She opened the text anyway.
State’s filing preliminary charges against the shell company guys. Test day vendor flipped. You two are officially listed as cooperating witnesses, not targets. Keep your heads up and your doors locked. And go live your lives.
Bree’s chest softened. She typed back with one hand, the other still curled unconsciously to feel the ring.
We plan to. Thanks for keeping the monsters out of the corners.
A second message buzzed in almost immediately. This one was from Kara.
Inspection scheduled. Sellers are fixing the roof issue. You’re on track for closing in four weeks, and they've agreed to let you rent from them immediately so you can get out of the hotel. Hope you like signing your names a lot.
Bree set the phone down.
“Well?” Hank asked.
“Diaz says the net’s tightening,” Bree said. “We’re officially in the ‘good guys’ column. Kara says the house is moving forward. We can move in right away and pay rent to the owners for the four weeks we're waiting on closing.”
“Big day,” he said.
“You just proposed,” she said. “Understatement of the year.”
He grinned. “That too.”
She looked around the space; the half-sanded floor, the patched wall where Jason had already started prepping for future hanging rails. Bryn’s painting drying in the corner, Colby’s projection marks still faint on the far bricks, and the new canvas waiting.
Her gaze fell back to the painting of Hank.
“I want to finish something,” she said.
“I thought you just did,” he said, glancing at the ring.
“That too,” she said. “But I meant this. I want to sign it.”
She picked up a thinner brush, dipped it in dark paint, and stepped close to the bottom corner of the canvas. Her hand shook once, then steadied as she wrote her name. Not the careful gallery signature she’d used in the city, the one that tried to sound older and cooler than she felt. Just her real name, in the script her grandmother had taught her as a kid.
Aubree.
She stepped back. The letters looked right there, small but sure.
“There,” she said. “First official Copper Moon piece finished.”
Hank slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. “Second,” he said, nodding toward Bryn’s painting.
“That one’s close,” she said. “Not quite there.”
“It can take its time,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
She leaned into him, feeling the steady beat of his heart against her back.
“What happens now?” she asked quietly.
“Now we get used to calling each other fiancé,” he said. “We meet with Jason and Kara and Liz. We start arguing about tile choices and shop signage. Colby freaks out his captain by asking for transfer paperwork. Brian designs at least twenty terrible logo options before we talk him down to five.”
“And me?” she asked.
“You,” he said, kissing her shoulder, “paint. You teach. You yell at me when I leave greasy handprints on your clean walls. You hang that,” he nodded at the canvas, “wherever you want. And when it all feels like too much, you come upstairs and breathe in this light until it doesn’t.”
She turned, facing him fully. “That sounds like a plan,” she said.
