“No,” she said softly. “You’re not.”
He kissed her, slow and sure. The taste of cheap champagne and pizza, and something that felt a lot like the future, slipped between them.
The string lights hummed softly overhead. Outside, somewhere beyond the open bay, the harbor whispered against the shore.
Hank rested his forehead against hers when they broke apart.
“We did it,” he said again, needing to hear it out loud.
“We did,” she said. “And tomorrow we keep doing it.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed.
He had no idea exactly how they’d juggle construction schedules, loan payments, racing commitments, and house repairs. There would be arguments and setbacks and nights where this string of lights was replaced by flickering work lamps and exhaustion.
But standing here, in the echoing center of the life they were building, Hank James felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Home was no longer an idea he’d lost in the rearview mirror. It was right here, watching him with green eyes and paint on her wrist, asking him to stay.
He planned to.
Chapter 25
The morning after the party, the warehouse smelled like leftover pizza, cold concrete, and the faint ozone of overworked fairy lights.
By early afternoon, it smelled like primer and coffee instead.
Bree stood barefoot on a drop cloth in the upstairs space, brush in hand, the light from the big windows stretching long across the floorboards. Someone, probably Jason, had pulled out the last of the old shelving and swept; a fine dust still clung to the corners, but the bones of her future studio were visible now.
In the far corner, a stretched canvas leaned against the wall, the paint on it still drying. Bryn’s face emerged there in color and motion, not as Colby’s grand mural concept, but as a more intimate study; eyes crinkled in laughter, hair tucked under a sun hat, the suggestion of the track behind her. It wasn’t finished, not yet, but it was far enough along that Bree could step back without wanting to tear it in half.
Today, though, was for something else.
Two easels stood in front of the windows. One held a blank canvas she’d primed last night. The other held the painting she’d started at the hotel weeks ago, in that liminal space between the race and everything that came after.
Hank on the track.
She’d painted him from memory, from slow-motion replay, from the way her chest had clenched watching him lean into those corners like he’d been born there. Then life had rushed in: investigations, permits, meetings, and house tours. The canvas had followed, propped against walls and tucked in corners until it finally found its place here, in the light.
Now she stood in front of it, brush hovering.
The basics were already there. His body tucked low over the bike, the curve of the fairing, the suggestion of the crowd in blurred strokes. But the faceplate of his helmet was still rough, the background too clean. It felt like the painting of a man racing, not of the man she’d come to know off track; the one who triple-checked her locks and teased her into breathing when fear pinched too tight.
She wanted both.
Her phone chimed from the crate she was using as a side table. She ignored it. The outside world could wait.
She dipped her brush in a thin wash of color and met the canvas where the helmet curve framed his gaze. She added depth there, shadows that suggested the intensity that had pulled her in from the beginning. Small strokes, barely there, that hinted at vulnerability under that focus.
She worked in slow layers, stepping back often. The background shifted as she added movement; streaks of color that suggested speed without pinning it down to specific banners or logos. The track became less a place and more a feeling.
After an hour, she set the brush down and circled the easel.
It looked like him. Not in the literal sense, though anyone who followed the series would know who she’d painted. But in the way that mattered.
The risk. The joy. The weight he carried and the defiance with which he kept getting back on the bike anyway.
Her throat tightened.
