3. The Things I Couldn’t Save
The Things I Couldn’t Save
Jacob
The sound comes first.
It hums beneath everything like static bleeding through a broken signal—voices overlapping, chairs shifting, the quiet scrape of shoes against polished wood. It should feel familiar. Grounding. Instead, it burrows beneath my skin, needling at something instinctive that refuses to settle.
By the time I realize I've stopped moving, I already know—before I even look around—
Something isn't right. The air feels heavy in a way that presses against my lungs when I breathe, like the moment before a storm splits the sky open.
I stand at the end of an aisle beneath a rose-covered arch, my boots planted against polished wood that gleams too clean beneath the low light.
The chapel stretches out in front of me in perfect rows—white-painted pews filled with people dressed in muted tones.
Pink. Gray. Navy. Soft pastels that blur together beneath the warm glow of hanging lights.
They sit quietly. Hands folded. Faces turned toward me.
Waiting.
For what, I don't know.
I draw in a breath—and then my senses ignite.
Her.
Summer.
It's faint, but it's there, woven into the air like something that shouldn't exist outside of her skin.
That soft mix of perfume and something warmer beneath it.
Something that always clung to her—her scent—the one that lingers on my bedsheets even after she wakes.
The one that I could sniff out in a room full of hundreds of people.
My lungs stutter so fast it almost hurts. She shouldn't be here. But she is. I know she is.
My gaze lifts to the arch above me, draped in layers of white voile that stir in a breeze I can't feel. Fairy lights are threaded through the fabric, casting a soft glow over the roses wrapped around the wood.
Pale pink. White. Clean. Her colors. Not mine.
I've never given a fuck about flowers. Never cared what they meant, what color they were, or how they were arranged. But this—this is beautiful in a way that feels eerie. Like I've stepped into something that was never meant to include me.
Movement shifts at my side.
Haywood.
His hand grips my shoulder, solid and steady—the kind of touch that says you've got this without needing words.
Michael and Elaine sit in the front row.
Dressed neatly. Faces calm. Smiling the way parents do when their daughter is about to walk down the aisle.
The sight punches straight through my chest, stealing the air from my lungs.
No. That's not right. They shouldn't be here.
They're dead. I know they're dead. I saw what was left behind.
Saw the blood. Saw what Moore did to them.
So why the hell are they sitting there smiling like none of it ever happened?
My gaze shifts again, and this time the cold sinks deeper.
My parents stand toward the back of the chapel, half-hidden in shadow.
My father's posture is rigid, familiar in all the worst ways.
My mother's expression is soft—but never kind.
It's the same look she used to give me when disappointment outweighed anything close to love.
They shouldn't be here either. They shouldn't be anywhere. The truth settles into place with sickening clarity.
This is a dream.
A nightmare.
The sound shifts. Music rises—soft piano notes drifting through the chapel, slow and hollow in a way that doesn't sit right in my chest.
Adelaide appears first, gliding down the aisle in a pale dress, her smile stretched just a fraction too wide. Constance follows behind her, eyes bright, her expression fixed in something that should look like happiness—but doesn't feel like it when I look at her.
And then—
Her.
Everything else falls away.
Summer steps into view, and the world narrows until there's nothing left but her.
Her auburn hair catches the light, soft curls spilling over her shoulders beneath a veil that trails behind her like smoke.
The dress clings to her, fitted in a way that makes something dark rise instantly in my chest.
Too much.
Too fucking much of her skin on display. Possession hits hard enough to unbalance me.
Mine.
The word lands without thought. Immediate.
Absolute. The same word that has lived in my chest since the first time I saw her across her father's yard—18 years old, laughing and completely unaware of what she'd already done to me.
I have never found a way to remove it. Never tried.
It isn't a choice I made. It's a fact I woke up to and have been organizing my life around ever since.
I want to tear the dress from her. Strip it away until there's nothing left for anyone else to see. Until this room, these people, this entire false reality has nothing of her that isn't mine.
Because she is. She always has been.
She walks toward me, slow and steady, every movement too controlled. Her smile is bright—too bright—and it cuts deeper than anything else in this room.
Love hits first. Then grief. Then something darker coils tight beneath both.
When she reaches me, she lifts her face. Her eyes meet mine and something inside me gives. Pressure builds behind my eyes, rising too fast, too much, like something inside my skull is forcing its way through. It sharpens until she's the only thing I can see.
"I love you," she whispers. Her voice is soft. Fragile. Real enough to ruin me.
I don't hesitate, I grab her hand and pull her into me, holding her too tightly—like if I loosen my grip even slightly, she'll slip through me and disappear all over again.
"God, I love you, Summer," I breathe, the words tearing free, raw and unfiltered. "I fucking love you."
I mean it. I will always mean it.
We turn toward the pastor together—but something is wrong.
It starts at the back of my neck. A prickle. A warning that spreads lower, deeper—something my body understands before my mind does. The pastor stands before us, hands folded neatly. Still. But he has no face. Just a blur where features should be.
My grip tightens instinctively. The air shifts.
Something dark coils low as the faceless thing lifts one hand, crooks a finger, and beckons her forward.
No.
I pull her closer, anchoring her to me with everything I have. But she slips free effortlessly, like I was never holding her at all. Panic slams into me.
"Summer—" Nothing comes out. The sound is trapped somewhere deep in my chest, buried beneath terror and something worse.
She walks toward him without hesitation, untouched by any of it. The skin of the pastor's face begins to move. Rippling. Shifting. Like something underneath is forcing its way out. The blur sharpens. Forms.
Jackson Moore.
He smiles. That same look burned into my memory—the one that says he's already won. That I was too late. That I always will be.
Rage detonates. I try to move, but I can't. My feet are locked in place, like the floor has swallowed me whole. I'm trapped beneath the arch, forced to watch while everything around me stays soft. Beautiful. Untouched.
Jackson turns to her with quiet patience. His hand lifts, wraps around her throat, his thumb pressing beneath her jaw in a way that makes something savage tear loose inside me. Then she leans in, and kisses him.
"No!" The word comes out this time. It changes nothing. "Summer!"
She pulls herself away. Turns her head. Looks at me. Her smile is soft. Awry.
"You let this happen," she says. The words catch something already broken inside of me. "You let him take me."
My chest caves in around them. "I didn't," I choke. "I tried—"
Jackson doesn't look at her. He looks at me. Watching. He’s Enjoying this.
Slowly, he reaches to his belt and pulls free a blade. The metal catches the light as he turns it in his hand, giving me time to see it. To understand exactly how powerless I am.
My heart slams against my ribs.
"Don't—"
The word barely forms before he drags the blade across her throat. The sound is quiet.
Red spills across white silk, blooming fast, soaking through the fabric as it drips to the floor. She collapses.The roses tremble. Petals fall. And something inside me breaks beyond repair.
"SUMMER!" The scream tears out of me, raw enough to rip my throat. The world flickers. The lights dim. Glass fractures in thin jagged lines. I open my mouth to breathe, but my body forgets how—
A hand clamps down on my shoulder. The smell hits first. Whiskey. Smoke. Rot.
My father.
He stands beside me smiling, and the sight of him fills me with a hatred so deep it feels permanent. The kind that doesn't flare. Doesn't roar. It just sits there in the bones the way scar tissue sits—evidence of damage done so long ago that the wound and the body have become one.
"You couldn't even save your mother," he says cruelly. "And you thought you could save her?"
Rage surges, violent and immediate. I turn to confront him.
To challenge him. To show him I'm not that same weak boy anymore.
But as I turn—his face splits open. Skin tears.
Blood runs thick and dark. His eyes blacken.
Smoke pours from the cracks in his flesh, filling the chapel until the air turns toxic in my lungs. Then he collapses. Bone. Ash. Dust.
Everything that he is falls apart at my feet and settles into her blood.
I choke. Try to breathe. Try to scream—
"Boss!"
The world snaps.
Hands grip my shoulder, shaking me hard. My eyes fly open to darkness, rain streaking across the windows, the cab of the truck pressing in around me with a different kind of suffocation.
Carter is beside me, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping my shoulder.
"Christ," he mutters. "You were losing it. Thought you were gonna start swinging in your sleep."
I don't answer straight away. Can't.
My chest is still heaving. My throat still burns from a scream that wasn't real. My heart is slamming against my ribs like it hasn't got the message yet—like it's still back there in that chapel, still watching her fall, still hearing that sound.
I press the back of my hand against my mouth and force myself to breathe.
In. Out.