Page 43 of The Ashes of Summer

I'd yelped.

The horror on his face had been almost comical.

"I'm sorry," he'd blurted immediately, dropping the brush like it'd bitten him. "I didn't realize..."

Softness had never come naturally to him, but he'd tried. God, he'd tried.

A sob breaks free before I can stop it. Jackson's hand stills for the briefest second. Then, just as quietly, he continues. The tears come harder, dragging another memory up with them.

Mama sat on the edge of my bed while sunlight spilled through the curtains, patiently brushing my auburn waves after another awful day at school.

"I hate it," eight-year-old me had whispered, wiping angrily at my eyes. "Everyone keeps calling me carrot top."

She'd smiled at me through the mirror.

"People notice what stands out, sweetheart."

"It's ugly."

"No." She'd leaned forward and kissed the top of my head. "It's fierce. It's rare. One day you'll realize people are just jealous."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

My chest caves in. Because she was right. It was rare. And now...

The dryer falls silent, cutting me out of my thoughts.

The room is swallowed by quiet, and I force my eyes open. Jackson is watching me through the mirror. His expression is unreadable at first, his gaze moving slowly over my face before settling on my hair. His fingers slide once through the dark strands resting against my shoulder, almost reverently.

"There." The word barely rises above a whisper.

His expression flickers, and then he leans in, settling his nose into my scalp to inhale the scent before planting a kiss to my head.

"Just like her."

Chapter 13

What Else Have I Got Wrong?

Jacob

Monitors pulse in slow, measured rhythms, each steady beep marking another heartbeat. Oxygen hisses softly through tubing. Somewhere further down the ward, a nurse murmurs to a patient before the curtains whisper closed again. The whole place runs with an efficiency that's almost unsettling, as though death is simply another item on a checklist waiting to be managed.

The smell hits me before anything else. That stale, recycled air hospitals pump through every corridor, thick enough to coat the back of your throat, reeking of antiseptic.

I fucking hate hospitals.

Too many memories. Too many people waiting for someone else to tell them whether the person they love is going to make it through the night. Too many families clinging to hope while machines do the breathing for them.

Hope's a dangerous thing—I've seen enough of it to know that.

My boots carry me across the polished floor until I stop beside bed three.

The swelling has gone down enough that I can finally see the face beneath it. Not completely—one eye is still swollen, his jaw sits slightly crooked where it healed after I broke it, and bruises stretch across the left side of his face in shades of purple and yellow—but he's recognizable now. The breathing tube's gone, replaced with a nasal cannula resting beneath his nose. His chest rises and falls on its own, slow and steady, the monitor beside him confirming what my eyes already have.

I know exactly where every injury came from because I put them there. The split lip. The fractured jaw. The trauma that forced the doctors to place him into an induced coma before the swelling inside his skull killed him.