He framed her face with both hands.“Good,” he said, voice rough.“Because I love you too.Somewhere between you mocking my spreadsheets and you learning how to use a saw, I was done for.It's only gotten worse.”
A damp laugh broke out of her.“That's a terrible declaration.”
“I'm not great at speeches,” he said.“I'm steady.I show up.I build things.I'm in this.With you.All the way.Fires.developers.Gas cans.Whatever comes next.”
She leaned into his hands.“You realize you just proposed long-term emotional chaos,” she said.
“I've seen your plan sheets,” he said.“I think we'll be all right.”
She kissed him then.There was nothing tentative in it.No apology.Just a clear, steady answer to a question that had been hanging between them for days.
He kissed her back with the same quiet conviction he'd brought to the frame earlier.No rush.No pressure.Just a promise.
When they finally broke apart, she rested her forehead against his again.
“I thought the fire took everything,” she whispered.“Tonight I realized it didn't.It took walls and sheets and a name on a sign.It didn't take the part of me that knows what home feels like.I found that again.With you.With that land.With this plan.In this cabin.”
He closed his eyes for a second and let that sink in.
“You keep talking like that,” he said, “and I am going to ask you something big without a ring handy.”
She let out a shaky laugh.“One crisis at a time, biker guy.”
“Deal,” he said.
Outside, the night moved on.Somewhere out on Norman land, red and blue lights flashed.Evidence flags went into the dirt.Reports began.
Inside the cottage, on a couch that had seen a lot of late-night plans and not enough sleep, Colby wrapped his arms around Sabrina and held on.
For the first time since Norman House burned, the tight coil in his chest eased.
The arsonist was in custody.The cabin frame still stood.The woman he loved was here, solid and warm under his hands, her heartbeat steady against his side.
Relief washed through him, sharp and overwhelming.Underneath it sat something steadier.
A bone-deep certainty that whatever came next, they'd face it the same way they'd faced tonight.
Together.
ChapterEighteen
Colby held one end of the tape measure while Sabrina squinted at the numbers, her brow furrowed in concentration beneath the late morning sun.A strand of dark hair had escaped her ponytail and fallen across her cheek, and she brushed it away impatiently with the back of her wrist, pencil still clutched in her fingers.
"Forty-two and a half," she said, her voice carrying that particular blend of determination and hope that had become as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat."If we center the window here, the bed's not crowded, and nobody has to climb over anyone to get out."
"Forty-two and a half it is."He watched her make a quick pencil line on the stud, tongue caught between her teeth, the way it always did when she focused.The gesture did something complicated to his chest, a warmth that spread outward from his ribs and settled somewhere permanent."Mark it."
She did, the graphite leaving a sure gray line against the raw wood.Around them, the skeleton of the cabin rose toward a sky the color of faded denim, the framing now solid enough to cast proper shadows across the plywood subfloor.The smell of fresh lumber mingled with salt air drifting up from the water, and somewhere in the distance a gull cried out, its voice sharp and clean above the whisper of wind through the trees.
He loved that look more than he should probably admit out loud.
An engine rumbled up the access road, the sound carrying through the morning stillness like a stone dropped into a quiet pond.Sabrina's hand went still on the stud, her shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly.
"That's Diaz's car," she said.
"Yeah."He let the tape retract with a soft metallic whisper."Right on time."
Diaz's SUV rolled to a stop next to the trailer, gravel crunching beneath the tires.She climbed out with a folder tucked under one arm, wearing her Copper Moon PD hoodie over jeans and sturdy boots, her dark hair pulled back tight in a bun.The same solid presence she always carried, but there was something different in her expression today, a thin thread of satisfaction that Colby hadn't seen before.It looked like the face of someone who had finally cornered a problem they'd been chasing for weeks.
