Page 146 of The Ashes of Summer

I close my eyes for a beat, because after tonight I need this. Need her.

"You really mean it?" she asks quietly.

"What?"

"The women." She searches my face. "You're really going to let them decide?"

I look back toward the trucks, where they're already gathering. "I think they deserve the choice. Deserve the closure."

Something works across her face. Not approval, exactly. Understanding—the kind that only comes from somebody who lived through the same thing and knows what it would mean to stand in that room.

Then she reaches up and kisses my jaw. "I love you."

It hits harder than the bullet did.

My hand slides into her hair. "I love you too. So fucking much."

The rest of it disappears. The blood. The bodies. All of it.

Until Black clears his throat. "Get a room."

I flip him off. He grins.

By the time we've finished counting, thirteen of them choose to come. Five stay behind—too exhausted, too frightened, too broken to stand in a room with him and not come apart. The rest went out in the first vans an hour ago, before I ever opened my mouth.

Constance volunteers to stay with the five, alongside one of Black's men, until the transport's arranged.

Nobody argues. She's probably the safest thing any of them could have standing between them and the world right now.

The trucks load quietly. Nobody talks much. The women sit wrapped in blankets, watching the windows or holding onto each other's hands.

And then we start the drive back toward Rivers Ridge.

The roads wind up through the mountains under a sky that's finally starting to go gray at the edge. My shoulder throbs with every mile of it. I can feel my pulse inside the wound now and I know that sooner or later somebody's going to put me in a hospital bed whether I agree to it or not.

Summer drives.

Neither of us says anything for a long while.

Then she reaches over and turns on the radio. Static crackles before the music finds its way through.

Three Little Birds.

A rough laugh gets out of me before I can stop it. Because after the blood and the bullets and everything this night has been, having Bob Marley gently insist that it's all going to work out feels absurd.

It also feels like the only thing anybody could possibly play right now.

Summer glances across at me. Then reaches over and squeezes my hand.

No words. Just warmth. Just proof she's still here.

And for tonight, that's enough.

Chapter 44

It Belongs To Them

Summer