35. The Fire in Her Hair
The Fire in Her Hair
Summer
The whole SUV smells like blood.
It's thick in the air, on Jacob's clothes, on my hands, soaking into the seat beneath us. Every few seconds another strained sound comes out of his throat no matter how hard he tries to swallow it, and each one feels like something carving deeper into my chest.
I can't stop shaking. I don't think I'm ever going to stop.
Adelaide drives like an absolute maniac, throwing us round mountain bends while Jacob sags into the seat beside me, gray beneath the blood smeared across his face and throat. My hands stay clamped over Carter's shirt, balled against the hole in his shoulder, pressing down with everything I've got.
Blood still comes through my fingers.
Too much blood.
Somewhere far away my own body is trying to tell me things. My wrists are raw and weeping where the ropes were. My fingers are broken and grinding. There's a deep, spreading ache in me from what they did upstairs, and my throat feels like it's been dragged out of me and put back wrong.
I can't hear any of it. There isn't room. Every scrap of me is in my hands, on his shoulder, holding him in this car.
If I stop pressing, he might go. And if he goes, I don't come back from this—not the way you come back from a bad night. There'd be nothing left to come back to.
So I press.
Jacob notices where I'm staring and slowly reaches for my wrist.
"Hey."
Rough. Weak. I turn my head instantly, and he's already watching me—those eyes reaching straight into my body and tugging on my soul.
"You're spiraling," he says.
A sob catches in my throat. "You got shot, Jacob. Of course I'm—"
His hand tightens around my wrist as we take another corner. "I'm still here."
The words nearly destroy me. Fresh tears spill over while I look at this man sitting beside me covered in blood because he came for me, knowing full well he might not come back down this mountain.
Then his hand slides into my hair.
I freeze.
His fingers move slowly through the dark strands before his fist closes gently around them, like he's grounding himself with the feel of me. His eyes lock onto it.
The brunette hair.
And something cracks across his face so fast I almost miss it. Relief and pain and rage, all tangled into one thing.
His thumb brushes across my temple.
"As soon as we get back to Rosefield," he says quietly, "I'll have my beautiful Summer back. My girl with fire in her hair."
It breaks me open.
Because he still sees me.
After everything—after Jackson spent three days sanding me down into a shape that suited him better, after the hair and the perfume and the clothes and the name he kept not saying—Jacob looks at me covered in another man's blood with another woman's color in my hair and he still sees me.
Not what's left of me. Not what I've been turned into.
Me.
I've been so frightened of what he'd find when he got here. And he's looked right at it, and he hasn't flinched once.
My chest caves in and the tears come harder.
And then I realize Jacob's eyes are wet too.
I think it's the pain—God knows the wound is horrific enough. Then I understand he's looking at me like a dying man seeing heaven. Like he still can't quite believe I'm here.
"You scared the fuck out of me," he says hoarsely.
The rawness in it physically hurts.
I grab his face. "I thought he killed you, Jacob."
"I thought I lost you." His voice cracks straight down the middle. "When I was tied to that chair and the alarm went up that you'd got out—I didn't think about myself once. Not once. I'd have gladly fucking died right there if it meant you were off that mountain."
The confession shatters something in me. Because I saw it in that corridor. That second our eyes met, that wasn't relief on his face.
That was devastation ending.
He swallows hard, looks down, then back at me.
"You know something?" he murmurs.
I shake my head.
"I never actually asked you properly."
My brow furrows through the tears. "What?"
"If you'd marry me."
The world stops. And I hear Adelaide trying to mask her crying in the front seat.
His mouth twitches despite the pain tearing through him. "When this is over—" His thumb catches a tear beneath my eye. "—I'm gonna give you the proposal you deserve."
A broken laugh escapes me. Half sob. Half smile. "Jacob—"
"No." Rougher now. "You deserve the whole fucking world. A life where you're safe and you never have to run again."
I laugh harder through the tears. "But I like it when you chase me."
A weak grin pulls at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah? Well, once we're home and this fucker's healed, I'm gonna chase you into those woods and—"
He breaks off coughing. I move to help him adjust and he hisses, pain twisting across his face—and then he looks at me and smiles anyway.
God. I love him so much it hurts.
And I'm so thankful I'm here. That I got out, with my best friends and the man I love and—
Harris.
Oh God. Harris.
Reality comes crashing back so hard it takes the air out of me. The last time I saw him he was face-down on that gravel with blood in his mouth, and I ran. I left him there.
And everything else comes with it. Papa. The club. The women.
My smile dies.
"Jacob…"
His expression changes instantly.
I swallow. "Papa." Pain twists through my chest. "He went to the club. He—"
"I know."
I freeze.
His eyes stay on mine. "I know, baby."
The grief hits all over again. "He caused all of this."
Jacob's jaw goes tight. I genuinely think he's angrier about that than the hole in his shoulder.
"I'm so fucking sorry," he says quietly.
And the emotion in it wrecks me, because it isn't pity. It isn't obligation. It's real sorrow—he hates that this pain belongs to me now, he'd take it off me and carry it himself if there were any way to do it.
"He destroyed so many lives," I whisper.
His hand tightens around mine. "That blame belongs to him. Not you."
But it doesn't feel that simple. Not with everything I know now. Not with Harris bleeding on that driveway. Not with Jacob dying beside me because my father made a monster and then left me to pay what he owed.
A pained grunt leaves Jacob's throat.
My head snaps round. His pupils have blown wide. His face is paler than it was a minute ago.
"Jacob?"
He exhales sharply through his nose and reaches into his pocket, and the movement clearly costs him.
"What are you doing?"
"Phone," he mutters. He pulls it free with another strained sound. "Call Tamara."
Adelaide glances back. "Who?"
"She's a doctor. She handles—" He grimaces. "—off-duty incidents."
My brow furrows. "What does that even mean?"
And his voice answers in my own head, from a lifetime ago: you really don't wanna know.
He unlocks it and hands it to me. "Call her."
My hands shake as I find the contact.
It barely rings once.
"Sheriff, thank God you're okay."
Something ugly twists low in my stomach. The concern in her voice is immediate. Personal. My grip tightens on the phone.
"Uh—" I clear my throat. "This is Summer Miller."
"Oh my God." Her voice changes completely. "What happened?"
I glance at Jacob. His eyes have closed against the pain. "He got shot."
"What? Where?"
"His shoulder. He's awake, he's—"
"Where are you?" she cuts in, sharp.
Adelaide reels off directions while I lean harder on the wound.
"Okay—closest clinic to you is Brentwood."
"Hold on." Adelaide's already stabbing at her maps with one hand. "Got it. Fifteen minutes out."
Tamara swears quietly. "I told him this would end in bloodshed."
And that lands somewhere it has no right to. Because of the way she says it—like this was always coming, like it was inevitable the second I existed.
And the worst part is she's right.
If he'd never come for me, he wouldn't be bleeding out in the back of this car.
"I'm on my way. Fast as I can." Shuffling in the background. "And Summer?"
I hesitate. "Yes?"
"Keep him awake."
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone slowly, and in the quiet a question I haven't let myself think finally surfaces.
How many men came up that mountain tonight?
All I've had room for is Jacob. Jacob bleeding. Jacob surviving. But there were others. There were always others.
I run my fingers through his hair and brace myself to ask the question. "How many men came to Rivers Ridge?"
His expression hardens. "It doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does."
"Summer—"
"I want the truth."
The words crack apart halfway through. Silence fills the SUV. Then, finally: "Groves."
Pain slices through me.
No.
"Hayes."
Another crack.
"Vance."
The tears come instantly. "Oh my God—"
I press my hand over my mouth while it crashes through me. Dead. All of them. Because of this. Because of Jackson. Because of my Papa.
Jacob reaches for me despite what it costs him. "Hey."
I can barely breathe around the guilt. "They came for me," I sob.
"And they'd do it again."
I shake my head hard. "They didn't have to—"
"They chose to. They wanted to." The sharpness silences me. His eyes lock onto mine. "Every one of them knew exactly what they were walking into tonight."
"And now they're dead."
His expression darkens. "They died doing the right thing." He reaches up slowly, brushing bloodstained fingers against my cheek. "And you made him pay for it."
I freeze.
"When you pulled that trigger—" His voice roughens. "—you did that for them."
The memory flashes violently through my head. Jackson jerking sideways. The gun leaving his hand. My stomach turns over.
"I was scared."
"I know."
"I couldn't let him take you from me."
"That's why I'm proud of you."
The words hit like a physical blow.
Because Jacob isn't looking at me like I'm fragile. He isn't looking at me like something that's been broken and needs handling.
He's looking at me like I survived.