Chapter 6 #2
The onion made her eyes water when she cut into it.
Her nose wrinkled, and she blinked rapidly, but her rhythm stayed steady, the knife moving in clean, confident arcs.
The pepper joined the pile of diced vegetables, and then the bacon hit the pan with a sizzle that filled the room with the kind of smell that made his stomach clench in anticipation.
The warmth spread through the kitchen slowly, low and steady, like the house itself was waking up.
"You don't have to pay rent in eggs," he said.
"Too late." She bumped him with her hip as she moved past him to check the toast. The contact was casual, easy, like she'd done it a hundred times. "You rescued me from a hospital, a fire, and my own brain on an endless loop. Take the breakfast."
He huffed out a laugh that surprised him. "Yes, ma'am."
By the time she set a plate in front of him at the small table by the window, his stomach had remembered it existed with a vengeance. He sat. She hesitated with her own plate, still standing, like she wasn't sure she belonged at the table.
"You like hot sauce?" she asked.
"Yes."
She went straight to the right cabinet, pulled the bottle down without searching or second-guessing. He didn't remember telling her where he kept it.
They ate in easy silence for a while. The omelette was good. Better than good. The bacon was crisp, the eggs were fluffy, and whatever magic she'd worked with the dying pepper and the forgotten onion made them taste like something from a real kitchen instead of his bare-bones bachelor pantry.
The chair across from him had never looked like it fit until she was sitting in it. Like the house had been waiting for someone else to arrive before it could settle into itself.
"You're easy to cook for," she said eventually.
"How's that?"
"You don't complain." She forked another bite of eggs. "You eat everything on your plate like your mother raised you right."
He lifted his fork in acknowledgment. "She'd haunt me if I didn't."
"I'd like to send her a thank-you card," she said.
"She'd frame it."
That earned him a quick spark of a smile, there and gone, but real.
When they finished, she reached for his plate before he could move.
"I've got it," he said. "You cooked."
"Let me rinse at least." She carried the dishes to the sink and turned the faucet. The handle squeaked and stuck halfway, refusing to budge until she forced it.
"That thing's got a hitch," he said. "I've been meaning to fix it."
"Add it to your list." But the words came out softer than she'd meant them, her jaw tightening.
He heard the note underneath. Embarrassment. Like asking for a working faucet was too much to expect. Like pointing out imperfections made her a burden.
"What else sticks?" he asked.
She looked back at him. "What?"
"In the house." He tipped his head toward the hall. "Cabinet door. Faucet. You hesitated with the closet last night when you put your things away."
Color climbed her neck, spreading up toward her ears. "It catches a little when you open it. It's fine. I didn't want to say anything."
"It's a door," he said. "It should open without a fight. That's a pretty low bar."
"It feels ungrateful to complain." Her voice dropped. "You've done so much already. I can live with a cranky faucet and a sticky door."
"You don't have to." He pushed back his chair and stood. "Let me see what I can fix. It keeps my hands busy, and this is all stuff I've needed to do anyway. I've been here so little since I moved in, I'm not even aware of everything that needs work."
She watched him drag the toolbox from the corner onto the counter. "You really can't sit still, can you?"
"Not while things are squeaking at me," he said.
He tightened the cabinet hinge first. Two screws, a minor adjustment, and the door closed clean on the first try.
He moved to the hall closet next, adjusted the striker plate until the latch caught smoothly.
The outlet cover in the living room had a stripped screw that he replaced.
The towel bar in the bathroom wobbled; he set that straight with a few turns of the screwdriver.
Sabrina trailed behind him through each room, arms crossed over her chest, her bare feet quiet on the floor. She didn't say much, but she watched everything. Cataloging. Learning the house the way she seemed to learn everything, by observation and instinct.
"I didn't even notice that outlet cover," she said when he finished screwing it back into place. "You walk into a room and see every weak point, don't you?"
"Part of the work," he said, gathering his tools. "Firehouse. Garage. You learn to read the small stuff. What's solid, what isn't. Where things are going to fail before they actually do."
Her brows drew together. "Does your brain ever shut off?"
"Sometimes." He straightened, tucked the screwdriver back into the box. "Usually, when I'm exhausted. Or distracted."
She leaned one shoulder into the bathroom doorway, blocking his path without seeming to realize she'd done it. "Is this distracting?"
He looked up from the toolbox. Her expression was open, curious, not teasing. Her hair had slipped a little from its knot, a loose strand brushing the line of her jaw. She looked soft in the morning light, softer than she probably wanted to be. Vulnerable in a way she was clearly fighting.
"Yeah," he said. "In a good way."
Her throat moved as she swallowed. "Then I'm glad I could help."
He closed the toolbox, let the sound of it fill the space between them. "How are you holding up? Really."
She stared down at her bare feet for a second, at the chipped polish on her toenails that was one more thing she hadn't had time to think about, then looked back up at him.
"It changes every ten minutes. I feel like I should have one answer ready by now, something consistent I can give people when they ask. But I don't. It's all over the place."
"More than one answer's allowed," he said. "You got hit hard. You're allowed to wobble."
She tipped her head, studying him with those tired, too-perceptive eyes. "What do you do when something sticks in your head and won't shake loose?"
He thought about the calls that replayed at night.
Houses half-gone by the time they arrived, flames eating through roofs, smoke pouring from windows.
The weight of people he'd carried out who never woke up.
The different weights of the ones who did, who clutched his arm and cried and thanked him for something he'd only done because it was the job.
"I try to do the next right thing in front of me," he said.
"I can't redo the last fire. Can't unsee what I've seen.
But I can check my gear, train harder, and show up when the next call comes in.
Or fix a stupid cabinet hinge." He shrugged.
"It's not the same scale, but it tells my brain I'm not useless. Gives me something solid to hold onto."
She let that sit, nodding slowly like she was filing it away for later.
"Is that why you became a firefighter?" she asked.
"Part of it." He leaned against the doorframe opposite her, settling in for the conversation.
"I like puzzles. I like figuring out how things work, how they break, and how to put them back together.
Fire's chaos that thinks it's in charge.
I like arguing with it." A half-smile tugged at his mouth.
"And I like that when someone calls, we show up.
No questions asked. No negotiations. Just, 'you need help, we're on our way. '"
Her gaze warmed, something shifting behind her eyes. "You did that for me."
"Yeah."
"That's a big weight to carry," she said quietly. "All those people. All those fires."
"It's not just me," he said. "There's a whole crew. And I'm only part-time at the station anyway. The rest of the time I'm at the garage, trying to keep Hank from forgetting to eat or working himself into the ground. Trying to keep Brian from getting too engrossed in all the things."
"That sounds like a full-time job on its own," she said.
"It's a team effort. Bree helps with that now. She's good at dragging him away from the bikes when he needs it. And he's better since they got married. More grounded." He paused. "More like himself, I think. Like she helped him remember who he wanted to be."
Sabrina smiled faintly, then sobered. "What about you? If you could change something, what would you do next? With this place. With anything."
He leaned back against the counter, considering.
"I'd like to get this house finished. Make it more than a landing pad between shifts and race weekends.
Build a table that doesn't wobble. Hang something on the walls besides a calendar.
Make it feel like a place worth coming home to, not just somewhere to crash. "
"You could build a table?" she asked, something like wonder in her voice.
"I can follow a plan," he said. "Wood, screws, a level. Not that different from a bike frame if you think about it. Everything's just pieces that need to fit together the right way."
She made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. "Of course you'd compare furniture to motorcycles."
"It's what I know."
She looked around again, and this time her expression was different. Thoughtful. Like she was seeing the house not as it was but as it could become. "You picked this place on purpose. Out of everything available, you chose this one."
"For a guy who lived in a hotel for a while, yeah. It felt big. Committing to something that didn't move." He met her eyes. "I wanted somewhere that was mine. Something that would still be here tomorrow."
"You deserve that," she said softly.
"So did you. With the inn."
Her mouth tightened, the softness draining away. "You saw what happened to that."
"I saw you get people out alive," he said. "That's not nothing. That's the only thing that matters."
Her eyes flicked away, unable to hold his gaze. "I need to change. Your T-shirt's dangerously comfortable. If I keep wearing it, I'll forget it's borrowed."
He didn't say what flashed through his head. He just watched her walk back down the hall toward the spare room, her bare feet silent on the wood floor, and let out a slow breath.
The house felt different already. Fuller. Like it had been holding its breath, waiting for something, and now it could finally exhale.
He finished his coffee standing at the window, watching the morning light shift across the backyard he hadn't yet figured out what to do with. Sabrina moved into the spare room, quiet sounds of drawers opening and closing, of life settling into spaces that had been empty before.
He could get used to this, he thought. And that scared him more than any fire he'd ever walked into.