Page 26 of The Ashes of Summer

One second I'm staring at the ceiling, the next my mind has slipped somewhere else entirely. His kitchen just before six in the morning. The coffee pot hissing quietly in the background. The smell of fresh grounds drifting through the house, mixing with cedar and whatever laundry detergent he always used, somehow managed to cling to him no matter where he'd been the day before. Pale morning light spilling through the windows over the sink, soft enough to blur the corners of everything it touched.

I can see him standing there with a mug in his hand.

The ceramic disappears beneath his fingers, steam curling lazily past his knuckles while he drinks without waiting for it to cool. I remember reaching for the same mug once and jerking my hand back almost immediately, laughing because it was too hot to hold. He'd looked at me like he didn't understand my problem before taking it from me as though the heat simply didn't exist.

I don't think I ever saw him hesitate. Not over pain. Not over fear. Once he'd decided something, it became the only direction the world was allowed to move in, and everything else seemed to fall into place around him. Even when it didn't. Even when the odds were impossible. He carried himself like certainty had been stitched into his bones long before I'd ever met him.

I used to hate that about him.

I'd lie awake in my room after he’d scared me, another moment where he'd crossed a line I'd been certain he wouldn't cross, replaying every conversation until I could barely remember how they'd started. I'd pick apart every word he'd said, every look he'd given me, every time he'd stepped close enough that I forgot how to breathe, convinced that if I examined it from enough angles I'd finally find the point where it stopped feeling so complicated. I'd list every boundary he'd ignored. Every decision he'd made for me. Every reminder that my choices weren't really mine anymore.

Eventually, I’d found myself listening for the sound of his truck pulling into the driveway. Learning the rhythm of his footsteps before they reached the hallway. Sleeping more deeply on the nights I heard the deadbolt lock because it meant he was home.

I don't know when that happened.

I don't know when the man I spent so long trying to escape became the first person I looked for every time I walked into a room.

Maybe there wasn't a moment.

Maybe it happened so slowly that by the time I noticed, it had already settled somewhere too deep to pull back out.

God, I miss him.

The thought steals the air from my lungs before I can stop it.

I miss the warmth of his hand finding me beneath the covers before either of us was fully awake. The rough scrape of his jaw against my forehead when he'd kiss me without thinking. The sound of him moving through the house before sunrise while I stayed curled up in bed pretending to be asleep just so he'd come back and check on me one more time before he left.

I miss the certainty that if I woke up frightened, all I had to do was reach across the mattress and he'd be there.

My eyes burn. I press the heels of my hands against them until stars bloom behind my eyelids.

Don't.

Don't do this.

Not here.

Not where that red light is still watching.

But when I try to force Jacob out of my head, my parents come flooding back instead.

Mama, standing in the kitchen the night Jacob came for me, folding clothes that neither of us wanted packed. Her hands never stopped moving.

Lift. Fold. Smooth. Stack. Lift. Fold. Smooth. Stack.

She treated every dress, every sweater, every pair of jeans with the same careful attention she'd always given them, as though neat corners and straight seams could hold together a future that had already split wide open. She never looked at me while she did it. I didn't understand why then. I do now. If she'd looked at me, she wouldn't have been able to keep going.

I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs listening to her and Papa.

I heard her heart fracturing in every shaky breath she tried to swallow before it reached me. In the way her shoulders lifted just a little too high each time she inhaled.

A sob tears its way out of me before I can stop it. It catches somewhere behind my ribs, painful enough that I have to brace one hand against the mattress just to stay upright.

The camera can have it.

Let Jackson watch.

Let him sit behind that lens and mistake this for surrender if it helps him sleep at night. Because this has nothing to do with him.