Chapter 7 #2
"Sure," he said. "I've got regrets. Everybody does. But if I'd changed any of that, I might not be sitting in this truck with you right now." He held her gaze. "And I'm not willing to trade that."
Her breath caught. "Why?"
"Because you're here," he said simply. "And you're safe. That matters to me."
Her eyes went shiny with tears she refused to let fall. She turned her head away quickly, swiped at one cheek with the back of her hand.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted. "With any of this. The fire. The inn. Him being here. You. Any of it."
"That's fine," he said. "We don't need a ten-step plan today. Just the next right move."
"What's that?" she asked.
"We can skip Main Street for now," he said.
"Order some basics online. Bree would love an excuse to play stylist, help you pick things out.
Or we can hit a quieter store later, somewhere outside of town, where you won't run into anyone you know.
You don't have to prove anything to a bunch of people who don't matter. "
"You make it sound easy," she said.
"It's not," he said. "But that doesn't mean we can't do it."
She stared at the dashboard for another long moment, her breathing slowly evening out. "Can we go home?"
Home. The word landed in his chest like a fist wrapped in velvet. She'd called his house home. His half-finished, barely unpacked, still-figuring-it-out house.
"Yeah," he said. "Home it is. But I want to call Diaz first and let her know Gavin is in town. Either still or again."
"Okay." She inhaled deeply, squared her shoulders, and stared straight out through the windshield.
Colby touched the call button on his steering wheel and told the system to dial Marisol Diaz. Sergeant Diaz answered on the second ring.
"Landon."
"Diaz."
She chuckled on the other end but stayed silent, waiting.
"Gavin Hartley is in town. Sabrina and I were walking into the clothing store on Main, and she spotted him outside the café, talking on his phone."
"Thanks for the heads-up. Is Sabrina safe?"
"I've got her. She decided to head back to the house and stay out of Hartley's sight line."
"Smart. I'll run down and see if I can have a chat with him. Thanks for letting me know."
The call ended. Colby put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb, leaving Main Street and Gavin Hartley behind.
Sabrina didn't speak the entire drive home.
She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed on the passing scenery, her jaw set in a tight line that he was learning to read.
She wasn't shutting down. She was processing.
Filing everything away, trying to make sense of a world that kept throwing new complications at her.
He let her have the silence. Sometimes that was the kindest thing you could give someone.
The afternoon passed in quiet rhythms. Sabrina retreated to the spare room for a while, and he gave her the space, busying himself with small tasks around the house.
He tightened the loose railing on the back porch.
He sorted through one of the boxes in the living room and actually found places for most of what was inside.
He made a grocery list, because if she was going to keep cooking like she had this morning, he needed to give her something better to work with than sad vegetables and freezer bread.
When she emerged in the late afternoon, she looked steadier. Still tired, still carrying the weight of everything, but more herself. She'd changed into the joggers and T-shirt from the bag Bree had dropped off, her hair loose and skimming her shoulders.
That night, the house settled around them in a way it hadn't yet.
Colby sat on the couch with one leg stretched out, flipping through channels until he found some cooking competition where everyone yelled about sauce, timers, and plating. The noise filled the room without demanding anything from him.
Sabrina walked in carrying a bowl of popcorn and the worn blue blanket he'd thrown over the back of the couch when he first moved in and never thought about again. Her hair was still down, catching the lamplight.
"I made peace with your microwave," she said, passing him the bowl. "It only tried to burn one bag."
"Progress," he said.
She settled into the opposite corner of the couch, folding her legs underneath her. Then she flicked the blanket open and spread it across both their laps like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He adjusted automatically, shifted so she had room. Her knee brushed his thigh through the fabric. A small contact. Barely anything.
It felt like she'd put her hand directly on his chest.
On the TV, a contestant tried to stack food into something that looked like modern art and failed spectacularly. The tower collapsed, and the contestant's face cycled through five stages of grief in three seconds.
"This is chaos," she said.
"Organized chaos," he said. "They know what they're doing. They just pretend they don't until the last ten seconds."
"Like you at the firehouse?" she asked.
"Something like that."
Her hand dipped into the popcorn bowl, her fingers brushing against his before she pulled back with a handful.
"Sorry," she said.
"For what?"
"For taking over your couch. Your kitchen. Your life." She rolled her eyes at herself. "I feel like a barn cat that wandered in from the rain and decided this was my place now."
"I like barn cats," he said.
"You don't look like a cat person."
"I'm a 'things that decide to trust you after a rough stretch' person," he said. "Species is optional."
She went quiet for a moment. On the screen, the show's host announced a twist that made all the contestants groan.
"I don't trust my own judgment right now," she said finally.
"I stayed with a man who treated me like a badly performing employee.
I kept an inn running for years and still didn't see the fire coming until it was too late.
My grandparents' house went up in flames, and I didn't smell smoke until the ceiling was already falling.
" She shook her head. "Maybe 'barn cat' is generous. "
He turned his head toward her. "You got out of that relationship. You ran a place that gave people somewhere to rest. You woke up in a burning building and got your guests out alive." He held her gaze when she finally met his eyes. "Don't rewrite yourself into the problem."
Her throat worked as she swallowed. She pulled the blanket higher, tucking it around her hips. The edge brushed against his hand where it rested on his thigh. He left his palm where it was.
"Do you have regrets like that?" she asked quietly. "Ones that live in your chest and won't leave."
"Yeah," he said. "Plenty. Calls I replay in the middle of the night.
People I wish I'd reached faster. Things I should have said, or shouldn't have.
" He shrugged one shoulder, a small motion.
"Some days I carry them better than others.
Some days I shove them in a box in the back of my head and pay attention to whoever's right in front of me instead. "
"Who's in front of you right now?" she asked, but her voice had already gone softer, like she knew the answer.
"You," he said.
She turned her head, searching his face with those tired, too-perceptive eyes. "Is it weird that I feel safer here than I did in my own house for the last year of my life?"
"No," he said. "That feels pretty understandable."
"Even with sticky faucets," she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her face.
"Especially with sticky faucets," he said. "Builds character."
Her lips quirked. She leaned back a little, just enough that her shoulder brushed his arm. The contact was light. Intentional. Testing.
He could have moved. He didn't.
A few minutes later, her head tipped sideways until it rested against his upper arm. He felt the weight of it through his shirt, the slight pull on the fabric. Her hair tickled the skin of his arm.
He slowed his breathing, made himself still, so he wouldn't spook her.
Every instinct he had wanted to slide his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer. To feel her tucked against his chest instead of just leaning on his arm. To wrap himself around her and keep her safe from everything that had been chasing her for longer than the fire.
But she'd been through enough in the last forty-eight hours. The last year. The last, however long she'd spent with a man who counted her glasses and called her stupid. She needed steadiness, not someone else making claims on her.
He wasn't going to cross that line. Not tonight. Maybe not ever, unless she crossed it first.
He kept his arm where it was, braced along the back of the couch. Available. Solid. Nothing more than she asked for.
Under the blanket, her hand moved. Her fingers found the edge of his, curled into the fabric right beside his palm. She didn't take his hand. She didn't have to.
Her breathing evened out, slow and steady. The tight line between her brows smoothed a little, not all the way, but enough. Some of the tension bled out of her shoulders.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
"I'm closer to it here than anywhere else," she murmured, her eyes still closed.
"We can work with that," he said.
He watched the chaos unfold on the TV screen without really seeing it. The house was still half-finished. The walls were mostly bare. The boxes waited in their corners, patient and accusing. The cabinet door would probably find a new way to stick by next week.
But with Sabrina's head resting against his arm and her fingers hovering near his under the blanket, the place felt more like home than any roof he'd had in a long time.
He stayed still and let her inch closer.
And for the first time since he'd signed the papers on this house, he thought maybe he understood why he'd wanted it so badly. Not for the walls or the foundation or the potential it represented.
For moments like this one. For someone to share it with. For a reason to stop running and stay.
Outside, the night settled over Copper Moon, and somewhere in the distance, the ocean kept its eternal rhythm, waves rolling in and out like the breathing of something vast and patient.
Inside, Colby held perfectly still and let himself imagine, just for a moment, what it might feel like to have this every night.
It felt like hope. It felt like exactly the kind of thing he'd spent his whole life yearning for but didn't know how to find it.