Colby slowed as they reached the bottom of the porch steps, his hand still wrapped around hers, but his attention focused on the cabin with an expression she couldn't quite read.
Sabrina glanced up at him, catching the way the light played across his features."What?"
He studied the cabin for a moment longer, like he was checking his own work, cataloging details only he could see."I like this one," he said finally.
"You like all of them," she said, a smile tugging at her mouth."You've told me that at least once per cabin, usually while covered in sawdust and complaining about my window placement choices."
"I do," he said."But this one feels like the moment, I guess.The right place for something."
"What moment?"she asked, curiosity sharpening her attention."What something?"
His fingers slipped free of hers, only so he could rest his hand at the small of her back and guide her up the steps ahead of him, a gesture that had become familiar, protective without being possessive.
"Come on," he said, his voice carrying a note she couldn't quite identify."Humor me."
She went, curiosity pricking at the edges of her nerves, the good kind this time, the kind that made her heart beat faster with anticipation rather than dread.
On the porch, she paused and turned to look out over the property they had built together.
The other two cabins glowed softly down the curve of the path, their lights marking the way like lanterns in the dark.Beyond them, the field stretched toward the tree line, silver-touched by starlight and the distant glow of the moon rising over the water.The dark patch of ground where they'd once stood with Diaz and watched a patrol car's lights paint her land red and blue had faded back into simple darkness, just another piece of earth now, unremarkable, healed.
The trailer was long gone, replaced by a small storage shed they'd built with leftover lumber and Brian's enthusiastic insistence on efficient tool organization.He had shown up one Saturday with a whiteboard and a system he'd clearly spent too much time developing, and Colby had let him run with it because it made him happy and because the result was actually useful.
The ghosts were quieter here now.Not gone, perhaps; she didn't think they ever truly left a place where something terrible had happened.But they had settled into the background, become part of the landscape rather than its dominant feature.
"How's your seven?"Colby asked from behind her, his voice soft in the darkness.
"My what?"
"Your freak-out level," he said."Still holding steady, or has it changed?"
"It dipped," she admitted, turning slightly toward him but not quite facing him yet, still drinking in the view."I think seeing the lights helped.Standing here, looking at all of it together.It looks real from this angle."
"It is real," he said."Every board.Every nail.Every argument about tile grout and porch railing heights."
She turned fully to face him then.
He stood just inside the spill of warm light from the cabin window, the glow catching the angles of his face and softening the harder edges.It brushed over his features, illuminating the faint white line along his cheekbone where the worst of the bruise from the night of the arrest had faded.His T-shirt had a smear of something that might have been grout along the hem, a remnant of their work earlier that day.There was sawdust in his hair and beard, caught in the dark strands above his ear and along his cheekbone, and his boots were scuffed with the particular kind of wear that came from honest labor.
Her heart did an unsteady little step, the same way it still did sometimes when she caught him at moments like this, when the reality of him overwhelmed the part of her brain that still couldn't quite believe he was hers.
"You're looking at me," he said, a slight smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
"I'm allowed," she said.
"Yeah," he said softly, something shifting in his expression."You are."
She tipped her head toward the cabin door, trying to shake off the strange weight that had settled over the moment."Are we doing a last-minute inspection, or are you making me stand out here to build suspense?Because I can tell you from experience, the suspense thing works better when there's actually something to be suspenseful about."
"Maybe both," he said.
He stepped past her, close enough that she caught the familiar scent of him, sawdust and soap and something underneath that was just Colby, and opened the cabin door.
Warm light spilled over the front room, revealing the space in all its carefully curated comfort.
The little couch sat against one wall, upholstered in a soft gray fabric that would hide stains and wear well over time.The chairs flanking it were the ones she'd found at the thrift store on the edge of town, solid bones under dated fabric that she and Bree and Kara had reupholstered together over the course of a long weekend, their hands aching and their determination unwavering.The kitchenette gleamed quietly in the corner, everything in its place, the butcher-block counters she had agonized over glowing warm in the lamplight.
Through the open doorway of the sleeping alcove, the bed looked crisp and inviting, pillows plumped just so, the quilt folded at the foot in the exact way she had learned from her grandmother decades ago.The window above the headboard framed a square of night sky, and tomorrow it would fill the room with morning light, the way she had designed it to.
