Chapter 43
Sabrina came awake with a start.
Which was when she realized she’d fallen asleep.
She’d tried not to. After Boss and Hew had left with Black Widow, she’d promised herself she’d wait up for them, no matter how long it took.
Sleep is for normal people, she’d told herself. Not people who spirit assassins out of the country in the middle of the night.
But her traitorous body hadn’t gotten with the program.
Even sitting upright in the chair she’d moved back into the corner of her bedroom hadn’t been enough to keep her from succumbing to bone-deep exhaustion.
The blanket she’d pulled up around her chest had fallen to her waist. The paperback she’d been determined to read lay facedown in her lap, pages crinkled from where it’d fallen from her lax fingers.
She blinked, trying to get her bearings, trying to determine…
How long have I been out?
It’d been midnight when Fish and Eliza trudged up the stairs from their date night at Red Delilah’s.
She’d spent half an hour bringing them up to speed on what they’d missed, and then another fifteen minutes answering the frantic questions they lobbed at her head.
Afterward, voice hoarse from recounting the nightmare, she’d padded downstairs to make tea.
She’d hoped the heat and the caffeine would be enough to stave off oblivion, but…
No such luck.
The last thing she remembered was checking her phone and seeing it was half-past two. Then…nothing. Not even dreams.
Now, her gaze slid to the window. To the light leaking in through the thin crack of her curtains. It was pink and muted gold. That first blush that heralded the dawn.
For heaven’s sake, the little voice chided. You slept half the night away.
Had Hew come home without her hearing? She’d left her door wide, knowing he’d have to walk by her room to get to his. But she didn’t sleep with one eye open like he did because she hadn’t grown up attuned to danger the way he had. It was very possible he’d slipped by while she was zonked out.
She picked up the book, did her best to smooth its crinkled pages, and set it on the bookcase beside her. Then, she pushed the blanket to the floor, ready to stand, before—
She froze.
There it was again. The sound that had jerked her from sleep. Heavy boots moving down the hallway.
His boots. His stride.
She’d recognize it anywhere, even when he was clearly trying to tiptoe.
Her pulse tripped over itself like it did whenever he entered a room.
And then he was there. Entering her room.
Or, rather, he stopped on the threshold, his green eyes pinging to her bed before sliding around the space and stopping once he found her tucked into the chair in the shadows of the corner. She would swear it felt like a physical touch when his gaze collided with hers.
“You’re awake.” Surprise had one eyebrow arcing up his forehead. That fabulously wide forehead with that knee-weakening whorl of hair and that faint, crescent-moon scar.
“You’re home,” she whispered back, and the words sounded too soft, too…something, even to her own ears.
He leaned a broad shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed one booted ankle over the other. Then, he ran a hand down his face. And that’s when she got a proper look at him in the soft glow of the lamplight that reached across her room and framed him in the doorway.
He was exhausted. It was there in the neck stubble that sprouted beneath his neatly trimmed beard.
There in the new lines carved into the corners of his eyes.
There in the wild riot of hair that looked like he’d either raked his fingers through it a hundred times or rode with his head out the window.
Heaven help me, all I want is to pull him into bed, smooth the line from between his eyebrows, and hold him until he falls asleep.
A few months ago, she would’ve done exactly that without thinking twice.
Now? She couldn’t find the words to bridge the distance that’d opened up between them. Couldn’t find a way to go back to how things had been…before.
“Ayuh.” He nodded. “I’m home. And none too soon, either. I feel like a man who’s been draggin’ lobster traps with no gloves on.”
Her lips tugged at the corners. Only Hew could compare exhaustion to Maine fishermen and make it sound miserable and endearing all at the same time.
“Bit of a whirlwind, was it?”
“When Boss puts together a quick escape package”—his tone was wry—“he doesn’t mess around.”
“No, he does not,” she agreed. “You should’ve heard him barking orders and calling in favors over the phone.” She tilted her head. “How is he, by the way?”
“Back home with Becky and the girls. Said he’d catch a few winks and then come in later to give everyone a sitrep on our most recent adventure.”
She turned her head to peer at him from the corners of her eyes. “Does that mean I have to wait to hear how it went?”
He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, letting his hands dangle loose. She stared helplessly at the veins tracking the backs of his hands. At those long, knobby-knuckled fingers.
The same fingers that had once taken her apart piece by piece until she’d been nothing but shaking, shivering, screaming surrender in his arms. The same fingers that had expertly put her back together again.
“We flew her low and fast over the border into Bumfuck, Ontario,” he said. “Landed in someone’s hay field where one of Boss’s old combat buddies was waitin’ in a mud-splattered pickup truck to take her from us.”
He stopped, one corner of his mouth tilting ruefully.
“Ya think Boss looks like he’s seen some shit?
Should’ve seen this guy. I swear he was carved from driftwood and rawhide.
More scars than skin. But he had a firm handshake and trustworthy eyes.
So even without Boss’s endorsement, I would’ve been tempted to like him. ”
Her own lips twitched at the vivid picture he painted. Despite being reticent by nature, when he did speak, it could be almost…lyrical. Or maybe literary was the better word.
All that reading, no doubt.
“Apparently, he had a little float plane parked at the dock on a nearby lake. He agreed to fly her up to Alaska, where a friend of his will load her up on a rusted-out fishin’ boat and sail her to Russia. After that, she’s on her own.”
“Good riddance.” Sabrina made a face. Just the thought of Black Widow was enough to leave a bad taste in her mouth.
“To bad rubbish,” Hew finished with a dip of his chin.
Her brow creased. “And these guys…they just volunteered to do all this? Because Boss asked them to?”
That’s when Hew smiled.
Not his usual half-smile. Not the guarded, fleeting tipping up of one corner of his mouth.
Oh, no. This was a full smile.
The kind that lit up his face like the sunrise and made his eyes glint like sea glass.
Her breath caught.
“Did I leave out the part where we stopped to pick up the bags of money she stashed under an overpass before she grabbed ya?” He winked.
“Boss made sure she paid for the trouble she was puttin’ these guys through.
Ya should’ve seen her face…red as a beet when she realized her great escape came at the cost of a quarter of her cash. ”
Sabrina laughed. Really laughed.
And Hew? He laughed too. The easy, comfortable kind of laughter she hadn’t heard out of him since that fateful afternoon when everything changed.
It was the most beautiful sound. It wrapped around her like a blanket fresh from the dryer. Warm. Reassuring. A little scratchy in the best possible way.
She’d missed it.
And lord, she’d missed him.
It was bone-deep and visceral. A feeling that curled around her soul and sank into her heart until there was no her without him. No part of Sabrina that didn’t include a part of Hew, too.
She’d plucked the stuffed lobster off his dresser earlier, placing it on her lap before settling in for the night. Imagining it was her tether to him. A silly, red, overstuffed stand-in for the man himself.
His eyes tracked the toy as she fiddled with it now, and all the humor drained from his face. He grew so still it wasn't easy to distinguish him from the long shadows that held sway in the hallway.
“Ya finally took the lobster.” Lobstah.
“I borrowed it,” she emphasized, giving the plush claws a gentle pet. “Just for tonight.”
His Adam’s apple made a slow trek up the tan column of his throat. She thought he’d again try to convince her to keep it. So she was blindsided when, instead, he asked, “Why didn’t Martin leave you at the gate?”
Her mind quickly sifted through the two outcomes should she answer his question.
If she admitted the truth, the awkwardness…the yawning chasm that already stretched wide between them…would grow. But if she lied, she’d feel the guilt like a stone in her chest, and it would become an obstacle between them in every conversation they had.
She realized she’d been quiet for too long when he quickly said, “If it’s too private, all ya got to do is say.”
“Nothing’s too private between us, right?”
Why was her voice so hoarse all of a sudden?
Oh, right. Because her heart was sitting in the back of her throat.
“So why didn’t Martin leave ya at the gate?” he asked again, his gaze fixed firmly on hers.
She rubbed the lobster’s claws, using the motion to steady her trembling hands. It didn’t really help the tremble in her voice, though, when she admitted, “Because I asked him to. Because I needed some space and some time to think.”
“About what?”
“About my life. About my feelings. About my future.”
He straightened from the doorjamb, all traces of his earlier exhaustion vanishing like fog hit by the sun. His gaze flicked to her left hand, sharp and assessing.
“Did he propose?”
The question startled her so badly she nearly dropped the lobster. “What?”
“Did he ask ya to marry him?”
“God, no! Why would you think that?”
“Life and feelings and future.” He made a rolling motion with his hand.
Despite the impediment of her heart having found a new home in her throat, she laughed. Shook her head. “Oh, right. I hear how that sounds now.” Then she sobered. “No. He didn’t ask me to marry him. I broke up with him.”
Hew didn’t move. And his voice was so soft and low she was reminded of the barest whisper of wind when he asked, “Why?”
Ah, she thought. And here we are.
The two paths stretched before her, neither one more traveled than the other. Both full of possibilities and possible pitfalls.
She chose her course, the truth. And didn’t look back.
“Because it wasn’t fair to keep dating him when I don’t love him,” she admitted, watching her fingers fiddle with the stuffy because she couldn’t bear to face him when she spoke the words. “When I won’t love him.”
Her heart hammered in the momentary pause. Finally, his voice floated across the space between them. “How do you know ya won’t love him? Eventually?”
Her voice cracked under the weight of her confession. “Because I’m in love with someone else.”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only sit there. Waiting. Hoping.
Just ask it, Hew, she silently begged. Please ask it so the truth can set me free.
And then he did.
“Who?”
The lobster fell from her fingers when her hands flew out wide. The gesture was one of helplessness. One of surrender.
“You, Hew. It’s only ever been you.”