"No," he said."That feels pretty understandable."
"Even with sticky faucets," she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her face.
"Especially with sticky faucets," he said."Builds character."
Her lips quirked.She leaned back a little, just enough that her shoulder brushed his arm.The contact was light.Intentional.Testing.
He could have moved.He didn't.
A few minutes later, her head tipped sideways until it rested against his upper arm.He felt the weight of it through his shirt, the slight pull on the fabric.Her hair tickled the skin of his arm.
He slowed his breathing, made himself still, so he wouldn't spook her.
Every instinct he had wanted to slide his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer.To feel her tucked against his chest instead of just leaning on his arm.To wrap himself around her and keep her safe from everything that had been chasing her for longer than the fire.
But she'd been through enough in the last forty-eight hours.The last year.The last, however long she'd spent with a man who counted her glasses and called her stupid.She needed steadiness, not someone else making claims on her.
He wasn't going to cross that line.Not tonight.Maybe not ever, unless she crossed it first.
He kept his arm where it was, braced along the back of the couch.Available.Solid.Nothing more than she asked for.
Under the blanket, her hand moved.Her fingers found the edge of his, curled into the fabric right beside his palm.She didn't take his hand.She didn't have to.
Her breathing evened out, slow and steady.The tight line between her brows smoothed a little, not all the way, but enough.Some of the tension bled out of her shoulders.
"You okay?"he asked quietly.
"I'm closer to it here than anywhere else," she murmured, her eyes still closed.
"We can work with that," he said.
He watched the chaos unfold on the TV screen without really seeing it.The house was still half-finished.The walls were mostly bare.The boxes waited in their corners, patient and accusing.The cabinet door would probably find a new way to stick by next week.
But with Sabrina's head resting against his arm and her fingers hovering near his under the blanket, the place felt more like home than any roof he'd had in a long time.
He stayed still and let her inch closer.
And for the first time since he'd signed the papers on this house, he thought maybe he understood why he'd wanted it so badly.Not for the walls or the foundation or the potential it represented.
For moments like this one.For someone to share it with.For a reason to stop running and stay.
Outside, the night settled over Copper Moon, and somewhere in the distance, the ocean kept its eternal rhythm, waves rolling in and out like the breathing of something vast and patient.
Inside, Colby held perfectly still and let himself imagine, just for a moment, what it might feel like to have this every night.
It felt like hope.It felt like exactly the kind of thing he'd spent his whole life yearning for but didn't know how to find it.
ChapterEight
The fire roared back to life.
It came without warning, the way it always did in these dreams, erupting from nothing into everything.Flames crawled up the walls of Norman House like living things, black and orange tongues licking at the wallpaper her grandmother had chosen thirty years ago, devouring the crown molding her grandfather had installed with his own hands.The heat pressed against her skin, searingly close, impossibly real.Smoke clawed at her throat, thick and acrid, filling her lungs with the taste of everything she'd ever loved burning to ash.
Somewhere down the hall, someone pounded on a door.The rhythm was frantic, desperate, fists against wood in a pattern that meant help me, help me, help me.
Someone screamed.
She tried to move toward the sound, but her feet wouldn't cooperate.The floor had become something liquid and uncertain, shifting beneath her with every step.She couldn't find the doorknob.She couldn't see past the wall of smoke that had descended like a curtain between her and the people who needed her.Her hand swept through empty air, searching, grasping at nothing.
