Chapter 13 #3
They worked through the afternoon, trading tasks and water bottles, falling into an easy rhythm that felt like something they'd been doing together for years instead of hours.
The foundation forms were set properly. The floor joists went down, measured and checked and measured again.
Sabrina helped carry planks and held up the first wall section while Jason tacked it into place with his nail gun, the sharp crack of each fastener punctuating the quiet.
"Don't let go until I say," Jason warned, positioning another nail.
"Not planning to," she said through gritted teeth, her arms trembling with the weight.
Colby watched the way she dug her heels into the dirt, her shoulders braced, her face set with the kind of determination that could move mountains if pointed in the right direction. When Jason finally called out that he had it secured, she stepped back, shaking out her arms.
"How's it feel?" Colby asked, nodding at the upright frame standing against the sky.
"Real," she said quietly. "Like it's not just in my head anymore."
By late afternoon, three walls stood against the fading light, skeletal but solid.
The roof would have to wait for more materials and another day of work, but the shape of the cabin was unmistakably there.
Doorway. Window openings. Corners that met at proper angles.
A space that had existed only in sketches and conversations now had bones.
Sabrina walked into the framed space slowly, stepping over the threshold of what would eventually be a door. She moved like she was entering a photograph she'd stared at for years, like she was afraid it might dissolve if she breathed too hard.
Colby followed, ducking under the header that would hold the door frame. Jason stayed outside, making a show of packing up tools and coiling extension cords, giving them space he probably thought they didn't notice.
Inside, the air felt different. Contained. Quieter somehow, even without walls to block the sounds of the evening birds and the distant traffic on the main road.
Sabrina moved to the opening that would hold the big window and rested her hands on the temporary brace, her fingers curling around the raw wood.
"This is the view," she said softly. "From the bed. This is what people will see when they wake up."
He looked past her at the trees, their leaves catching the golden hour light in shifting patterns. The branches swayed gently in a breeze he could barely feel, creating a kind of natural animation that no painting could capture.
"You picked well," he said.
She turned in a slow circle, taking in the bare studs, the rough plywood floor beneath her feet, the sky visible through the gaps where windows and roof would eventually go.
"Bathroom there," she said, pointing. "Tiny kitchen there.
Little table with two chairs over here, where you can see the trees while you eat breakfast." She stepped to one side, her hands shaping invisible furniture.
"Hooks by the door. A bench for shoes. A place to set your bag down and know you've arrived somewhere that wants you. "
"You're good at that," he said.
"At what?" she asked, turning to face him.
"Making people feel like they can exhale," he said. "Like the world's going to hold them up for a minute instead of always trying to knock them down."
Her gaze met his, and something unguarded sat there in the space between them. Hope and fear and want, all tangled together in a way that made his chest feel too tight.
"Do you really think people will come?" she asked. "That they'll find this place, out here in the middle of nowhere, and actually want to stay?"
"Yes," he said, without hesitation. "You build this the way you're building it, and they'll find it. Word gets around. People talk about the places that make them feel something. You're creating one of those places."
Her hand lifted, then fell back to her side. "It scares me how much I want this. How much I'm letting myself believe it could work."
He stepped closer, careful on the uneven floor where subfloor planks met bare earth, and reached for her hand. Her fingers were rough with the day's work, sawdust still caught in the creases of her palm. "Wanting something isn't the problem," he said.
"What is?" she asked.
"Letting someone tell you that you don't deserve it," he said. "That's the problem. That's what messes people up. And you're not doing that again. Not if I have anything to say about it."
Her fingers slid between his, interlacing, holding on with a strength that surprised him. "You say that like you're very sure."
"I am," he said.
They stood in the middle of her half-framed cabin, hands linked, the evening light filtering through the gaps in the framing around them.
Outside, Jason hummed something tuneless under his breath as he loaded tools into his truck.
Inside, it felt like the world had shrunk down to just this space, just the two of them, just the woman in front of him and the future she was trying to build.
Sabrina took a breath, then another, her shoulders settling. "I can see it now," she said quietly. "Not just this cabin. The others. Little paths connecting them. People arriving with suitcases full of whatever they're running from and leaving with something lighter in their chest."
He watched her face as she spoke, the way her eyes lit up when she talked about it, the way her whole body seemed to lean toward the vision she was describing. She wasn't just planning a business. She was imagining a kind of healing.
"That's the future I want," she said. "Not the one where I sold everything and lived in some beige condo because it looked tidy on paper. Not the one where I let Gavin reduce me to someone small and scared and sorry for existing."
He lifted their joined hands and rested his forehead against hers, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath. "Then that's the one you're building. And I'm going to be right here, handing you nails."
Her free hand settled against his chest, right over his heart. His pulse kicked hard beneath her palm, and he didn't try to hide it.
"You really think I can pull this off?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I know you can," he said. "I've seen you run an inn with one hand while putting out fires with the other, sometimes literally. This is you starting from the ground up with people behind you who actually want you to succeed. That's not a gamble. That's a win waiting to happen."
She closed her eyes for a second, leaning into the contact. When she opened them again, there was less fear there and more of that stubborn, bright thing that had been growing stronger every day since he'd pulled her out of the smoke.
"Colby?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Thank you for seeing this," she said. "For standing in a half-built box with me and calling it a future."
He swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat, the words pressing up against his ribs like they wanted out. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."
He didn't say the rest out loud. Not yet.
That somewhere between the first stake in the ground and this moment standing under a bare header, something in him had shifted.
This had started as helping a woman get back on her feet, offering a hand because that's what you did when someone was drowning.
Somewhere along the way, without his permission, it had become something else entirely.
He just held her hand, forehead touching hers, and let the bones of the cabin rise around them like the outline of a life he very much wanted to belong to.
Outside, Jason's truck rumbled to life, and the man called out something about seeing them bright and early tomorrow. Neither of them moved to answer.
The copper moon was beginning to rise, just visible through the gaps in the framing, and its light turned everything it touched into something that looked like a promise.