Page 110 of The Ashes of Summer

The brunette hair.

And something cracks across his face so fast I almost miss it. Relief and pain and rage, all tangled into one thing.

His thumb brushes across my temple.

"As soon as we get back to Rosefield," he says quietly, "I'll have my beautiful Summer back. My girl with fire in her hair."

It breaks me open.

Because he still sees me.

After everything—after Jackson spent three days sanding me down into a shape that suited him better, after the hair and the perfume and the clothes and the name he kept not saying—Jacob looks at me covered in another man's blood with another woman's color in my hair and he still sees me. Not what's left of me. Not what I've been turned into.

Me.

I've been so frightened of what he'd find when he got here. And he's looked right at it, and he hasn't flinched once.

My chest caves in and the tears come harder.

And then I realize Jacob's eyes are wet too.

I think it's the pain—God knows the wound is horrific enough. Then I understand he's looking at me like a dying man seeing heaven. Like he still can't quite believe I'm here.

"You scared the fuck out of me," he says hoarsely.

The rawness in it physically hurts.

I grab his face. "I thought he killed you, Jacob."

"I thought I lost you." His voice cracks straight down the middle. "When I was tied to that chair and the alarm went up that you'd got out—I didn't think about myself once. Not once. I'd have gladly fucking died right there if it meant you were off that mountain."

The confession shatters something in me. Because I saw it in that corridor. That second our eyes met, that wasn't relief on his face.

That was devastation ending.

He swallows hard, looks down, then back at me.

"You know something?" he murmurs.

I shake my head.

"I never actually asked you properly."

My brow furrows through the tears. "What?"

"If you'd marry me."

The world stops. And I hear Adelaide trying to mask her crying in the front seat.

His mouth twitches despite the pain tearing through him. "When this is over—" His thumb catches a tear beneath my eye. "—I'm gonna give you the proposal you deserve."

A broken laugh escapes me. Half sob. Half smile. "Jacob⁠—"

"No." Rougher now. "You deserve the whole fucking world. A life where you're safe and you never have to run again."

I laugh harder through the tears. "But I like it when you chase me."

A weak grin pulls at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah? Well, once we're home and this fucker's healed, I'm gonna chase you into those woods and⁠—"