Chapter 9 Beck
NINE
BECK
The rug is soft under my back, but it’s her weight on my chest that keeps me anchored.
Sabrina’s cheek rests over my heart, one leg hooked over mine, fingers tracing idle patterns across my ribs like she’s learning me by touch alone.
The fire has dwindled to a nest of glowing coals; the room is warm, shadowed, intimate in a way that makes every breath feel shared.
I should get up. Check the perimeter again. Load the rifle. Do something useful besides lie here drowning in the feel of her.
But I can’t move.
Because right now she’s crying.
Not loud sobs. Not the kind that demand comfort. Just quiet, steady tears soaking into my skin, one after another, like she’s finally letting the dam break after holding it together for too long.
I don’t say anything at first. Just slide my hand up her spine—slow, deliberate—until my fingers thread into her hair. I cradle the back of her head, press my lips to the crown like I can shield her from whatever’s tearing her open.
After a long minute she speaks, voice small and wrecked.
“I keep thinking… what if I’d said yes to him?
What if I’d helped him hide it? We’d still be family.
We’d still have holidays and phone calls and stupid inside jokes.
And I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t know you.
I wouldn’t—” Her breath hitches. “I wouldn’t love you this much. And that scares me more than anything.”
My chest caves.
I roll us so she’s under me now. I’m braced on my forearms so I can see her face. Her eyes are swollen, lashes wet, but she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t hide.
I brush a tear from her temple with my thumb. “You think you’d be happier if you’d stayed blind? If you’d kept pretending he was still the brother who used to carry you on his shoulders?”
“No.” She shakes her head. Fresh tears spill. “But I miss who I thought he was. And I hate that missing him feels like betraying you.”
The words gut me.
I lower myself until our bodies align—chest to chest, thigh to thigh—until there’s no space left for doubt.
My forehead rests against hers. Our breaths mingle.
“You’re not betraying me,” I murmur. “You’re grieving.
That’s different. And you get to do both at the same time.
You get to love the memory of him and still choose me.
Still choose what’s right. Still choose us. ”
Her hands come up, framing my face. Fingers trembling.
“I’m so afraid I’m going to ruin you, Beck.
That when this is over—when the snow melts and the sheriff comes and Ethan shows his face—I’ll be too broken to stay.
Or you’ll look at me and see him. See the family that tried to buy a killer. See someone not worth keeping.”
I catch one of her wrists. Press her palm flat over my heart so she can feel how hard it’s pounding—for her, because of her, only her. “Look at me,” I say. Voice rough. Raw. “Really look.”
She does.
“I see you,” I tell her. “Not your brother. Not his sins. Not the blood we might have to spill tomorrow. I see the woman who drove up a mountain in a blizzard because she refused to look the other way. The woman who trusted a stranger with an axe and a bad attitude enough to let him carry her inside. The woman who kissed me like she was starving. The woman who just let me come inside her bare because she needed to feel something real more than she needed safety.”
Her lips part on a shaky inhale.
“I see the woman who’s crying in my arms right now because she still has enough heart left to grieve a brother who doesn’t deserve it.
And that—” My voice cracks. I don’t care.
“That makes me love you harder. Makes me want to wrap myself around you so tight nothing can ever touch the parts of you that still hurt.”
A sob escapes her—quiet, broken—and then she’s pulling me down, kissing me like she’s trying to crawl inside my soul.
It’s not frantic this time. Not desperate.
It’s slow. Deep. Devastating.
I kiss her back the same way—unhurried, reverent—tasting salt and sorrow and the fierce, unshakable certainty that she’s mine. My hands roam her body—not claiming, not possessing, just feeling. Memorizing every curve, every tremble, every place she’s soft and strong and fragile all at once.
When I slide inside her again, it’s gentle. Slow. Deep enough to make us both gasp.
No rush.
No need to chase release.
Just the quiet, steady rhythm of two people trying to become one before the world tries to tear them apart.
Her legs wrap around me. Arms lock behind my neck. We move together—small rocking motions, shallow thrusts that keep us joined, keep us close, keep the ache between us from growing too big.
I bury my face in her neck. Breathe her in. Whisper against her skin the things I’ve never said to anyone.
“I’ve been alone so long I forgot what it felt like to need someone. Then you crashed into my life—literally—and suddenly I couldn’t breathe without you in the room. Couldn’t think without knowing you were safe. Couldn’t imagine tomorrow without you in it.”
She turns her head, lips brushing my ear. “I was running from everything. And I ran straight into you. Like the universe knew I’d need someone who’d fight for me when I couldn’t fight for myself anymore.”
I lift my head. Look into her eyes—wet, shining, full of something so tender it hurts. “I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “Even if he comes. Even if we have to run. Even if we lose everything else. You’re my home now, Sabrina. Not this cabin. Not this mountain. You.”
A tear slips down her cheek. She smiles through it—small, radiant, heartbreaking. “You’re mine too,” she whispers.
We don’t speak after that.
We just move—slow, intimate, wrapped so tightly together I can’t tell where I end and she begins.
I think about putting a baby inside her.
Breeding her. Making us a family. I want that more than anything.
The thought makes me come harder than I ever have before.
When we come it’s quiet—shuddering sighs, trembling limbs, her name on my lips like a vow, mine on hers like a prayer.
Afterward we don’t separate.
I stay inside her. She stays wrapped around me. We lie there on the rug, fire dying to embers, storm a distant murmur now, hearts beating in the same uneven rhythm.
Her fingers find mine. Lace them together.
“Promise me something,” she says softly.
“Anything.”
“Tomorrow… no matter what happens… we come back here. To this spot. To this moment. Even if it’s just in our heads. We come back.”
I squeeze her hand, and press my lips to her forehead. “We’ll come back,” I murmur. “Every day. Every night. Until the day I die. And then I’ll wait for you on the other side so we can keep coming back forever.”
She exhales—a long, shaky breath that sounds like relief. Then she whispers the last thing I expect. “I want to marry you, Beck Ironwood.”
My heart stops. Then starts again—harder, louder, fuller. I pull back just enough to see her face.
She’s smiling now—real, bright, terrified and sure all at once.
“Not today,” she adds quickly. “Not tomorrow. But… someday. When this is over. When we’re safe. I want forever with you. The real kind. The kind that has rings and vows and bad dancing at a reception.”
I stare at her. Then I laugh—low, rough, cracked open. And I kiss her like she’s already wearing my ring. “Yes,” I say against her mouth. “A thousand times yes.”
Tomorrow the pass opens. Tomorrow the fight comes. But tonight? Tonight we hold each other like the world can’t touch us. Because it can’t.
Not anymore.
Not when we’ve already promised forever in the dark, on a rug in front of dying coals, with nothing between us but truth and love and the quiet certainty that we were always meant to find each other—right here, right now, right when everything else was falling apart.