Chapter 13
Reservation For Ruin
Summer
We pull up outside a place I’ve only ever seen from a distance.
Not the neon buzz of the diner down Main, not the peeling sign of The Dogwood.
This is different—plate-glass windows catching the amber glow of gas lamps, mahogany siding polished so the porch lights gleam like jewels.
Brass letters crown the door, gleaming and golden, promising silk and suits, not work pants and flannel. It doesn’t feel like Rosefield.
Jacob kills the engine without a word. I watch his heavy-stitched boot hit the pavement before he circles the truck, opening my door like a gentleman. He extends his hand. The leather of his palm is rough, but I wrap my fingers around it anyway.
Inside, the air is thick with warm bread and oiled leather.
Burgundy booths nestle under golden sconces glowing.
White linen napkins rest in precise triangles beside polished silverware that catches every ripple of light.
Around us, voices murmur and ebb. Beyond a low partition, a piano spills velvet chords into the hush.
It looks safe. Luxurious.
The host—a bald man in a charcoal vest—glances at Jacob and stiffens. His nod is reverent, words clipped: “Sheriff. This way.” The tone says he’s already decided we don’t belong.
We’re led to a booth tucked behind a curtain of fern, the table secluded, cut off from the center of the room. The leather seat presses into my shoulders, closing me in. A candle quivers between us, shadows bending and twisting across his jawline.
Jacob slides into the booth across from me, jacket still on, collar up. He doesn’t touch the menu. Just watches as my fingers trace the edge of the embossed cover.
“You’re quiet,” he says, voice low enough to scare the hush right out of the space.
I inhale, lungs filling with the scent of polished wood and warmth. “I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
I study his reflection in the wine glasses lined along the table, ghostlike and fractured.
“How strange it feels to be here.”
His mouth curves, a half-smile trembling in the candlelight. “Strange how?”
I push the menu away gently after a glance, leave a faint smudge on the white page. “Like it isn’t real. Like it’s staged.”
His brow ticks upward. The corner of his mouth crooks, but it isn’t a real smile.
“I was hoping,” he says, voice dropping into a low hum that almost sounds like a growl, “this could be our first time out where you don’t look at me like I’m the devil.” He chuckles under his breath—dark, a vibration more than a sound. “Guess I was wrong.”
The depth of his voice snakes through me, making my thighs press together beneath the table. Heat coils there—unwanted, treacherous—whirring to life like a machine I can’t shut off. Maybe it’s because he is the devil, and because I’m starting to crave the hell he unleashes on me.
Heat floods my cheeks, betraying me before I can school my face. His expression shifts—subtle, satisfied—as if he’s catalogued the exact effect his voice has on me, filing it away like ammunition he’ll use again later.
The waitress approaches—her braid neat, cheeks touched pink, her smile trained into perfection. She offers it to both of us, but Jacob doesn’t look at her. His eyes stay fixed, pinning me to my seat.
“What can I get you tonight?” she asks, sweet and practiced.
I lift my chin, letting my fingertip trail across the wine list. “Short rib with truffle mash, glazed carrots, and a glass of the Californian Cabernet Sauvignon.”
Jacob exhales through his nose, rattling the saltshaker between us. “Jesus. You always eat like that when someone else’s paying?”
My lips twitch into a grin. “You said I could have anything.”
He finally turns his gaze toward the waitress, dismissive and brief. “Same for me. And leave the bottle.”
When she drifts away, the silence folds back around us, heavier now.
The candle leans toward me, its flame quivering like it’s straining to overhear.
Jacob settles back, one arm stretched along the booth’s top.
His eyes—dark, unyielding—fix on me, burning hotter than the gold light could ever soften.
“I haven’t done this in years,” he says.
“Dinner?”
“Dates.”
My pulse kicks hard against my ribs. “So why now?”
The waitress approaches with a bottle of wine. She uncorks it in front of us, then slips one hand neatly behind her back while tilting the bottle, pouring a modest splash into Jacob’s glass.
“Would you like to try first, Sheriff?” she asks, her voice soft, cheeks flushed pink.
She’s got the hots for him—it’s obvious in the way her eyes linger on his face, and she flutters her lashes.
Heat prickles under my skin, an unfamiliar streak of jealousy coiling tight inside me before I can shove it down.
“No. It’s fine.” He cuts her off with a huff, snatching the bottle out of her hand without sparing her more than a glance. His gaze stays locked on me, deep and unrelenting, as if daring me to look away.
The poor girl’s smile falters. She knows she’s intruding, her expression faltering with the awkward weight of stepping into a conversation she was never meant to touch.
His thumb traces lazy circles against the curve of his glass, the red wine burning a deep shade of red.
“Why? Because last night you gave part of yourself to me that I never thought I’d get,” he says at last. His gaze pins me harder. “And because… you’d have let me take more.”
My stomach clenches so tight I taste metal.
“And I almost took it,” he adds, rough as gravel, “because for the first time, I believed you weren’t pretending.”
He leans forward, breath warm with earth and smoke. Candlelight flickers across his stubbled cheek, sharpening him into something carved out of shadow and flame.
“I want you, Summer. Not as some conquest,” he snarls, teeth bared in restraint, “not as a prize I pat myself on the back for earning.”
The room stills, the air itself tightening, as if even the walls know better than to interrupt him.
“I want you wrecked for anyone else.” He leans in, eyes burning through me, voice dropping to a rasp meant for me alone. “I want you to choose that ruin. To walk into it with your eyes open. To give me everything and know you’ll never get it back.”
For a heartbeat, I forget how to breathe. Not because of his words, but because of what they ignite in me—an ache so fierce it makes the thought of anyone else feel impossible. I want to scoff, to roll my eyes, but the truth is already branded across my skin.
I’m his.
I lift my glass, sipping slow, letting the burn steady the tremor in my fingers.
“So,” I whisper, “you want to pretend this is real? Like we’re… normal?”
His mouth quirks. “We were never normal.”
“No,” I admit softly. “We weren’t.”
He leans forward, elbows braced on the table, the flame catching on the faint scar beneath his cheek. A reminder in living flesh.
“Do you remember the first time we saw each other?” His voice drops, almost intimate. “Not when we were introduced. The very first time I laid eyes on you.”
I swallow, throat tight. “Yes. I remember.”
His smile is small, dangerous, indulgent. “You were in the garden. With those two girls—”
“Constance and Adelaide.”
He nods. “Right. You three were sprawled in the grass, giggling like you’d stolen the world.”
A reluctant smile touches my lips. “We were looking at boys on our phones. Rating them.”
His chuckle is deep, chest heavy. “Oh? And what did you rate them?”
“Constance gave some guy with marble abs a twelve.”
“And you?” He tilts closer, eyes darkening.
“A six,” I confess. “He was too full of himself.”
Jacob hums. “And me?”
“You didn’t make the cut.”
His jaw tics, but not with anger—with amusement. “Different league, then?”
“You stood by the fence, talking to Papa—but watching me.”
His tongue drags along his cheek, slow. “You noticed?”
“Too easy,” I reply.
He leans back but doesn’t break my gaze. “You wore that white sundress with yellow flowers.”
I blink. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything,” he says. “The way your hair caught the sun. The tilt of your chin when you laughed, like you had no idea how much someone could want you.”
Silence tightens between us.
“Why didn’t you approach me? Before things got…weird?” I murmur.
He doesn’t flinch. “I told myself I’d wait for you to move out of your parents.
Told myself I wouldn’t overstep.” His hand drags through his hair, a rough, restless motion, like even speaking it out loud makes him sound worse than he already feels.
“But Summer….” His voice drops, softer, darker.
“The second I saw you, I knew you’d be mine. ”
A hot ache claws through me—shame, desire, curiosity tangled too tight to separate.
“So, you just… held onto hope?” My voice wavers. “Didn’t you ever think I wouldn’t feel the same?”
His eyes taper. “Every goddamn day. I worried someone else might touch you. Might get there first.” His fingers close around mine, grip firm, tethering.
“But it didn’t stop me,” he says. “Never has. Never will. Hope wasn’t what I needed.
I made sure no one else got close enough.
I didn’t need you to want me, Summer. I needed you to see me.
To feel in your bones what I feel when I look at you.
And once you did… I knew you’d never forget. ”
My thumb traces the rim of my glass before I look up, meeting the dark weight of his stare.
I’m hoping he doesn’t see the guilt behind my eyes, because Tyler did get there first. But he was just a boy compared to Jacob.
He was nineteen, inexperienced and—from what I experienced—had no clue what a clitoris was.
I shake myself back into the conversation.
“Why did you come see Papa that day?” I ask.
He shifts in the booth, not restless—reflective. A man replaying a memory etched too deep to fade.
“Your father was working a case,” he says after a pause. “I’d arrested the man he was prosecuting. I came to talk.”
My stomach tightens. “To help him?”