Always, he answered. Now turn the TV on and pretend I am very calm and very professional down here.
Liar, she sent, the letters a little wobbly under her thumb.
She set the phone down and crossed to the TV. The remote lay on the dresser; she grabbed it and clicked through channels until Copper Moon’s logo appeared in the corner of the screen, a little stylized crescent tucked beside the network name.
The feed showed highlights from yesterday: bikes flicking through the long curve by the dunes; slow-motion shots of sand spraying; riders’ bodies low and fluid. A pair of commentators sat in a booth with the ocean behind them; bright polos; teeth a little too white; voices a little too cheerful.
She muted them for a moment and went to the balcony door.
Habit tugged at her, as strong as the tide. That balcony had become her studio; her favorite place in Copper Moon; all that space and motion framed in glass.
Her hand closed around the handle.
She could feel the cool metal against her palm; the subtle give when she pulled, just enough to crack the door; the rush of air that would follow; the roar of engines coming in clean instead of muffled.
Hank’s voice threaded through the temptation.
Hotel room, door locked. No balcony, no boardwalk.
She let the handle go.
Her fingers left little crescents on the wood where she had squeezed too hard. She stepped back and tugged the curtains closer together until the view outside was just a faint glow.
“Fine,” she said under her breath. “You win.”
She grabbed her sketchbook and pencils from the side table and curled up on the end of the bed. When she unmuted the TV, the commentators had shifted to live shots; the camera perched somewhere high above the pits, looking down on the grid of trailers, awnings, and taped-off rectangles.
From up here, the world she had walked through yesterday looked like a toy set; tiny people moving between splashes of color; the bikes slim as matchsticks on their stands.
She let her pencil start moving. Broad strokes first; blocking in the shapes; the canyon of haulers; the spine of the main lane. Her lines steadied her; always had. When the rest of her felt shaky, her hands usually remembered what to do with graphite and paper.
Her phone buzzed again.
Bree?
She smiled.
Yeah, she replied.
Love that you want to help, his next text read. Remember, the best thing you can do for me today is stay safe. Let me handle the ugly.
Heat prickled behind her eyes; not tears exactly; something heavier.
You handle the ugly, she wrote. I’ll handle the pretty.
Deal, he sent.
On screen, one of the cameras zoomed in on the tech inspection area. The announcers’ tone brightened; words like “pre-race checks” and “safety protocols” floated over the image.
She watched the officials move from bike to bike, checking levers, looking at screens, bending to peer into frame gaps. They looked oddly gentle with the machines, like doctors with patients.
A line of text ran along the bottom of the screen: identifiers; team names; numbers. She saw Hank’s name flick past: Hank James, number twenty-four; Copper Moon Performance.
Her chest gave that little lurch when she saw his name in print.
The camera shifted again, panning toward a section of pits she recognized even from this distance.
Red and black dominated the frame. The Red Dragons’ hauler gleamed; their pit taped off neatly. Heidi stood with one hand on her hip, sunglasses on, hair perfect, posture loose in a way that did not match the tension in her jaw.
