Chapter 2 #2
"If I leave before it's all out, it'll feel like I abandoned it." She swallowed against the lump in her throat. "My grandparents wouldn't have left. They would've stood right here till the last ember went cold."
"Your grandparents aren't the ones who nearly died in there last night."
She blinked at him, stung by the bluntness. "You think I'm being dramatic."
"I think you're exhausted and your body is past its limit.
That's not the same thing." He held her eyes, his gaze steady and unwavering.
"This isn't you giving up. It burned. It's out.
You coming back here at all, after everything you went through, shows more loyalty than most people could manage on their best day. "
The world tipped a little, the edges going soft. The outlines of the engines and people wavered like heat mirages. She noticed, distantly, that the smoldering pile seemed to sway.
Or maybe that was her.
"Okay," she said. "Maybe I'm a little tired."
Colby's gaze sharpened, concern cutting through the careful neutrality. "When did you last eat?"
She tried to remember. Coffee at the inn early yesterday morning, standing at the kitchen counter while she went over the week's reservations.
A blueberry muffin from Maggie's around ten, eaten in three bites between checking in the Hendersons and fixing the stuck window in Room 4.
After that, everything blurred into smoke and sirens.
"I'm fine."
He gave her a look that said he didn't believe her for a second.
"I don't want to leave," she repeated, but even she heard how weak it sounded, how her voice had thinned to almost nothing.
A knot of heat expanded behind her eyes, pressure building.
She tilted her chin up and focused on the ruined front steps, the ones her grandfather had painstakingly refinished the summer she had her first date.
He'd taught her how to sand the wood smooth, how to run her palm over it to find the rough spots that still needed work.
"If you're going to do something," he had said, his weathered hands guiding hers, "you do it right, kiddo. The house deserves that much."
The memory pressed against her ribs until it hurt to breathe. Her knees loosened under her, joints going liquid.
Colby stepped closer, his voice dropping. "Sabrina."
"I'm okay." She forced a breath in, but the world tilted again, the horizon sliding sideways.
An echo of the smoke-thick hallway rushed back—the heat, the darkness, the terrible certainty that she might not make it out.
The charred ruin in front of her blurred, edges smearing together like a watercolor left in the rain.
He reached out, a hand hovering near her elbow. "You're pale."
"I just need a minute." She locked her knees. Bad idea. The ground slipped away completely for a heartbeat, her vision narrowing to a dim tunnel with the ruins at the far end.
The next thing she knew, his arm wrapped around her waist, steadying her before she pitched forward. Her palms found the solid plane of his chest, sweatshirt soft under her fingers. Warmth radiated through the heavy material, grounding and solid and very, very real.
"Got you," he said.
She hadn't even realized how far she'd swayed until she felt how firmly he held her. His other hand settled lightly at her upper back, not gripping, not trapping, just there—a point of contact that said he wasn't going anywhere.
"Don't move too fast," he added. "Head rush."
She let out a shaky breath. "I'm fine."
"Is that your favorite sentence?"
"It's convenient."
He huffed a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. "Lift your head for me. Slowly."
She obeyed, feeling ridiculous even as she did. Her gaze met his. Concern darkened his eyes, but there was no pity in them—no condescension, no exasperation. Just focus. And something steady underneath it all that made the roaring in her ears soften to a manageable hum.
"You're leaning on me," he said.
She realized she was. Both hands gripping his sweatshirt like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
Her body pressed more fully against his than she had intended, close enough to feel his heartbeat through all those layers.
If she stepped back, she wasn't entirely sure her legs would cooperate.
"You can let go," she said. "I'm okay now."
"You can stay right there."
Her cheeks warmed, but the embarrassment was thin, washed out by exhaustion. She felt his arm tighten just a fraction, enough to convince her he wasn't ready to let go even if she asked him to.
Behind them, Anderson called out a command; a hose team shifted position, spraying a final stubborn hotspot near what had been the dining room. Steam rose, ghostly and brief, then faded into the morning air.
Sabrina watched it with her cheek nearly level with the reflective strip on Colby's sweatshirt. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she stood somewhere else entirely, leaning against someone in a kitchen somewhere warm and bright, music playing low, no smoke or ruin or fear in sight.
"What now?" she asked softly. The question escaped before she could stop it.
"Now," he said, "you breathe."
"That's your grand plan?"
"For the next ten seconds, yes."
She let her head tip against his chest, tension bleeding from her shoulders one muscle at a time. "And after that?"
"After that, you let them finish putting this out." His voice stayed calm, a quiet anchor in the wreckage. "Then we figure out the next thing. One step at a time."
Her fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, snagging on a loose thread near one of the pockets. "I don't know what the next thing even is. I don't have a house. I don't have a business. I barely have pajamas."
"Pajamas are replaceable." His words were gentle, but firm underneath. "You're not."
She closed her eyes briefly, letting the words settle somewhere deep in her chest, then opened them again, forcing herself to look at the charred remains of everything she'd built. "I thought if I came back and watched, it would make it real. That I'd be able to accept it, move past the shock."
"Did it?"
"I don't know." Her voice turned raw, scraping over the admission. "It feels like waking up in someone else's life. Like any minute now I'll snap out of it, and everything will be back the way it was."
He didn't pretend to have an answer for that. He only held her through the next small wave of dizziness and kept himself between her and the worst of the view, his body a shield she hadn't asked for but couldn't bring herself to refuse.
Diaz approached after a minute, her steps measured and deliberate, notebook tucked away in her jacket pocket. Anderson peeled off toward one of the engines, calling instructions to his crew.
"Sabrina," Diaz said.
She straightened slightly in Colby's hold, but he kept his arm where it was, his palm still a warm point of contact at her back.
"Yes," she answered.
"We'll have the lab results as soon as possible. I'll update you the moment we know more."
"Okay."
"In the meantime, I'd prefer you not stay on-site for too long. There's debris that could shift without warning, and you've had a rough night."
"I'm not leaving until it's out," she said.
Sabrina felt Colby's chest move under her hands as he drew breath to argue, then let it out slowly instead. He glanced at Diaz. "She nearly fainted a second ago."
"I did not," she muttered.
Diaz's gaze flicked over her face, taking in the pallor there, the dark circles under her eyes, the fine tremor still working through her frame. "You look like you spent the night in a fire."
"She did," Colby pointed out.
"I'm aware." Diaz crossed her arms, her expression softening just slightly around the edges. "You stay back from the structure, understood? You can stand here with Landon, but if you wobble again, you're in the truck. No arguments."
"I'm fine," Sabrina said.
Both of them looked at her with identical expressions of disbelief.
She sighed. "I'll sit if I have to."
Diaz seemed to accept that compromise. "Don't touch anything. Scene's still active."
"We won't," Colby said.
Diaz nodded once and walked away, heading toward one of the patrol cars where an officer waited with a tablet.
Sabrina watched her go. "She's very reassuring."
"She's very thorough," Colby said. "You want thorough on your side right now."
"Do I have her on my side?"
"You have Copper Moon on your side." His voice carried that quiet certainty again, the one that made her want to believe him even when everything else felt impossible. "That includes her. That includes everyone here."
The engines' lights kept rotating in slow, hypnotic turns, reflecting off the wet ground where water had pooled.
Another section of the interior wall crumbled inward, sending up a small cloud of ash and debris.
Anderson signaled his crew to dampen it again.
They moved with practiced ease, their motions synchronized by years of working together.
Sabrina stayed where she was, her weight a little more relaxed against Colby's chest. He didn't seem to mind. Didn't shift away or check his watch or give any sign that he had somewhere else to be. His heartbeat thudded steadily under her ear, an easy counterpoint to the distant noise.
"I'm not leaving," she repeated, more to herself than to him.
"I know," he said. "I'll be right here with you."
She believed him. For the first time since the flames had woken her, since she'd stumbled through smoke and heat and terror, she believed someone when they said they weren't going anywhere.
She tightened her grip on his sweatshirt for just a second, then loosened it again, allowing herself that small admission.
Leaning on him felt dangerous in a different way than anything else she'd faced tonight. It felt like the beginning of something she wasn't prepared for, something that could hurt in ways fire never could.
But for now, in this moment, with her world reduced to char and steam and the steady circle of his arms, it also felt like the only thing keeping her upright.
So she stayed.
And so did he.