Page 109 of The Ashes of Summer

Constance hasn't moved. Adelaide's white as death.

Summer drops the gun like it burned her.

"Oh my God." Then her face crumples. "Oh my God⁠—"

She's down beside me, hands on my face, shaking.

"You're bleeding—Jacob, oh my God⁠—"

"It's okay," I grind out.

It is absolutely not okay.

Chapter 35

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.