Chapter 22 #2
“I wrote the recommendation myself,” he said, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “You two make a good team.”
“We do.” She seized the opening. “Just like you and I make a good team.”
His eyes finally met hers fully, and what she saw there—hurt and an utter lack of hope—nearly broke her.
“Sabrina.” Her name sounded raw in his throat. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I love you.” The words burst from her with the force of a flash flood, unstoppable and transformative. “I love you, and I was wrong, and I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
Noah went completely still, wariness draped around him. “What happened in the cave—”
“Changed everything,” she finished for him. “Not because I almost died, but because it forced me to see what I’d been running from. You were right, Noah. About all of it. About us.”
He didn’t move, but he felt farther away all at once. “I don’t want you to say things you don’t mean because you’re grateful to be alive.”
“This isn’t gratitude.” She pushed herself straighter in the bed, needing him to understand. “This is truth. The guy who chased me into that cave—he was there because of Annie Ross. Because we were getting too close to whatever happened to her.”
Noah’s focus sharpened instantly and he fairly bristled. “You were attacked? You didn’t tell me—”
“Because the guy was already gone,” she said softly. “But that’s all I could think about while I was trapped. That you’d have protected me. And I’ve spent my whole life fighting against letting anyone get close enough to do that. Not because I like being alone. Because I was scared.”
Noah crossed his arms. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I was afraid. Not of you, but of what you make me feel.
” The words tumbled out now, unstoppable.
“My whole life, I’ve defined strength as not needing anyone.
I thought being independent meant doing it alone.
Not being part of a family. Not being part of a team.
But that’s not strength—it’s isolation. And it’s exhausting. ”
“Sabrina—”
“Let me finish. Please.” She drew a shaky breath.
“When you asked me to move in with you, I panicked. I thought you were trying to crowd me, to arrange my life to suit you, that you didn’t know me at all.
When, really, you knew exactly what I needed.
You were offering to share your life, your family.
I couldn’t see the difference because I’d never had anyone offer me partnership before. Not real partnership.”
Noah’s jaw worked as he stared at a spot above her head. Not interrupting. But not flinging himself into her arms either.
But she couldn’t stop confessing all of the things in her heart. Even if he turned his back on them.
“The cave showed me what real isolation feels like,” she continued. “And it’s not freedom. It’s emptiness. I don’t want to be alone anymore, Noah. I want to be part of Team Saboah Nobina forever. I want you.”
“Sabrina.” He ran a hand through his hair, that familiar gesture that made her heart ache. “I want to believe you mean these things. That this is real.”
“It is real,” she insisted, wishing he’d moved close enough for her to touch him. But she understood why he hadn’t.
He made a noise in his throat. “You nearly died today. That changes how people see things, feel things. I’ve watched it happen a dozen times in this work.”
“This isn’t about the cave,” she said, though she could see he didn’t believe her.
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But I need to know that when you’re healed, when you’re back to being you with both feet firmly on the ground, you’ll still want the same things.”
She nodded. That was fair.
But then the distance yawned again, opening up this fissure between them that she couldn’t cross without different equipment, skills she didn’t have at her disposal.
Bleakness pulled at his expression. “I can’t do this again, Sabrina. I need more than words in a hospital room.”
The truth in his statement stung, but she couldn’t deny it. “What can I do, Noah?”
His eyes softened marginally. “I don’t know. Focus on getting better. We can talk after you’re discharged.”
“Noah—”
“I’ll keep Ripley,” he said, pausing at the threshold. “Until you’re back home.”
And then he was gone, leaving Sabrina with the echo of all the things she hadn’t managed to say. No, she’d said them.
Noah hadn’t wanted to hear them.
* * *
Noah dumped his cold coffee into the kitchen sink and stepped back onto the porch, restlessness driving him to move, to do something other than replay the look on Sabrina’s face in that hospital room on an endless loop.
The evening light painted golden stripes across the training yard, burnishing the equipment to copper.
Dancer lay at his feet, but his usually steady partner kept glancing toward Ripley, who prowled the yard perimeter with the nervous energy of a dog who sensed something wrong in her world.
Smart dog. Everything was wrong.
Sabrina’s voice echoed in his head, those three devastating words that should have been cause for celebration.
I love you.
Said in that clear, fierce voice that matched the fire in her eyes. The same fire that had drawn him that first day at the recovery site. The fire that had been missing when she’d walked away from him and his too-fast, too-much declaration.
Too much. That was the story of his life, wasn’t it? All throttle, no brakes, Hurricane Noah roaring ashore and leaving people scattered in his wake.
Except Sabrina hadn’t scattered. She’d been right there in front of him, saying the very words he’d been aching to hear.
And he’d walked away.
Because hearing those words now—after a near-death experience—triggered something in him. What had changed? Why was the offer of his entire soul good enough now, but it hadn’t been a week ago?
Dancer’s head came up sharply, ears perked toward the front of the property. A moment later, Ripley’s stance mirrored his, both dogs alert and focused on the same thing.
Noah’s heart rate spiked, his body instantly ahead of his brain. Because his body knew who was on his doorstep before conscious thought could form.
Sabrina.
Everything in him lurched toward her, even as caution kept his feet planted.
The sharp knock confirmed it. Noah inhaled deeply, pulling oxygen into lungs that suddenly felt starved, and headed for the door.
He passed his reflection in the hall mirror, hair sticking up from where he’d raked his hands through it, jaw darkened with stubble, eyes hollow with a night’s worth of replayed arguments with himself.
Perfect. Just how he wanted to look when facing the woman who held his heart in her hands.
When he opened the door, Ripley shot past him, nearly knocking Sabrina over in her enthusiasm. Her laugh, that rich, throaty sound he still heard in his sleep, curled around his heart like a fist. Like it always had. Like it always would.
“You should be resting,” he said, fighting the urge to drag her into his arms and make sure she was real. That she was here. That she was okay.
“I’m fine.” She knelt to greet Ripley, fingers finding the dog’s sweet spots with the ease of true partnership. When she straightened, her eyes locked with his, steady and sure. “Noah, I need to talk to you.”
He crossed his arms, a flimsy barrier against the hope threatening to crack him open. “I’m listening.”
“Not here.” She gestured toward his living room. “Can we sit?”
Every instinct screamed to protect himself this time, but when had he ever listened to caution where Sabrina was concerned?
He led her to the couch where they’d spent so many evenings planning training sessions, tossing ideas back and forth about Annie Ross, trading stories that somehow never felt like enough.
He could map every moment he’d fallen deeper in this room, on this couch, measuring the distance between them in heartbeats and half smiles.
“I submitted our registration as an official SAR team,” she said without preamble, the declaration hitting him like a tree branch snapping in gale force winds.
“You what?”
She pulled out her phone, bringing up an email confirmation that she flashed in his direction.
“Team Colton-West, pending final approval.” The determination in her eyes matched the set of her jaw. “I want us to work together, Noah. Professionally and in every other way.”
Something cracked inside him, hairline fractures spider-webbing through the walls he’d hastily erected. Professional partnership. A commitment in writing, a declaration of intent so Sabrina-esque that it almost made him smile. Almost.
“Sabrina—”
“I know what you’re thinking.” She leaned forward, all that wild energy he’d fallen for focused into laser intensity.
“That I’m reacting to trauma. That I’ll change my mind again.
” Her voice dropped, an intimacy that wrapped around him silkily.
“This isn’t impulse, Noah. This is choice.
This is me, both feet on the ground, choosing us. ”
Her certainty pulled at him, tested boundaries he’d reinforced through a sleepless night. But he’d been burned before—not just by Sabrina but by everyone who’d ever found his hurricane-force enthusiasm too intense, his passion overwhelming, his tendency to go all in terrifying.
She was just the one who had hurt him the most.
“Partnership registration is a start,” he said, “but—”
“I brought something else.” The vulnerability in her expression nearly shattered his remaining defenses as she held up a toothbrush. “To prove I’m serious.”
“A toothbrush?” The words escaped before he could stop them, defensive and edged. “What, so you spend the night occasionally and, oh yay, you have your own toothbrush. That’s not what I want from you, Sabrina. It’s not enough.”
A smile ghosted across her lips. “Not just a toothbrush. Everything else, too.”
“What do you mean, everything else?”
“Look out your window.”
Confusion replaced wariness as he rose and crossed to the front window, pushing aside the curtain to reveal—
His pulse stuttered.