Chapter 25
Only Ever Yours
Summer
The car ride home is silent except for the low hum of the engine and the occasional hiss of the tires slicing through wet asphalt.
My teeth chattering. I’ve been trembling since the hospital, since the detectives looked at me with those eyes that already decided Benny was tied to the kind of monsters who murdered my parents.
Constance and Adelaide had waited for us in the reception area. Their faces had broken into dismay when Jacob told them that Moore was out.
Now, they sit pressed close to each other in the back seat, their heads bent together, whispering things I can’t make out. Maybe comfort. Maybe fear. Maybe both. When we turn down their street, Constance squeezes my shoulder.
“You should stay with us tonight,” I whisper, like an offering I know she won’t accept.
“No, Summer. We all need to process this. We all need our own beds for the night.” She shakes her head. “And as much as it pains me to say—you’re in good hands.”
I nod my head, acknowledging that she’s right. With Jacob is the safest I will ever be—I realize that now. When we pull up outside Constance’s house, Adelaide opens the door, but before she steps out, she turns to me.
“We love you and we’re always here… no matter what.” Adelaide croaks, glancing back at me, eyes red, before she hooks her arm through Constance’s.
I watch them walk to the porch, their shadows stretched long and thin under the yellow streetlamp. I don’t breathe until they’re both inside, the door shutting quietly behind them.
When we pull into the drive, the house—our house—looms ahead. Silent, familiar, yet somehow foreign now. Jacob cuts the engine, the sudden quiet ringing in my ears. He turns to me, his expression unreadable.
“Stay here,” he says.
I part my lips to argue, to tell him I don’t care if the house is safe or not, that I can’t sit here doing nothing—but the look in his eyes stops me cold. It’s harsh, commanding, edged with something close to fear. I just nod, wrapping my arms around myself as he opens the door and steps out.
The car locks with a double click—then another, his thumb pressing the fob again and again, as if repetition could make it safer.
Through the windshield, I watch him cross the yard, a dark silhouette against the weak glow of the porch light. His shadow stretches long across the gravel before he disappears inside, leaving me alone with the steady thud of my heart and the whisper of wind against the glass.
Time blurs. Seconds, minutes—I can’t tell which. Then the door creaks open again.
He emerges from the house, striding across the yard with purpose. The porch light catches his face for a split second—hard, set, unreadable—before he reaches the car.
“Come here,” he mutters, and before I can even move, he’s lifting me into his arms.
The world tilts around me. My cheek presses to his chest, where his heart beats steady, brutal, certain. The tears return, hot against my skin.
He carries me inside like I’m weightless. Like the weight of grief and rage and ruin I feel is easy for him to carry.
He places me gently on the sofa, then moves away. I hear the shuffle of a blanket being pulled from the back of a chair. A moment later, it’s wrapped around me, his hands tucking it in with a care that makes my chest ache harder.
“Stay put,” he orders softly. Then his footsteps retreat upstairs.
I curl into the blanket, my knees to my chest, the scent of him clinging to the fabric. Cedarwood and smoke.
When he returns, he’s carrying a folded set of pajamas. He kneels in front of me, places them in my lap.
“Change,” he says. Not harsh, not demanding—like he can’t stand the sight of me sitting here in uncomfortable clothes.
My fingers tremble as I reach for them, they’re so numb I can barely work the buttons on the pajama top. Jacob watches, crouched low, his arms resting on his knees, but he doesn’t move to help. He’s giving me space. He’s letting me ask for help before he intervenes.
When I finally fumble the last button, he stands and leaves the room.
It’s the kind of courtesy I wouldn’t expect from him, the kind that makes my throat close.
I slip out of my old clothes, the fabric heavy with the smell of hospital antiseptic, and slide into the soft cotton of the pajamas.
They’re much too big for me, hanging loose at the wrists and ankles, and that’s how I know they’re his.
When I whisper, “I’m done,” he re-enters the room.
Without a word, he gathers the discarded clothes into his fist and sets them aside, like he can erase the night with the sweep of his hand.
“Relax,” he murmurs.
I want to laugh at the word. Relax. When my parents are dead.
When the boy I thought might save me turned out to be nothing but another lie.
When Jacob himself—this towering, merciless man that I spent years running from— is my safety, and the man I’m falling so hopelessly and desperately in love with after all.
But I don’t laugh—I just let out a shaking breath as stands.
He heads toward the door and disappears into the kitchen. I hear him rummaging through drawers, opening and closing one at a time.
“Where the fuck is it?” he mutters under his breath, voice low but edged with frustration.
Despite everything—despite the tension coiling through my chest—I almost laugh. For all his control, all his darkness, he’s still a man. A stubborn, impossible man who can stare down killers without flinching but can’t find whatever it is he’s looking for without tearing the house apart.
He returns with my pink hairbrush clutched in his hand. It looks absurd in his scarred grip. He climbs over me and sits behind me on the sofa, shifting me between his knees.
“Head forward,” he orders.
My muscles resist, but I obey, letting my head bow. The first drag of bristles through my hair makes me gasp. It hurts. He’s not careful enough, not practiced. But every time the brush catches a knot, he slows. He tries.
It’s a strange kind of tenderness—this brutal man, this sheriff who bleeds violence, sitting here with a hairbrush and untangling me piece by piece.
I close my eyes. The brush pulls, then eases, then pulls again. The rhythm is hypnotic. And slowly, the trembling in my hands begins to fade. When he’s finished, he sets the brush down, his fingers brushing the back of my neck. My skin erupts in goosebumps.
I lean my head back without thinking, resting it against his chest. He exhales, rough, like the air is burning on its way out. His lips press to the crown of my head—just a graze—and then lower to my temple, then my cheek.
I turn my body to face him and climb to straddle him on the sofa. I press my lips to his and kiss him. I expect his return to be fierce and claiming, but he’s softer than I expect. Like he’s fighting his own nature to give me something he doesn’t even know he has inside him.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “I know you hate me,” he whispers. “Because I left you. Because I wasn’t here when—”
“Stop.” My voice is ragged. I bury my face against his neck, inhaling smoke and pine and him. “I don’t hate you,” I whisper into his skin. “I just never understood why you left without telling me.”
His arms tighten around me, crushing, like he’s trying to fuse me into him.
“But I know now, you didn’t know they were gone.
You rushed off to save them. Because that’s who you are.
You’re the savior, the protector. You look after this town and care for everyone—well, most—people in it,” I say, tears soaking into his shirt.
“And you’ve always been my safety. I just didn’t see it before. ”
He doesn’t speak, but the tremor in his chest tells me he heard.
I press my lips against his throat, a desperate kiss, a vow. “And you never gave up on me. Not for a single second.” I swallow hard. “Jacob—I love you.”
His lack of response is deafening. But I can feel it in the way his grip tightens around me, in the way his chest rises rough and heavy beneath my cheek. He heard me. He just doesn’t know what to do with it.
I lift my head, force him to look at me. His eyes are fire and ruin, storms bottled in ice. He looks like a man about to come apart at the seams.
“I mean it,” I whisper. “I’m so deeply in love with you it burns my fucking soul.”
The muscles in his jaw flex. His lips part, close, part again.
His hand slides up my spine, slow and possessive, curling around the back of my neck.
He pulls me forward, crashing his mouth to mine.
It’s not gentle this time. It’s punishing.
Consuming. Like he’s trying to drown himself in me before the world takes me away.
I gasp against him, my nails digging into his shoulders, but he doesn’t stop. His tongue claims, his teeth graze, his growl vibrates through my chest. I feel myself unravelling, piece by piece, giving myself to him, wholly, completely. Mind, body and fucking soul.
When he finally breaks, his forehead presses to mine, breath ragged.
“Don’t you ever say that to me unless you’re ready to live with it,” he snarls, voice raw. “Because I’ll never let you take it back.”
I choke out a sob, half fear, half relief. “I don’t want to take it back.”
His eyes close, like the words are too much, too dangerous. When they open again, they’re darker. Hungrier.
“Christ, Summer….” His voice cracks around my name. “You have no fucking idea what you’ve just done.”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. His hands seize my hips, dragging me tighter against him. Heat floods through me at the hard press of him beneath the thin cotton barrier.
My breath stutters, body arching instinctively.
“Jacob—”
He cuts me off with another kiss, this one deeper, slower, but no less brutal.
His hands roam, sliding under the hem of the pajama top, palms rough against my skin.
Every touch is a contradiction—too harsh, too desperate, yet trembling with restraint, like he’s terrified he’ll break me if he doesn’t hold back.
I clutch his face, forcing his gaze to stay on mine. “You’re not going to break me,” I whisper against his lips. “You’ll never break me.”
Tears stream down my face, but I don’t care.
I drag his mouth back to mine, kissing him deeper through the sobs, desperate and messy.
He groans into me, the sound torn from somewhere deep and dangerous.
When he finally pulls back, his breath scorches my lips.
His eyes burn into mine—furious, starving, shattered.
“I need you,” I whisper, trembling. “And if you meant what you said earlier—if you want me to be your fiancée, then my answer is yes.”
His hand fists in my hair, dragging my head back so I have no choice but to meet his gaze. His mouth hovers over mine, dangerous and reverent all at once.
“You have no idea how many times I’ve dreamed you’d say those words.”
“I’m yours,” I breathe. “Only ever yours.”
His earlier restraint disappears, and he kisses like a man who refuses to let me piece myself back together without him. He releases me and drags his teeth over my throat like he’s branding me.
I moan, my body arching helplessly against his. My fingers clutch at his shoulders needing him closer even as he tears me apart.
“You own me, Jacob.”
His growl is from the depths of hell, like my confession is gasoline thrown on open flame. He shoves me deeper into the cushions, his weight crushing, his heat surrounding me until there’s nothing left but him.
“Say it again,” his words are guttural, straight from his heart.
“I’m yours,” I choke out, tears burning hot down my face. “I’ve always been yours. Deep down. I’ve denied it. I’ve hated you. But… I’m yours, Jacob. And I love you.”