“Not if we can help it,” Brian said.
He said it lightly, but Hank knew that under all the jokes and flirting, Brian watched everything. People, patterns, angles. The SEAL in him never really clocked out.
Bree hugged her sketchbook closer, then loosened her grip. “Maybe I should come down here tomorrow. Paint from the pits instead of the balcony.”
Hank’s first instinct was to say no. To tell her to stay in her room with the door locked, to watch from a safe distance where Marcus and his crew couldn’t touch her.
But she wasn’t a fragile thing to put on a shelf. She was a grown woman who’d survived losing her sister, who’d chosen to come here to try to live again. He didn’t get to cage that because it made him feel better.
“You can,” he said slowly. “If you want to be in the middle of it.”
Her chin tipped. “I don’t want to hide in my room. I’ve done enough of that.”
He nodded once. “Then we’ll make it safe.”
Brian looked at him. “How?”
“We put her here.” He gestured to a clear space between the trailer and the cooler. “Back against the wall, out of the main traffic. You or Colby walk her to the bathrooms or the concessions if I can’t. No wandering alone. You stay with her if you come down.”
Brian didn’t argue. “Deal.”
Bree blinked. “You’re all very sure I need guarding.”
“You’re new,” Brian said. “You don’t know which idiots to avoid yet. That’s all.”
“And Marcus already put a target on you by sniffing around,” Brian added. “He likes to poke at anything Hank cares about.”
Bree’s gaze swung back to Hank. “Do you?”
“Do I what?” he asked.
“Care,” she said softly.
The question hung there, suspended between engine noise and gull cries and the distant crash of waves.
He didn’t look away. “Yeah. I do.”
Her breath shivered out, a tiny hitch he felt more than heard.
“Okay,” she said. “Then I’ll trust you.”
It wasn’t just about walking through the pits. They both knew that.
Colby cleared his throat. “On that note, we’ve got a riders’ meeting in twenty. Hank, you need to read the updated grid.”
Hank nodded, but his attention stayed on Bree a second longer. “You going back to the hotel?”
Bree glanced toward the hotel. “I probably should. I'll see if Carmen is alright. She loves her sister but hates the drama surrounding her connection with the Red Dragons.”
Bree shifted closer. “You’ll text me later?”
He hadn’t asked for her number yet, but somehow that didn’t surprise him. She reached for his phone, fingers brushing his as she took it, entered her number, and handed it back.
“There,” she said. “Now you can send me the telemetry or dog pictures or whatever it is race guys share.”
He smiled. “Race guys share split times and gear ratios.”
“Thrilling.”
