Then another tremor shook the cave, jolting them back to reality.
“We need to go.” Noah turned, scoping out their exit route. “They’ve got equipment coming, but I’d rather not stick around for the after-party if this place decides to come down.”
She nodded, allowing him to guide her toward the opening. Allowing him to help her. She was so weak. Outside, he could hear the sounds of emergency vehicles arriving, the organized chaos of a rescue operation forming.
“Can you make it through?” He eyed the tight passage dubiously.
“Watch me.”
It would have made him feel a lot better if her voice hadn’t come out so hoarsely, but he’d take the flash of her old spirit, even as she winced trying to squeeze through the narrow space.
He followed closely behind, ready to push her forward if she got stuck, hyperaware of every sound, every shift of rock above them. The opening seemed to have shrunk since he’d entered, making their exit even more perilous.
When Sabrina’s boots finally emerged into sunlight, a cheer went up from the gathered rescue workers. Noah crawled out after her, blinking in the sudden brightness.
Sabrina swayed, paramedics already rushing forward. But her eyes stayed locked on Noah’s face, something fierce and determined warring with weariness and other trauma in her gaze—the same look she’d had when they’d climbed in Moab, that blend of fearlessness and fire that had first drawn him to her like a moth to flame.
“Noah, I need to tell you—”
“Let them check you out first.” He cut her off gently, unable to handle whatever she might say while adrenaline still coursed through his system, while his heart felt like it had been run through a meat grinder, tenderized to the point where the slightest touch might push it from its moorings completely. “We have time.”
They had time. But that didn’t mean he had the energy for anything else.
The relief of finding her alive warred with the memory of how she’d walked away, of how spilling his heart all over the place had sent her running for the exit like a building on fire. How she hadn’t believed in what they could be together, what he knew soul deep—they were meant to be.
He’d pulled her from the cave, but the emotional chasm between them felt just as vast as before. This was a different kind of darkness, a different kind of trap. One he wasn’t sure either of them knew how to escape.
She let the paramedics guide her to the ambulance, though her gaze kept finding his. He kept looking away, unable to let himself deconstruct what he saw in her depths.
When the medic insisted she ride with him to the hospital for observation, Noah stepped forward, his body moving on autopilot while everything beneath his skin remained caught in the undertow of emotion.
“I’ll follow in my truck,” he assured her and scrubbed at the back of his neck. “But I won’t stay. Just long enough to make sure they take care of you.”
Emotion flickered across her face—pain, understanding, resolve. “Noah, I was wrong. About everything. I need you to know—”
“Sabrina.”
He stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm, the first deliberate touch since he’d helped her from the cave, and it burned like frostbite, that peculiar pain that feels like fire but comes from ice. His heart couldn’t take confessions born of adrenaline and near-death experiences, couldn’t weather the inevitable crash when reality returned and she remembered all the reasons she’d walked away.
“You’re safe,” he said. “That’s all that matters now. Let the medic check you out, make sure you don’t have anything we can’t see going on.”
She nodded. “And then we can talk later?”
His eyelids slammed closed, and he had to take a minute, aware that the ambulance was waiting. “I don’t know what we’d talk about.”
“Us, Noah.” The catch in her voice nearly undid him. “I need to tell you some things—”
“I’m not at a place where I can hear them.” It wasn’t meant to be harsh, but neither could he lie. “After everything, I’ve become something I never thought I’d be. Cautious.”
The irony was bitter on his tongue.
Here he was—the guy who jumped into everything at full speed, the one who never looked before he leaped—telling her he’d hit his own wall. That he needed space.
She didn’t have to know it was because he wanted to gather her up and tell her he’d thought he’d lost her forever. That they’d wasted so much time already. Of course he forgave her and they should get married immediately.
The words would be easy. The recovery after she then crushed himagain, not so much.
“Okay.” She nodded, eyes bright with unshed tears that glittered in the sunlight. “But I’m not giving up on us. Just so you know.”
