Every instinct screamed to protect himself this time, but when had he ever listened to caution where Sabrina was concerned? He led her to the couch where they’d spent so many evenings planning training sessions, tossing ideas back and forth about Annie Ross, trading stories that somehow never felt like enough. He could map every moment he’d fallen deeper in this room, on this couch, measuring the distance between them in heartbeats and half smiles.
“I submitted our registration as an official SAR team,” she said without preamble, the declaration hitting him like a tree branch snapping in gale force winds.
“You what?”
She pulled out her phone, bringing up an email confirmation that she flashed in his direction.
“Team Colton-West, pending final approval.” The determination in her eyes matched the set of her jaw. “I want us to work together, Noah. Professionally and in every other way.”
Something cracked inside him, hairline fractures spider-webbing through the walls he’d hastily erected. Professional partnership. A commitment in writing, a declaration of intent so Sabrina-esque that it almost made him smile. Almost.
“Sabrina—”
“I know what you’re thinking.” She leaned forward, all that wild energy he’d fallen for focused into laser intensity. “That I’m reacting to trauma. That I’ll change my mind again.” Her voice dropped, an intimacy that wrapped around him silkily. “This isn’t impulse, Noah. This is choice. This is me, both feet on the ground, choosing us.”
Her certainty pulled at him, tested boundaries he’d reinforced through a sleepless night. But he’d been burned before—not just by Sabrina but by everyone who’d ever found his hurricane-force enthusiasm too intense, his passion overwhelming, his tendency to go all in terrifying.
She was just the one who had hurt him the most.
“Partnership registration is a start,” he said, “but—”
“I brought something else.” The vulnerability in her expression nearly shattered his remaining defenses as she held up a toothbrush. “To prove I’m serious.”
“Atoothbrush?” The words escaped before he could stop them, defensive and edged. “What, so you spend the night occasionally and, oh yay, you have your own toothbrush. That’s not what I want from you, Sabrina. It’s not enough.”
A smile ghosted across her lips. “Not just a toothbrush. Everything else, too.”
“What do you mean, everything else?”
“Look out your window.”
Confusion replaced wariness as he rose and crossed to the front window, pushing aside the curtain to reveal—
His pulse stuttered.
A moving truck. The words “Dark Canyon Rentals” emblazoned on its side, rear doors open to reveal furniture he recognized from Sabrina’s place. Boxes labeled in her precise handwriting. A life packed up and delivered to his doorstep.
“Everything I own,” Sabrina said, suddenly beside him. She was always in motion, his Sabrina, never still for long. “Everything that matters.”
He couldn’t tear his gaze from the truck and what it represented, the tangible, physical proof of what she was offering. What she was telling him without words.
“You asked me to move in with you, and I ran.” Her voice held a thread of steel under the vulnerability. “Now I’m asking you. Can I come home, Noah? To you?”
Everything inside him unraveled, walls crumbling as if made of sand instead of the steel he’d thought he’d used. He turned to face her fully, searching her eyes for any trace of doubt or fear. “You’re really doing this? No reservations, no panic, no running away when it gets too intense?”
“I can’t promise I’ll never be scared.” The honesty in her admission reached places he’d thought untouchable. “But I can promise I won’t run from us again. Not from you. Not from us.” She reached for his hand, her fingers cool against his overheated skin. “I love you, Noah Colton. Not because I nearly died, but because living without you isn’t really living at all.”
Her words unlocked something in his chest, but caution, that unfamiliar emotion that had never been his companion until recently, still held him back. “This isn’t too fast for you? You’ve made such a big deal about your space. About giving you time to figure things out.”
“I was freaking out. I readily admit it.” She stepped closer, her free hand rising to touch his face in a gesture so achingly tender it nearly undid him. “But I didn’t really need space or time to know how I feel. What I needed was a kick in the pants to make me realize you were going to slip through my fingers if I didn’t get my act together. I couldn’t live with that. Or have any kind of life that you weren’t in.”
For a heartbeat, Noah stood frozen, searching her eyes as if he could read the future there.
Then he was in motion before he could think, pulling her against him with all the force of emotions he’d been damming up since finding her in that cave. Since before that—since the first moment he’d seen her staring down Bonner at the recovery site, fierce and unyielding.
“I love you,” he murmured against her hair, the words inadequate for the torrent of feeling pouring through him. “I love you so much I can’t find the words.”
“There you are,” she murmured, her arms crushing him in kind. “But why did you pull away at the canyon? The hospital? When I tried to tell you how I felt—you scared me.”
