Chapter 8 #3
He made a sound then, quiet and low in his chest, and it lit up every nerve ending she'd thought she'd packed away in boxes marked "do not open."
The kiss remained gentle, but there was depth in it. Honesty. No performance, no angles, no calculation about what she was supposed to be feeling or doing. Just two people meeting in the middle of the night, finding something real in the wreckage.
She pulled back a fraction, her breath shallow, her lips tingling. "I'm not... I don't want to do this because I'm scared. I don't want this to be about running from something."
"I know," he said. "Do you want to stop?"
She shook her head slowly, deliberately. "I want to remember what it feels like to want something that isn't bad for me. To choose something instead of having it chosen for me. I want..." She struggled for the words. "I want to feel like myself again. Whoever that is now."
His hand tightened at her waist, fingers pressing gently into the fabric of her sleep shirt. "You're not bad for me, Sabrina."
"I meant the other way around," she whispered. "I don't want to be stupid. I don't want to make another mistake because I'm lonely and scared, and you're here being kind."
"You're not stupid," he said, the words fierce in their quietness.
"Not even close. And this isn't kindness.
Kindness was letting you stay in my spare room.
This is..." He paused, searching for the right word.
"This is wanting. I want you. I've wanted you since I walked into that hospital room and found you staring at the wall like you were trying to see through it to somewhere better. "
Her breath caught on something that might have been a sob or might have been a laugh. "That's a terrible first impression."
"It was honest," he said. "I like honest."
He shifted, easing them both backward so they were more reclined against the pillows piled at the headboard. He moved slowly, telegraphing every adjustment, letting her feel each motion before he made it. His body stayed braced, giving her all the space to pull away if she changed her mind.
She didn't.
She followed him down, her leg sliding along his over the tangled sheets, her chest pressed against his side. The thin cotton of her sleep shirt did nothing to hide how hard her heart was pounding, how fast her breath was coming.
"Still okay?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear.
"Yeah," she breathed. "More than okay."
He kissed her again, deeper this time. His tongue traced the seam of her lips in a question, and she answered by opening to him, by pulling him closer, by letting herself want without apologizing for it.
Heat curled low in her belly, spreading outward along every nerve. It had been so long since she'd felt this, this warmth that wasn't fear, this urgency that wasn't panic. She'd forgotten what it was like to want something just because it felt good, just because she chose it.
Her hand found the hem of his T-shirt and slipped underneath, her palm meeting warm skin over hard muscle. His stomach jumped under her touch, a reflexive tightening, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
"Sabrina," he said, her name coming out rough.
"If this is too much..." she started.
"It's not," he cut in. "God, it's not. I just need you to know something before we go any further."
She stilled, her hand flat against his ribs. "What?"
"I'm all in if we do this." His eyes held hers, dark and serious. "No halfway. No using each other to patch holes, and then pretending it didn't matter in the morning. If this happens, it means something to me. I need it to mean something to you, too."
Emotion surged in her chest, a wave so strong it threatened to pull her under. "You make it really hard to pretend anything with you."
"Good," he said. "Then we're on the same page."
She helped him tug his T-shirt over his head, the fabric catching briefly before pulling free. He tossed it somewhere toward the foot of the bed without looking.
The sight of him bare from the waist up hit her harder than she'd expected.
Solid chest dusted with dark hair, the lines of muscle defined without being showy.
And scars. They scattered across his shoulder and down his ribs, some pale and old, some newer and pink, a map of damage she hadn't known he carried.
She reached out, tracing one that curved along his collarbone with careful fingers.
"Fire?" she asked.
"A couple of them," he said. "A couple from before that. Motorcycle accidents, back when I was young and dumb and thought protective gear was optional." His mouth quirked. "I've been known to do stupid things at high speeds."
She traced another scar, this one on his ribs, longer and more deliberate-looking. "What about this one?"
"Surgery," he said. "Collapsed lung after a bad call. Beam came down. I didn't move fast enough."
"You almost died," she said, the realization settling cold in her stomach.
"Almost doesn't count." He caught her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm. "I'm still here."
"I should be more worried about that," she said. "About what you do. About the risks you take."
"You're allowed to be," he said. "We can schedule your lecture for later. Right now I'd rather focus on something else."
Warmth rolled through her at the easy banter, at the way he could make her smile even now, even with the ghost of her nightmare still lingering in the corners of the room. It steadied her enough to reach for the hem of her own shirt.
For a heartbeat, she wanted to hesitate.
To flinch. To cover herself and apologize for every way she wasn't perfect, every scar of her own, every part of her body that didn't match some imaginary ideal.
Gavin's voice whispered in the back of her mind, a catalog of criticisms she'd absorbed over years of being told she wasn't enough.
She pulled the shirt over her head anyway.
Colby's gaze traveled over her, slow and deliberate, and his expression went soft and fierce all at once. Like he was seeing something precious. Something worth protecting.
"Beautiful," he said simply. No hesitation. No qualification.
Her eyes burned. "You need to see all of it. The mess. The damage. Everything."
"Yeah," he said. "I do. And it's still beautiful."
He touched her like that, too. Like she was beautiful, like she was worth taking time with.
His hands moved over her with deliberate care, learning the landscape of her body in slow, reverent passes.
He asked silent questions with every touch, pausing when she stiffened, resuming when she relaxed, reading her responses like a language he'd been studying for years.
When old fear pricked at the edges of her consciousness, when Gavin's voice tried to intrude, Colby anchored her with quiet words murmured against her skin.
With the steady weight of his palm at her hip.
With the simple, unwavering way he looked at her, like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing.
"Still with me?" he murmured at one point, his forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing hard.
"Yes," she whispered. "Don't stop."
He didn't.
Every move he made said the same thing: I'm here. I'm not him. I'm not leaving.
By the time they moved together fully, the panic had burned away completely, replaced by something hot and bright and terrifying in an entirely different way. She clung to him, fingers pressed into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks, breath catching on his name each time he moved.
When the release finally crested, it felt less like falling and more like breaking through a surface she hadn't known she was trapped beneath. Like she'd been underwater for so long, she'd forgotten what air tasted like, and now her lungs were filling with it for the first time in years.
He held her through it, his own release following moments later with a low groan against her neck. His body shuddered, then settled, still pressed close to hers.
For a long moment, the only sounds in the room were their breathing and the faint ticking of the house settling around them.
She lay there, his weight comforting rather than confining, his chest rising and falling against hers in a rhythm that was slowly returning to normal. Her mind tried to spin up into its usual anxious patterns and failed, too wrung out, too satisfied, too at peace to manufacture new fears.
He shifted enough to keep from crushing her but didn't pull away entirely. His arm stayed curved around her waist. Their legs stayed tangled, skin against skin, warmth pooling between them.
"You okay?" he asked quietly.
She turned her head to look at him. His hair was a disaster, dark strands sticking up in every direction.
His eyes were softer than she'd ever seen them, the usual intensity muted to something gentler, more vulnerable.
The lines at the corners had smoothed out, the tension he carried in his jaw finally released.
"I should be freaking out," she said. "By all logic, I should be having a complete meltdown right now. But I'm not."
"That's not a complaint, right?" A hint of his usual humor crept back into his voice.
"No." Her throat tightened with emotion she couldn't quite name. "I just... I feel like you see me. Actually, see me."
His brow furrowed slightly. "I do."
"Not my damage," she whispered. "Not the broken parts he spent years picking at.
Not the version of me that failed and fell apart and made terrible choices.
" She pressed her palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat strong and steady under her fingers.
"You look at me, and I don't feel like a broken thing you're trying to fix.
I feel like... like a person. Like someone you chose.
Not someone you got stuck with because you happened to be on duty when my life caught fire. "
His fingers tightened gently at her hip. "Sabrina."
"You see me," she said again, because it was the only way she could explain it. "Not what he tried to turn me into. Not what the fire left behind. Just... me."
He cupped her face with his free hand, his thumb brushing the damp corner of her eye where a tear had escaped without her permission.
"You're the strongest person I've ever met," he said. "And I've met a lot of strong people. Firefighters. Soldiers. People who've walked through worse than you can imagine and come out the other side. But none of them have what you have."
She huffed out a shaky breath. "That can't be true."
"Argue with me later," he said. "Right now I've got the floor."
Despite everything, despite the tears still threatening and the rawness of the moment, a small laugh slipped out of her. "Bossy."
"Honest," he corrected. "I saw you last night when you were falling apart.
I saw you today when we ran into your ex.
I saw you out on that land, looking at ashes and seeing cabins.
I saw you in my kitchen this morning, making breakfast like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And tonight, just now, I saw you trust me when every instinct in you probably screamed not to.
" His voice dropped, low and fervent. "You keep standing back up.
Even when you're shaking. That's not weakness.
That's the hardest kind of strength there is. "
She searched his face, looking for any sign that he was saying what he thought she wanted to hear. Any hint of performance or manipulation.
She found nothing but honesty.
"You make it easier to stand," she said finally.
"That's the idea," he said.
She rested her palm over his heart again, feeling the steady beat under her fingers, and let herself believe, just for a moment, that this was real. That she could have this. That wanting didn't have to end in disappointment or pain.
They lay there in the quiet, wrapped around each other in his half-finished house, in the spare bedroom with its bare walls and minimal furniture, and the truth settled over her with surprising clarity.
They weren't just two people sharing space because the worst had happened.
They were choosing this. Choosing each other. In the middle of the wreckage, in the aftermath of fire and fear and years of being told she wasn't worth choosing, they were building something new.
She let her eyes drift closed, her body sinking into the mattress, into his warmth, into the strange, fragile, solid thing growing between them like a seedling pushing through scorched earth.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, wanting didn't feel dangerous.
It felt like the start of something.
Outside, the night continued its slow progression toward dawn. Inside, Sabrina pressed closer to the man who'd walked into her disaster and decided to stay, and let herself imagine what it might be like to wake up without fear.
Not healed. Not fixed. Not magically transformed by a single night.
But not alone.
For now, that was enough. For now, that was everything.