Jacob
She said it. She fuckingsaidit.
“I love you.”
Those three words out of her mouth… they could drop me to my knees faster than any blade shoved into my ribs. Hell, she even said she’d marry me.
It keeps replaying in my skull, a broken record that doesn’t grate—it brands. Her voice, wrecked and trembling. That little quiver in her throat like she was scared of saying it. Because she knows my feelings for her go beyond obsession. Fuck, I told her I loved her. She knows how I feel. But she held back. She’s tried to fight it. The same way she tried to fight how badly her body craved me.
I’ve got her. All of her. Body and fucking soul.
Summer Miller told me she loves me, and I believe her. No lies in her eyes. No manipulation. No strings attached. Just the girl I tore out of her own life, who somehow still found a way to look at me like I was the one thing keeping her from drowning.
Christ, if anyone else had told me this morning that this day would end with her lips saying those words to me, I’d have laughed in their face and broken their jaw for mocking me. Men like me don’t get love. We get violence. We get fear. We get power and blood andthe silence of graves. But never love. But now it’s mine. Her love. Her body. Her soul. I’ve been claiming all of it piece by piece, and tonight, she handed me the last fragment willingly.
My chest feels like it’s going to split wide open. I can’t breathe. For the first time in my entire life, I feel like I could break down and cry. Not shed a fragment of a tear, but really, completely break down and sob.
But I don’t. I won’t. Because she doesn’t need a man who weeps. She needs a monster who will stand, teeth bared, between her and the fire.
So, I make the promise. Quietly. Brutally. The kind of vow that isn’t spoken but etched into the marrow of my bones. Every single day from this one until the day I’m put in the ground—she’s it. The axis I spin on. The reason I wake, the reason I fight, the reason I keep breathing.
I won’t turn soft. She doesn’t want that. My girl loves pain, loves my roughness, my obsession. She drinks down every jagged edge I give her.But I’ll still change. Not in who I am—I’ll never stop being the sheriff, the monster, the man who puts bodies in the dirt when they get too close. No, I’ll change in‘why’.
Every bullet I fire will be for her.
Every son of a bitch I take down will be for her.
Every decision I make, every law I bend, every life I end—all of it, hers.
She’s curled against me, her body slack with exhaustion. I can feel the faint tremor of her breaths against my chest, the warmth of her cheek pressed to the hollow of my collarbone. Every once in a while, her lips twitch, like she’s about to speak, but sleep drags her under before the words can escape.
I should close my eyes. I should let my body rest—God knows I need it. My knuckles are torn open, my muscles ache, and my head’s a warzone of voices. But I don’t. Instead, I study her like a starving man memorizing the shape of bread.
I rise from the seat, careful not to wake her, and lift her in one motion. She grunts but doesn’t fully wake. I carry her to my bed. No—our bed. The bed where we will make our babies. Where we will sleep, fuck, and sleep again.
Me and mywife.
Her hair spreads over the pillow, strands curling from where I brushed it out earlier. I smile at the memory. The noise she made as it combed through her softness and released some of the tension she had built up from the worst day of her life.
Part of me feels jealous. I should have just pulled my fingers through her hair, to feel every single molecule of her being and not let anything else ever touch her. I almost laugh at the thought. Jealous of a goddamn hairbrush. What the fuck is wrong with me?
But then she shifts, sighs in her sleep, and the sound strips me raw. I reach out, careful, dragging the back of my knuckles along her jaw. Light enough not to wake her. Gentle—a word I don’t know how to wear, but I force it on anyway.
Her skin is warm, soft, a balm I don’t deserve. My chest tightens so hard I think my ribs might crack.
“Summer,” I murmur, my voice a rasp, just for her ears even if she’s too deep under to hear me. “You have no fucking idea what you’ve done to me.” I shake my head and laugh, but without a trace of humor. “I’ve broken men without blinking. Put bullets between eyes without a flicker of regret. But three words from you—three—I’m on my knees. You think you love me now? You wait and see what I do with it.”
I brush her hair back from her face, fingers sinking into the strands like roots. If another man ever hears her say “I love you,” it’ll be the last sound they ever hear. That, or the gunshot firing through their skull. But then I think, maybe she should say it to another boy, maybe she should say it to our son.
The image of a miniature version of me flashes through my mind, wearing the Sheriffs hat I refuse to don— riding a pretend horse through the yard. I’d give my son the life I should have had, the life I deserved. Not a life of fearing his father—of wondering whether he’d get the belt for not cleaning the porch just right. No—he would be loved, cherished and would grow to be a better man than me.
“One day,” I whisper.
She exhales, soft and shuddering, like her body knows the future I’ve planned for us, even if her mind’s too far gone to process it. I tuck the blanket tighter around her, press my mouth to the top of her head, and let the vow settle deep in my bones.
The vibration rattles against the nightstand, loud enough to slice through the silence. My heart doesn’t just skip—it fucking stops.
I rip the phone up before it can wake her. Carter’s name flashes across the screen, and every instinct in me turns to stone.
