Page 157 of The Ashes of Summer

I laugh, leaning against the rail that overlooks the lower level of the mall. Below me, people move around with shopping bags and coffees, none of them with the faintest idea what the last few months have taken out of the woman standing above them.

A few months ago I thought my world had ended.

Now I've got friends who walked through hell beside me and came out the other side still arguing about milkshakes. I've got my freedom. I've got a future I can actually picture, which is a thing I genuinely thought I'd never have again.

And I've got a man at home who would take the world apart before he let anyone touch me.

"You okay?" Jacob asks, softer this time.

The question settles warm in my chest.

I look back at Adelaide and Constance still bickering outside the boutique. Then out across the busy mall. Then down at the black bag hanging from my wrist.

And I smile. A real one—the kind that goes all the way into my chest now instead of stopping halfway.

"Yeah," I say.

And for the first time in a very long time, I really am.

Epilogue Two - The Ashes

Jacob

Summer's out at the mall with Constance and Adelaide.

Part of me hates not having her here beside me. The rest of me knows she needs it. Needs the laughing. Needs stupid gossip and the overpriced milkshakes she hasn’t stopped talking about. Needs a few hours where she isn't waking up out of a nightmare or going still every time an unknown number lights up her phone.

She's fought too fucking hard to claw those pieces back.

And honestly? Watching her smile again is the only thing that's kept me sane these last few months.

I stand in the middle of my backyard staring at the clusterfuck surrounding me and wonder how a man who dismantled an entire trafficking operation can't organize one surprise party without nearly causing a structural collapse.

The gazebo is finally up. Barely.

One of the support beams came down on Mason's head an hour ago and he damn near launched the whole thing into the sun.

"I swear to Christ," he'd snarled, while Carter folded in half laughing, "if this thing kills me after everything we survived, I'm haunting every one of you bastards."

Now white drapes shift softly around the edges of it in the breeze while Black balances on a ladder stringing lights through the trees.

The yard actually looks good. Really fucking good. Tables dressed in white linen scattered across the grass. Fairy lights wound around the fencing and the trunks. Music drifting from the speakers near the porch.

And for the first time since Rivers Ridge, my soul feels warm again.

Not haunted. Not full of ghosts.

Home.

Carter jumps down off the ladder after hanging the last of the bunting and wipes his hands down his jeans. "So, boss. What's next?"

Honestly? I don't know anymore.

I can run a sheriff's department. Coordinate a raid. Lead men into a building with no numbers and no backup. Sit across a table from a psychopath and take him apart with nothing but patience.

Apparently planning a proposal party is where God decided to humble me.

"Catering should be here in half an hour," I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair.