“That was the idea.” He nodded toward the driftwood. “You can set up there, stay out of the wind, still see everything.”
Bree walked to the log and brushed sand from the top with her palm. “You’ve been keeping this spot to yourself all week, and you just decided to share?”
“I figured you earned it after surviving that confrontation with Marcus.”
Her mouth twisted. “Is he always like that?”
“Pretty much.” Hank shrugged. “He thinks if he rattles everybody, they’ll make mistakes.”
“Does it work on you?”
He sank onto the driftwood, elbows on his knees. The sand under his boots shifted, giving a little, the way his leg liked. “Used to. Not anymore.”
She stayed standing, arms folded loosely at her middle, hair lifting in the breeze. “You were very calm back there.”
“Bartender would have thrown us out otherwise.”
“That is not what I meant.” She shook her head. “He went right for your leg. Your service. He wanted blood.”
“Yeah.” Hank watched the water roll in toward the rocks and break apart, clean and predictable. “Guys like Marcus, they have one move. If you let it work once, they keep using it.”
“And you just decided not to let it work.”
“Something like that.”
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?”
