Tomorrow will bring questions. Statements. Lawyers. Maybe more tears. But tonight she’s safe. Tonight she’s mine. Tonight the cracks in her heart don’t scare me.
They just make me want to hold her closer. Because broken things can still be loved. And I am going to love every shattered piece of her until the day I die. And then some.
FOURTEEN
SABRINA
Morning comes soft and slow, the kind of light that sneaks through frost-laced windows and makes everything look gentler than it really is.
I wake first.
Beck is still asleep beside me, one arm thrown heavy across my waist, face half-buried in the pillow. His breathing is deep and even, the steady rhythm of a man who has finally let himself rest after standing guard for too long. Snowmelt drips from the roof in lazy metronome beats. Somewhere far off a crow calls once, sharp and lonely.
I don’t move right away. I just watch him.
The scar through his eyebrow. The faint gray at his temples I hadn’t noticed before. The way his lashes rest against his cheekbones like he carries dreams he will never tell me about. He looks younger in sleep, less like the mountain man who faced down my brother with a rifle, more like the boy he must have been before life carved all those hard edges.
My chest aches with how much I love him.
Not the bright, fireworks kind of love. More like, the quiet, bone-deep kind. The kind that hurts a little because it matters so much.
I trace one finger along the line of his jaw, barely touching, afraid to wake him. He stirs anyway. Instinct. Always knowing when I am near.
His eyes open slowly. Hazel-green, still heavy with sleep, but the moment they focus on me they soften in a way that steals my breath. “Morning,” he rasps.
“Morning.”
He shifts closer. He pulls me flush against him until there is no space left between us. His hand finds the small of my back under the quilt, warm palm splaying wide like he needs to feel I am real. “You okay?” he asks. Voice low. Careful.
I nod against his throat. “Better than okay.”
He exhales, long and shaky, like he has been holding the breath all night.
We lie like that for a while. Just breathing together. Letting the quiet wrap around us like another blanket.
Eventually he speaks again, softer this time. “I keep thinking about what you said yesterday. About being broken.”
I tense.
He feels it. His thumb strokes slow circles over my spine. “I’m not going to pretend I can fix it,” he continues. “Grief like that doesn’t get fixed. It just changes shape over time. Gets smaller in some places. Sharper in others. But you’re not broken, Sabrina.You’re cracked open. And light gets in through cracks. That’s how I see you. Not damaged. Lit from the inside.”
Tears prick again, hot and sudden. I press my face harder into his neck so he won’t see. “I don’t know how to be okay with missing him,” I whisper. “Even after everything.”
“You don’t have to be okay with it.” His lips brush my hair. “You just have to let yourself feel it. And let me hold the parts that hurt too much to carry alone.”
I swallow. I nod.
He rolls us so I am on my back, him braced above me on his forearms. Not crowding. Just close enough that I can see every flicker in his eyes.
“I want you to know something,” he says. “I’ve spent eight years convincing myself I didn’t need anyone. That alone was safer. Cleaner. Then you crashed into my life, literally, and suddenly alone felt like dying slow. I’m not good at saying soft things. Never have been. But you make me want to try. Every day. For the rest of my life.”
My throat closes.
“Beck—”
He shakes his head. “Let me finish.”
I wait.
