Page 8 of The Ashes of Summer

Chapter 3

The Things I Couldn’t Save

Jacob

The sound comes first.

It hums beneath everything like static bleeding through a broken signal—voices overlapping, chairs shifting, the quiet scrape of shoes against polished wood. It should feel familiar. Grounding. Instead, it burrows beneath my skin, needling at something instinctive that refuses to settle.

By the time I realize I've stopped moving, I already know—before I even look around⁠—

Something isn't right. The air feels heavy in a way that presses against my lungs when I breathe, like the moment before a storm splits the sky open.

I stand at the end of an aisle beneath a rose-covered arch, my boots planted against polished wood that gleams too clean beneath the low light. The chapel stretches out in front of me in perfect rows—white-painted pews filled with people dressed in muted tones. Pink. Gray. Navy. Soft pastels that blur together beneath the warm glow of hanging lights.

They sit quietly. Hands folded. Faces turned toward me.

Waiting.

For what, I don't know.

I draw in a breath—and then my senses ignite.

Her.

Summer.

It's faint, but it's there, woven into the air like something that shouldn't exist outside of her skin. That soft mix of perfume and something warmer beneath it. Something that always clung to her—her scent—the one that lingers on my bedsheets even after she wakes. The one that I could sniff out in a room full of hundreds of people.

My lungs stutter so fast it almost hurts. She shouldn't be here. But she is. I know she is.

My gaze lifts to the arch above me, draped in layers of white voile that stir in a breeze I can't feel. Fairy lights are threaded through the fabric, casting a soft glow over the roses wrapped around the wood.

Pale pink. White. Clean. Her colors. Not mine.

I've never given a fuck about flowers. Never cared what they meant, what color they were, or how they were arranged. But this—this is beautiful in a way that feels eerie. Like I've stepped into something that was never meant to include me.

Movement shifts at my side.

Haywood.

His hand grips my shoulder, solid and steady—the kind of touch that says you've got this without needing words.

Michael and Elaine sit in the front row. Dressed neatly. Faces calm. Smiling the way parents do when their daughter is about to walk down the aisle. The sight punches straight through my chest, stealing the air from my lungs. No. That's not right. They shouldn't be here. They're dead. I know they're dead. I saw what was left behind. Saw the blood. Saw what Moore did to them. So why the hell are they sitting there smiling like none of it ever happened?

My gaze shifts again, and this time the cold sinks deeper. My parents stand toward the back of the chapel, half-hidden in shadow. My father's posture is rigid, familiar in all the worst ways. My mother's expression is soft—but never kind. It's the same look she used to give me when disappointment outweighed anything close to love.

They shouldn't be here either. They shouldn't be anywhere. The truth settles into place with sickening clarity.

This is a dream.

A nightmare.

The sound shifts. Music rises—soft piano notes drifting through the chapel, slow and hollow in a way that doesn't sit right in my chest.

Adelaide appears first, gliding down the aisle in a pale dress, her smile stretched just a fraction too wide. Constance follows behind her, eyes bright, her expression fixed in something that should look like happiness—but doesn't feel like it when I look at her.

And then⁠—