"I will."
Bree gave Colby a look that said more than words—gratitude and warning and something like hope all tangled together.He nodded once in return, a silent promise passing between them.Then he walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for Sabrina.
She hesitated only a second before climbing in.
Colby's cottage sat back from the road, tucked behind a line of old oaks that turned the headlights into shifting shadows as they pulled up the gravel drive.Sabrina glimpsed a small porch with a single step, the outline of a modest one-story structure with a metal roof, and what looked like a vegetable garden gone wild along one side.No grand entry.No sweeping staircase.No polished wood floors buffed for guests who paid two hundred a night to feel pampered.
Just a house.Lived in.Real.
He killed the engine.The sudden quiet rang in her ears, broken only by the distant call of a whippoorwill and the tick of the cooling motor.
"You ready?"he asked.
"I don't know what that means anymore," she said.
"We're redefining it as 'capable of walking to the door without assistance.'"
She snorted softly, surprising herself."In that case, maybe."
He rounded the truck and opened her door.She slid down, her feet grateful for the borrowed sneakers someone at the hospital had scrounged from a lost-and-found box.The gravel here was different from the inn's—smaller, more worn, the kind that had been driven over a thousand times.The air felt cooler this far from town, cleaner.Only the faintest hint of smoke clung to her hair and the thin fabric of her hand-me-down clothes, a stubborn reminder of where she'd been.
Colby unlocked the front door—solid wood, painted dark green—and pushed it open."Lights are to the left."
She stepped past him, close enough to catch the scent of sweat and ash and something underneath that was just him, and reached for the switch.
Warm lamplight filled a small living room.A worn but clean couch in faded brown leather faced a fireplace with a simple wooden mantel.A coffee table held a few rings from old mugs and a stack of paperbacks with cracked spines.A bookcase against the far wall was stuffed with actual books—leather spines and dog-eared paperbacks mixed together without any apparent system.A pair of work boots sat neatly by the door, laces tucked inside.The walls held a few framed photographs she couldn't make out from here, and nothing else.
The scent in here was subtle, layered.Coffee grounds.Laundry soap.A trace of wood smoke from the fireplace.And underneath it all, that particular freshness that seeped into everything this close to the water.
It was simple.It was quiet.It was everything the Norman House Inn had not been—no history pressing down from every corner, no guests to tend, no legacy to carry.
It felt safe.
Her shoulders dropped an inch without her permission.
"This is..."The word lodged in her throat.
"Under-decorated?"he offered, setting his helmet down on a small table by the door."Sparse?Bachelor-pad tragic?"
"Real," she said.
He paused in the act of shrugging off his coat, something flickering across his face too fast to read.Then he hung the coat on a hook by the door and turned back to her.Without the bulky turnout gear, he looked less like a firefighter and more like a man who had just finished the longest shift of his life and had come home to find a stranger standing in his living room.
"There's a bedroom down the hall you can use," he said, gesturing toward a short hallway."Second door on the right.Extra sheets are already on the bed—I changed them this morning, so they're clean.Bathroom's next to it.Towels are in the cabinet under the sink."He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in dark spikes."I don't have anything fancy, but?—"
He broke off.
She hadn't moved farther into the room.She stood just inside the doorway, her eyes sweeping over the space again and again.The couch.The table.The lamp.The boots.Every ordinary object felt like proof that there was still a world that hadn't burned.That somewhere, people went about their lives without smoke in their lungs and ash in their hair.That things could be solid and steady and exactly where you left them.
Her lungs pulled in air that didn't taste like destruction.
Her chest clenched.Hard.
"Sabrina?"Colby's voice came from somewhere close, low and careful, like he was approaching a wounded animal."You okay?"
She tried to answer.The word stuck.The pressure in her chest pushed higher, right up into her throat and behind her eyes.Her vision blurred.She blinked fast, but that just made the room waver, the lamplight smearing into gold.
No.Not here.Not now.
