Page 20 of The Ashes of Summer

No.

My eyes lock onto it. That tiny pulse of red, steady and indifferent, and suddenly the whole room feels different. Smaller. Closer. Like the walls have crept inward without me noticing.

Jackson lifts the phone slightly, gesturing upward.

"I can see everything that happens in this room."

My stomach drops. My gaze snaps to the ceiling, the corners, the walls. Then he gestures toward the open door across the room.

"I can see everything in there too."

I follow the direction of his nod.

The bathroom.

The full weight of it lands. Every intimate, unavoidable moment. Every second of privacy I assumed I could be granted. Gone. All of it. The tears come before I can stop them.

"You belong to me now, Summer."

Something in me cracks.

I shake my head, weak and useless. My lips part, but no sound comes out. I want to scream. I want to sink into something so deep that none of this can reach me. I want to say he can't do this—but my voice won't come.

It's gone.

All I can do is sit there shaking while every instinct I have screams at me to run, move, do something. There is nowhere to go. Nowhere that isn't him.

"Oh…" The sound drags my attention back to him whether I want it or not. "And do you want to know the best part?"

My stomach twists.

No.

I don't. I don't want another word from him. But he moves closer anyway. The mattress dips beside me as he sits, and the nearness of him sends panic shooting through me all over again. I lean away without meaning to, my body reacting before thought, but there's nowhere to go.

"It's attached to a livestream." He runs a hand through my hair, his knuckles skimming my jaw. The words hang there, suspended. “And every client will get to watch as I tear you apart piece by piece.”

“You won’t lay a fucking finger on me!” I scream. Pulling my head away fast, but he catches my hand. Pulls me closer. Looks at my broken fingers and kisses them. The corner of his mouth turning up to a smile.

"And my bet is, the sheriff is going to be the first one watching." He runs his tongue over his bottom lip, then scrapes his teeth across it. “With a click of a button, he sees you. He sees you breaking. He sees the moment you admit that you’re mine.”

Jacob.

The thought of him seeing this—seeing me like this, helpless and breaking in front of a man I can't fight my way out of—hits somewhere so deep it steals the breath from me completely. Not just fear. Something worse. Something made entirely of him—of his face at that window, the way he ran like nothing else existed. Seeing me like this would destroy him, and Jackson knows it—that's exactly why he's doing it.

A sob tears free, broken and helpless. My hands clench into fists as I shake my head, as if refusing it can make it less real.

"And baby…" His voice softens.

That makes it so much worse.

"…we're going to give him one hell of a show."

He just watches, with calmness radiating his features. Like this is exactly what he wanted from the moment he took me.

Chapter 6

Three Ways This Goes