Warmth spread through his chest, the kind that had nothing to do with temperature."That's good news.That's really good news."
"It is."She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest like she was trying to contain everything swelling inside her."It also means whoever set that fire didn't destroy everything.They knocked down a building.They didn't erase my future.They didn't take the land or the insurance I'd been paying into for years.They didn't take me."
He reached for her hand, weaving his fingers through hers."They can't."
Her fingers tightened around his, holding on."I hate that I feel relieved about an insurance payout that's directly tied to arson, while Diaz is out there trying to figure out if my ex-husband lit the match.It feels wrong somehow.Like I shouldn't be allowed to feel hope and fury at the same time."
"Both things can be true," he said."You can be relieved and pissed off simultaneously.You can grieve and plan at the same time.That's allowed.That's human."
She let her head tip toward his shoulder, resting against him."You make everything sound so simple."
"It's not," he said."Not even close.But you're not carrying it alone.That's the part that matters."
She looked up at him, her eyes clear and steady despite the emotional weight of the morning."I know.That's the part that keeps surprising me.Every time I expect to be doing this by myself, you're there."
He squeezed her hand."Get used to it."
Her mouth curved into something that was almost a smile."Bossy."
"Honest," he corrected.
Her laugh was softer this time, threaded with something that sounded like hope trying to take root.
They sat there at his kitchen table, fingers intertwined, the motion sensors standing silent guard at the doors, and the weight of unknown motives still pressing around them from every direction.The house was quiet except for the soft ticking of the cheap clock above the stove and the distant sound of a car passing on the street outside.
It should have felt like too much.The investigation was still open.Gavin was still unaccounted for.The future was still uncertain in a hundred different ways.
Instead, it felt like a line had been drawn.A boundary.A declaration.
Whoever had lit that fire had changed Sabrina's life.They'd burned down her history, her inheritance, the building her grandparents had poured their lives into.
But they hadn't broken her.
Not while she had breath in her lungs and fire of her own in her eyes.
Not while he was in the picture.
He looked at her profile, at the stubborn set of her jaw and the determination that lived beneath the exhaustion, and felt something settle into place in his chest.Something that felt a lot like certainty.
Whatever came next, they'd face it together.
That was the only plan that mattered.
ChapterEleven
Sabrina stared at Colby's kitchen table and realized she'd been tracing the same knot in the wood grain for ten full minutes.
The swirl of darker wood felt familiar now, a landmark in this space that was slowly becoming less foreign and more like somewhere she belonged.Morning light slanted through the window above the sink, catching dust motes in the air, making them look like tiny sparks suspended in amber.The coffee in her mug had gone cold without her noticing, a skin forming on the surface that she kept meaning to drink through and kept forgetting.
Her mind had been doing that lately.Drifting.Circling back to the same worn grooves like water finding the path of least resistance.The fire.The insurance call.Gavin's face on the sidewalk, that polished smile aimed at someone who wasn't her.The way Colby's hands felt when they steadied her, when they reminded her she was real and present and not trapped in the smoke-filled hallways of her dreams.
Her phone buzzed against the table, and she jumped so hard her knee hit the underside of the wood.
She exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to her chest where her heart had decided to audition for a drum solo, and flipped the phone over.Bree's name lit the screen, accompanied by a string of paint palette emojis that made Sabrina's lips twitch despite herself.
She answered."Hey."
"Hey, yourself," Bree said, her voice bright and slightly breathless, like she was moving while she talked."Are you decent?"
