Bree looked at him for a long moment, then eased onto the driftwood beside him. She left a polite few inches between them, but he could feel the heat of her body along his arm.
“I’m not used to men shrugging off that kind of thing,” she said. “My brother-in-law, Charlie, would still be pacing and planning comebacks.”
“He has kids. Different pressure.” Hank nudged a small shell with the toe of his boot. “Besides, I’m used to people staring at the limp. Since I’ve finished with therapy and was told there wasn’t anything more that could be done for me, I’ve learned to live with it. It’s part of who I am.”
Her gaze dipped automatically to his right leg, then back up. “Is it still painful?”
“Depends on the day.” He rolled his ankle once, easing a tight pull in the muscle. “Shrapnel took out more than they could fix. The docs did what they could. The rest is just noise I work around.”
“Noise.” She tasted the word, thoughtful. “And racing quiets it?”
“Sometimes.” He glanced at her. “Sometimes it turns it up. But out there, at least I know what I’m fighting.”
Bree rested her hands on her thighs, fingers laced loosely. “I get that.”
He waited. She didn’t look like she was sure she wanted to explain, but she did it anyway.
“After Bryn died, everyone kept telling me to keep painting,” she said. “Like it was a faucet I could turn on to feel better. ‘Do what you love, Bree, it will help.’” Her voice softened into imitation. “Only every time I picked up a brush, all I could see was the hospital room. Her hands. The way she looked at me when she asked me to be okay.”
His chest tightened.
“I started avoiding my studio,” she continued. “I told myself I would go in tomorrow, then the next day. Then I just stopped saying anything about it at all.”
“How long?” he asked quietly.
She blew out a breath. “Almost a year. The stuff I did try to paint was… wrong. Muddy. Like I was painting with fog instead of color.”
He thought of the sunrise outside her window, of her on the balcony that morning, brush moving in small, sure strokes. “The canvas you had up there today did not look wrong.”
“It surprised me.” She traced a small knot in the wood between them. “I was just blocking in shapes at first. When I looked back at it, there you were. You and Julie on the track. I did not mean to put you in it.”
He tilted his head. “Is that good or bad?”
“It is something,” she said. “Which is more than I have had in months.”
He let that sit for a moment. The wind shifted, bringing the faintest hint of salt and sunblock from farther down the beach. Out here, it was softer, less crowded.
“You know,” he said, “my granddad used to say the only bad laps were the ones you did not run.”
She looked over, the hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. “Is everything a racing metaphor with you?”
“Not everything. Sometimes I talk about coffee. Or torque.”
That pulled a quiet laugh from her. The sound threaded under his skin, warm and light.
“What would he think?” she asked. “Your grandfather. About you racing Julie in the Cup.”
Hank pictured the old man, wearing an oil-stained ball cap, and hands as nicked up as Hank’s were now. “He would tell me to keep my line clean and not let any yahoo push me around on the straightaway.” His throat tightened unexpectedly. “And he would be proud. Even if I came in last. He cared more about the run than the trophy. He and my father worked so hard to bring this Cup home. But they did it with honesty and hard work.”
Bree’s hand found his forearm, light as a bird landing. “Your dad?”
“He likes the trophies.” The answer came with a wry edge he didn’t bother to hide. “He wants that Cup on the mantel. Says the James men have been chasing it long enough.”
She rubbed her thumb once along his skin, absent and soothing. “And what do you want?”
He had been answering that question for months without really hearing himself. The Cup. Redemption. A way out. The words had worn grooves in his brain.
Right now, with her beside him and the track blessedly out of sight, the answer felt different.
