Chapter 25
The morning after the party, the warehouse smelled like leftover pizza, cold concrete, and the faint ozone of overworked fairy lights.
By early afternoon, it smelled like primer and coffee instead.
Bree stood barefoot on a drop cloth in the upstairs space, brush in hand, the light from the big windows stretching long across the floorboards.
Someone, probably Jason, had pulled out the last of the old shelving and swept; a fine dust still clung to the corners, but the bones of her future studio were visible now.
In the far corner, a stretched canvas leaned against the wall, the paint on it still drying.
Bryn’s face emerged there in color and motion, not as Colby’s grand mural concept, but as a more intimate study; eyes crinkled in laughter, hair tucked under a sun hat, the suggestion of the track behind her.
It wasn’t finished, not yet, but it was far enough along that Bree could step back without wanting to tear it in half.
Today, though, was for something else.
Two easels stood in front of the windows. One held a blank canvas she’d primed last night. The other held the painting she’d started at the hotel weeks ago, in that liminal space between the race and everything that came after.
Hank on the track.
She’d painted him from memory, from slow-motion replay, from the way her chest had clenched watching him lean into those corners like he’d been born there.
Then life had rushed in: investigations, permits, meetings, and house tours.
The canvas had followed, propped against walls and tucked in corners until it finally found its place here, in the light.
Now she stood in front of it, brush hovering.
The basics were already there. His body tucked low over the bike, the curve of the fairing, the suggestion of the crowd in blurred strokes.
But the faceplate of his helmet was still rough, the background too clean.
It felt like the painting of a man racing, not of the man she’d come to know off track; the one who triple-checked her locks and teased her into breathing when fear pinched too tight.
She wanted both.
Her phone chimed from the crate she was using as a side table. She ignored it. The outside world could wait.
She dipped her brush in a thin wash of color and met the canvas where the helmet curve framed his gaze. She added depth there, shadows that suggested the intensity that had pulled her in from the beginning. Small strokes, barely there, that hinted at vulnerability under that focus.
She worked in slow layers, stepping back often. The background shifted as she added movement; streaks of color that suggested speed without pinning it down to specific banners or logos. The track became less a place and more a feeling.
After an hour, she set the brush down and circled the easel.
It looked like him. Not in the literal sense, though anyone who followed the series would know who she’d painted. But in the way that mattered.
The risk. The joy. The weight he carried and the defiance with which he kept getting back on the bike anyway.
Her throat tightened.
“Hey,” a voice called from downstairs. “Are you planning on letting me in your secret upstairs club, or do I need special clearance?”
She smiled, wiping her hands on the rag draped over her shoulder. “Up here,” she called.
Boots thudded on the stairs. Hank appeared a moment later, one hand on the rail, the other carrying two takeout cups of coffee.
He’d shed his jacket somewhere, leaving him in a faded T-shirt and jeans, his hair still damp from a quick shower at the hotel. There was a smudge of something on his forearm, probably grease; she was starting to think it was a permanent feature.
“Delivery,” he said, holding out a cup. “Café Lila’s finest. She insisted I bring her regards and threatened bodily harm if you don’t come by for pie later.”
“I’m not sure that’s how that works,” Bree said, taking it. “But I’m not going to argue with pie.”
He stepped beside her, looking around. “It’s starting to look like a real place up here,” he said. “Less haunted storage, more artist lair.”
“That’s the goal,” she said.
He turned his attention to the easels. His gaze landed first on Bryn’s canvas in the corner. He walked over, stopping just short of touching it.
“She’s almost here,” he said softly.
Bree exhaled. “Yeah,” she said. “I kept trying to make it perfect. Then I remembered that’s not the point.”
“What is?” he asked, still studying the painting.
“That she’s more than the worst thing that ever happened to her,” Bree said. “That she was a person who laughed and swore and hogged the blankets. Not just a sad story about her last days.”
“And this helps,” he said.
“It helps me,” she said. “I hope it helps other people too.”
He nodded, then turned, eyes catching on the second canvas.
When he realized what he was looking at, he stilled.
“Is that… me?” he asked, almost cautiously.
She felt suddenly shy, which was ridiculous. They’d shared beds, showers, a thousand moments more intimate than this. Yet something about showing him how she saw him made her palms sweat.
“Yeah,” she said. “It started as a way to keep from spiraling while you were out there. I wanted to catch the way you looked on the track, like it’s the one place your brain quiets down.”
He stepped closer, mug dangling forgotten from his fingers.
The painted version of him leaned into the corner, background streaked in color. She’d deepened the shadows around his helmet, caught the angle of his shoulders, the way his hands held the bars like they were both weapon and lifeline.
“It’s not exact,” she rushed on. “I took some liberties. The crowd’s just a suggestion, and I left off the sponsor logos because I didn’t want to think about contracts. But…”
“Bree,” he said quietly.
She shut up.
He set his coffee on the crate beside hers and reached out, hovering his hand over the edge of the frame like he wanted to touch it but didn’t quite dare.
“You made me look…” He shook his head, searching for the word. “Whole,” he said finally. “Like I’m not just running from something.”
“That’s because you’re not,” she said. “Not anymore.”
His jaw flexed. His eyes stayed on the painting, but his voice had that rough edge she’d learned meant something important was scraping against his ribs.
“I’ve seen a lot of photos of myself on bikes,” he said. “Video, slow-mo replays, all that. They always look like someone I used to know. Like I’m watching a stranger who happens to have my name.”
He swallowed.
“This feels like me,” he said. “The me you see. I didn’t know how badly I wanted to know what that looked like.”
Her chest pulled tight. “I could do another one,” she said, half joking. “Something less dramatic. You on a stool in the shop, yelling at Brian about torque specs.”
“First of all, I don’t yell,” he said. “I passionately discuss.” He glanced at her. “Second, this is enough. More than.”
She stepped closer, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers.
“Good,” she said. “Because I planned on hanging this somewhere you can’t ignore it.”
“Like where?” he asked.
She considered. “House hallway,” she said. “Top of the stairs. So every time you leave, you remember who you are. And every time you come home, you remember what you’re walking back to.”
His breath hitched. He turned from the painting to her, really looking now.
“You want me in your hallway?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve already got you on my mortgage,” she said. “Kind of hard to walk that back.”
Something in his face softened, then set. Resolve, sure as any line he’d taken at ninety miles an hour.
He took a step back, just enough space to move. His hand went into his jeans pocket.
Her heart did something strange.
“Hank?” she asked.
“You remember when we sat in that awful plastic chair waiting for tech inspection,” he said. “Before any of this. When I told you I didn’t know how to want things that lasted.”
She did. It was burned into her memory, the smell of dry erase and gas, the way his voice had gone quiet.
“I remember,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” he said. “Apparently, self-reflection is a side effect of zoning hearings.”
She snorted, but her pulse thudded hard against her ribs.
“I used to think wanting things was the dangerous part,” he went on. “If you didn’t want anything too much, you couldn’t lose it. Then you walked in front of me on the racetrack, in this tiny harbor town, and every theory I had went out the window.”
He pulled his hand from his pocket.
A small velvet box sat in his palm.
Her mouth went dry. “Hank,” she whispered.
He smiled, nervous and a little wild. “I thought about doing some big speech at the board meeting,” he said. “Or down at the harbor, with a sunset and at least three bystanders filming. But that felt wrong. This feels right.”
He went down on one knee on the drop cloth, between splatters of primer and coffee rings.
Her world narrowed to him; the curve of his shoulders, the way his fingers tightened around the box, the deep, steady look in his eyes.
“Aubree Spencer,” he said. “You’re the bravest person I know.
You stayed when every part of you wanted to run.
You took my chaotic life and somehow made it feel like it points somewhere.
I want to spend the rest of my days building things with you.
Walls, engines, whatever. I want to wake up in that creaky farmhouse and trip over your paint tubes on the way to the coffee maker. ”
He opened the box.
The ring inside caught the light; a simple silver band, a round stone that wasn’t huge but sparkled like it meant it.
“I don’t know what the next race season looks like,” he said. “I don’t know how many permits we’ll have to file or which pipe in the house is going to burst first. But I know I want you there for all of it. Will you marry me?”