin, gripping, pulling me forward like she expected me to follow, like resisting her was not an option.
Her grip tightened as I followed her inside, and a voice started screaming in my head to back up, to get away from this chick before I did something stupid or got blamed for it. But then I looked at her again, and the voice retreated to a whimper.
This woman wasn’t like anyone I’d ever seen in my life. She was tall, heightened by the dark tights she wore and the loose, bright top with swirls of green and yellow which might have been flowers that cupped her small waist and drifted nearly to her thighs. But she was no delicate flower; she reminded me of a bunch of balloons, the kind that jackass clowns twist into animal shapes to impression stupid six-year-olds. There was so much color and noise in this woman—the whiteness of her skin, the loud shade of her dark lips, the jingle of the stack of bracelets on her wrist and the thick bundle of long chestnut colored hair that hung in a riot of waves and curls past her waist.
