4. Something Worth Finding
Something Worth Finding
Summer
It's dark when I open my eyes. The kind of darkness that feels aware of itself, like it's watching, like it's waiting for me to understand exactly where I am.
Above me, the rotors begin to slow, but every movement of the helicopter makes my head throb harder.
The ache sits behind my eyes, spreading until it feels like it's pushing against the inside of my skull, making it difficult to focus on anything except the relentless pounding.
I swallow without thinking and instantly regret it.
Pain rips through my throat so violently that my eyes water, and I have to clamp my teeth together to stop myself from crying out.
My hand finds my neck on instinct. The pain in my fingers is numbed by the pain in my throat—swollen and so tender that I barely brush it before pulling away with a sharp intake of breath.
I don't need a mirror to know what I'll find.
The bruises will come. Dark fingerprints wrapped around my throat like something he's left behind for me to carry.
My nose feels wet.
I wipe at it with the back of my hand, then stop when I see the streak of red smeared across my skin.
For a second I just stare at it, my stomach tightening as another slow wipe leaves more blood behind.
My chest starts to rise faster, because all at once I'm back there.
His hand crushing my throat. The desperate burn in my lungs as every instinct in my body screamed for air that never came.
I fought. I know I fought. But somewhere between the panic and the darkness... I'd lost.
I lift my head an inch, ignoring the protest from my neck, and search the cabin.
Every shadow makes my stomach tighten until I finally find him.
The world still swims around the edges, my vision blurred by tears I can't tell are born from pain or fear.
For a moment he's nothing more than a dark shape sitting opposite me, but the longer I blink, the clearer he becomes.
He's already looking at me, as though he's been waiting for me to wake.
Neither of us says a word. We don't need to. The corner of his mouth lifts, slow enough that I watch it happen, and something cold settles deep in my stomach. It isn't the smile itself that terrifies me. It's what sits behind it. Certainty. Like he already knows exactly how this ends.
Above us, the relentless roar of the rotors begins to change.
When the engine finally dies, the silence that follows hits like something physical.
Too sudden. Too complete. My ears are still ringing, my thoughts sluggish beneath the pounding in my skull, and I can't make sense of the quiet after so much relentless noise.
Then the door slides open.
A rush of cold air spills into the cabin, bitter enough to sting. It smells of wet earth and pine, damp stone, engine oil... and rain. Real rain. Fresh enough that it shouldn't feel threatening, yet it still does. Everything does.
I draw a careful breath. It catches halfway down, my throat protesting, and I grit my teeth against the pain.
A metallic click cuts through the silence. For a beat, I don't understand what’s happening. Then the pressure across my waist disappears.
The seatbelt.
I stare down at it as it slips away from my body, my mind struggling to catch up with something so ordinary that it shouldn't matter, but it does. Because I don't remember fastening it.
My pulse falters.
At some point after everything went black, he lifted my body, sat me back in the seat and pulled the belt across my lap.
I wasn't awake for any of it. I don't know where his hands were.
How long he touched me. Whether my head had fallen against his shoulder, whether he'd dragged me by my arms, whether he'd looked at my face while I couldn't open my eyes.
My skin crawls, a sob working its way up, but halting when the movement of my vocal cords sets my throat on fire.
A hand closes around my wrist and every muscle in my body locks.
I wrench against his grip before I can think better of it, desperate to put even an inch of space between us, but pain explodes through my neck and the ground pitches beneath my feet.
My knees threaten to give way, and before I can catch myself, I'm stumbling straight into the hold I was trying to escape.
The bastard doesn't even have to tighten his grip. He just keeps walking.
Cold air lashes at my face as he pulls me toward the open door. Beyond it, the world refuses to settle into focus. Dark trees blur together. Wet gravel glistens beneath the floodlights. Rain hangs in the air, turning everything soft around the edges.
Headlights cut through the dark. Two brutal beams slice across the clearing, bleaching the trees and gravel in stark white. A car crawls out of the darkness, its tires crunching slowly over the ground until it comes to a stop a few feet away.
The driver steps out, rain beading across the shoulders of his dark suit as he straightens the jacket with one sweep of his hand.
A single nod passes between him and Jackson before he walks around the vehicle—gravel crunching beneath polished shoes—and pulls open the rear passenger door without waiting for instruction.
My feet drag over the wet ground as Jackson keeps me moving, his hand locked around my arm. The beam from the headlights catches the puddles beneath us, turning them silver, and for a split second I watch our reflections fracture beneath our feet. Mine stumbles. His doesn't.
The space between the open door and Jackson narrows with every step.
His hand shifts just enough to force me through the open doorway.
The shove comes a second later and I stumble.
My shoulder slams into the doorframe before I crash onto the leather seat hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs.
Pain explodes through my neck and arm, but I barely register it.
My eyes have already landed on the opposite door.
I throw myself across the seat, my palms slipping against the leather as I scramble for the handle. Every movement tears at my throat and sends another wave of pain through my body, but I don't stop. I can't. My fingers close around the handle. If I can just get it open—
I yank, the movement clumsy, desperate.
Cold air rushes through the gap as the door swings outward, and I throw my weight toward it, my shoulder already slipping through the opening.
I can get out. I can—
A hand catches me.
Hard.
Jackson yanks me back before I can force the door wider, my body jerking sideways as he drags me across the seat, the impact knocking into my ribs and tearing another broken sound from my throat.
"No—" It comes out wrecked.
I twist against him, shove with everything I've got, nails dragging across skin and fabric as I claw for anything that might give me enough leverage to break free. I reach for the door again, stretching until my shoulder burns, but I'm pulled back just as easily.
My feet kick against the floor. I buck. I throw every ounce of strength I have into getting away. It changes nothing. His hand never slips.
The door swings shut with a heavy thud that seems to echo through the car before the lock drops into place with a dull, unmistakable click.
The sound settles somewhere deep inside me, and not because the door is locked.
But because I know, with a certainty that makes my stomach turn, that I was close enough to touch freedom... and it still wasn't enough.
I turn at the sound of his voice and meet his gaze.
"It's not time for me to chase you…" he says quietly. "Yet."
He’s settled against me, sitting in the same calm, unbothered position, watching me the way you watch something predictable—not remotely unsettled by any of it.
Like he knew exactly what I'd do.
Like he wanted to see it.
His hand settles on my thigh like it belongs there, and my pulse stutters. Every muscle in my body draws tight.
I turn to face the window.
The engine hums as the vehicle begins to move. Trees rise on either side of the track, tall and suffocating, branches clawing into the dark overhead until it feels like the world is closing in. No lights. No signs. No indication of where we are or where we're going.
We could be anywhere.
I press my forehead to the glass, the cold of it grounding me.
My reflection stares back—pale, hollow-eyed, hair tangled, face drawn tight with shock and exhaustion, tears still drying on my cheeks, but I don't recognize her.
I need to find her—the version of me that survived Jacob Darnell's house, that learned to read a man's silences, that stayed sane by paying attention when everything else told her to fall apart.
She's still in here.
I just have to be strong enough to find her.
I breathe in slowly.
One.
Two.
Three.
Jackson is different from Jacob. I know that.
Different in a way that Jacob cared for me.
Even when I thought he didn’t, I know deep down—my safety was everything to him.
And even though he had to hurt me to keep me there, had to leave bruises and mess with my head, he cared.
Jackson, on the other hand, doesn't care. I’ve heard stories about what happens to women in his company.
Most of them never return; even when they do, they’re never the same.
I shift my gaze, forcing my attention onto the details around me—the angle of the road.
The sound the tires make when they shift from dirt to asphalt.
Every turn. Every incline. Every second.
I start cataloging methodically. I note which direction we turned leaving the landing site.
I count the seconds between turns. I register the gradient of the road as it begins to climb and the way the engine note changes with it.
I clock the treeline on my left, the absence of any lights beyond the glass, the quality of the dark out here—deep and rural and far from anything.
Far.
That thought lands heavy, but I don't let it stay. Because Jacob found me before when I had nothing to offer him but the fact that I was still breathing. He found me when the whole world was against it. He isn’t a man who was going to sit down and accept that I’m gone.
He's already looking.
I believe that with every part of me that is still intact.
He's already looking, and I'm going to make sure there's something worth finding.
When he finally breaks the silence, his voice is quiet.
"Relax, Summer." The way he says my name makes something knot low in my stomach. Like he's testing it. Like he owns it.
I don't answer. I watch the darkness outside the window and I keep cataloging and I keep breathing and I keep adding to the list of things I know about this road, this car, this man sitting beside me who thinks he has already won.
He hasn't. He just doesn't know that yet.
The car turns, and the darkness begins to shift.
Streetlights appear—distant at first, then more.
Wide roads open out around us. Ranches dotted in the distance, lit up by porchlights.
We pass them without slowing, and the road curves again and begins to climb, the engine straining slightly as we rise.
The trees close in, swallowing the last fragment of light until the world narrows back down to darkness and the faint glow of the dashboard. Then the headlights cut out.
Darkness crashes over us completely and a gasp escapes me before I can stop it.
Jackson moves immediately. His arm slides around my shoulders, pulling me into his side, the movement smooth, practiced—worse than if it had been violent.
Violence I can brace for. This has the texture of something that expects to be accepted.
"I prefer you when you fight," he murmurs near my ear. "It's more interesting."
My body goes rigid against him. I don't answer. I don't move. I turn my face away and breathe through it, slow and deliberate, even as every instinct I have is screaming at me to pull away.
The headlights flick back on, and the world floods into view again.
Ahead of us, something massive rises from the darkness.
My breath catches—it isn't just a house.
It's a statement. Stone. Glass. Hard lines cutting into the night.
Windows reflecting nothing back. No warmth. No movement. Just something waiting.
It doesn't feel like a home. It feels like a place built to hold things.
The car rolls to a stop at the foot of wide stone steps leading to the front door. The engine quiets, and silence settles around us again.
I look at the house and I don't let the fear take over. I look at it the way I learned to look at Jacob's house that first night—like a problem. Like a series of questions that need answering. How many floors. How many visible entry points. Where the light is strongest and where it isn't.
I note the distance from the car to the front door, that the gravel—noisy underfoot, which matters.
Then I see the tree line to the left and try to calculate how far it is from the house.
I note all of it.
Jackson shifts beside me. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he murmurs.
I don't look at him, because he isn't looking at the house. I already know that. And knowing things—small things, quiet things, the things a man like him would never think to hide because he doesn't believe they matter—is how this starts.
It's how it always starts.