Page 65 of The Ashes of Summer

This was never about revenge. Not really. Not entirely. It was never about selling me, or trading me, or even hurting me—because any of those would almost make more sense than the truth.

Jackson doesn't want Summer Miller.

He wants her.

And somewhere along the way, he's decided the two of us can be made into one and the same.

The understanding settles into my chest, cold and heavy and absolute. And beneath the horror of it, so quiet that I'm ashamed of it, something else stirs. Because if Jackson can be this—this soft, this open, this unbearably human over an old bottle of perfume—then there's a crack in him. A way in. A way, maybe, to reach him. To reason with him. To survive him.

If he believes I'm becoming her—if some ruined part of him genuinely thinks he can bring her back through me—then that belief is a thing I can use. I can lean into it. I can pretend.

Even trapped inside a dead man's delusion, I can pretend.

Jackson rises from the chair and crosses to me, slow, his gaze never once leaving my face, the perfume bottle still in his hand like a relic he can't bear to set down. A bridge, I realize. Between the woman he lost and the one sitting in front of him now. He stops beside the bed and studies me for a long moment.

Then he smiles.

Because in his mind, he's already won. He's killed Papa. He has me here, in his house, in his hands. He's taken my body in this room, only hours after making me look at what was left of my father—and maybe, in whatever logic runs beneath all of this, that was how he thought it was supposed to begin. A door he had to walk me through to get to the other side.

The look in his eyes turns my blood to ice.

Because it isn't cruel. It's hopeful.

And hope is so much worse. Hope means he believes there's a chance this works. Hope means he isn't performing any of it. Hope means he's already stepped over the line between memory and fantasy and pulled the fantasy shut behind him.

Then, between one breath and the next, he snaps back. The softness drains out of his face and leaves it sour, and when he speaks again the tenderness is gone as though it were never there.

"You will wear her perfume. You will wear her clothes. You will do everything I ask of you until you no longer remember the name Summer Miller."

My throat closes around a swallow that won't come. Because he means every word. Because he genuinely believes this is a thing he can do to me.

And staring into those hopeful, terrible eyes, I understand the most horrifying thing of all.

If I want to survive this, I have to pretend to be someone else.

Chapter 21

She Deserved Better

Jacob

He's trying to look at me through swollen eyes. ‘Trying’ being the important fucking word.

The left one's sealed almost shut, the skin stretched tight and shining over bruising that's already gone purple. The right isn't much better—blood vessels burst red across the white, weeping at the corner while he fights to hold me in focus.

Good. He deserves worse.

I needed him conscious. Less than an hour ago the fucker was flat in a coma, and dragging him back out of it cost me a favor I'll be a long time repaying. Now he's awake, propped against the pillows, watching me the way prey watches a thing that's already decided to eat it.

He's dragged himself half upright despite what it's costing him—every breath snagging deep in his chest where the ribs give, sweat darkening the collar of the gown hanging open across bruised skin. Tamara hovers by the monitors, her eyes flicking between the numbers and me like she's waiting for me to finish what I started.

She should be. The only reason Kurt Moore is still taking up space in this room is that he's useful to me.

"I said," I repeat, quiet, "start fucking talking."

The room stills around my words. Adelaide stands at the window with her arms wrapped around herself, eyes swollen from crying. Constance leans against the wall beside her, arms folded hard across her chest, her jaw tight enough that I know she's one wrong word from losing it.

Kurt drags a breath in. "She can't..." His throat works. "She can't be there."