A/N: The majority of this chapter is told in flashbacks.

Nick's POV

Flashback

The stars didn't show up this time.Too much haze, too much light from town, too many things between us and the sky.

My truck was parked in the same field anyway, tires pressed into the ruts they'd carved a hundred times. The bed liner was colder now, March biting through the blanket Avery insisted on bringing. She was home on spring break, NASCAR had me at Darlington an hour and a half away, so I came early and was visiting with my parents for a couple of days.

I'd texted her one word.
Truck bed?

She sent back:
Always.

So now we were here. Sitting side by side, our backs propped against the cab, legs stretched out. Our shoulders just barely touching.

I could feel the heat of her through my hoodie and through whatever new layer of distance we'd grown in the last year.

"How's Boston?" I asked after a while.

It came out like small talk, like asking about the weather in another state. It used to be code for tell me everything.

"It's...a lot," she said. "Classes, internship, group projects. My calendar looks insane."

I huffed a laugh. "You love it though."

I said it like a fact, not a question.

She stared out at the dark line of trees. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I do."

Silence again.

"How's not-Boston?" she asked. "Truck life. TV life. Sponsor life."

I exhaled, breath fogging in the cold. "Also a lot. Practice, sim, meetings, travel. I've forgotten what my own bed at home feels like."

"You have a bed in the hauler," she said.

"That's a coffin," I said. "A coffin with a curtain and someone's dirty socks at the end."

She smiled automatically, then let it fade.

We'd been doing this for months now. Bouncing between jokes and logistics, never landing anywhere that felt like us.

I tipped my head back against the metal with a soft thud. "We're a mess," I said quietly.

There it was.

She traced a crack in the bed liner.

"We're...busy," she said. "This is what we signed up for, remember? Big dreams, big sacrifices. All that motivational poster crap."

"Yeah," I said. "Except the poster didn't say 'side effects may include never talking to your girlfriend when neither of you are half-asleep or already late for something.'"

The word girlfriend slid in sideways and caught.

She swallowed. "We're talking now."

"Are we?" I asked. "Because it feels like we're doing performance reviews."

That hit hard, because it was true.

I thought of the last few months: missed calls, rescheduled FaceTimes, texts answered twelve hours late with "sorry, fell asleep," "sorry, got stuck at the shop," "sorry, my group decided to meet at midnight because apparently no one believes in circadian rhythms."

The night her first big presentation tanked and she got my voicemail three times because I was on a plane. The race where I lost P1 in a photo finish and when I called, she was in a basement classroom with no signal and didn't see it until hours later.

There were little cuts. Nothing fatal on its own, but add them up and it started feeling like blood loss.

"I'm trying," she said.

"I know," I said, and somehow that made it worse. "I am too."

The thing about being good at plans is you always see the gaps first. The distance between what you pictured and what you actually built.

"I hate that I don't know your schedule anymore," she blurted. "I used to know every lap time, every heat race. Now I see results on Twitter before I hear it from you."

"I hate that I find out about your life from LinkedIn," I shot back. "'Avery is excited to share that she's accepted an internship in New York this summer', cool, glad the algorithm told me."

She flinched. "You were on the West Coast. You were literally racing. I was going to call."

"I know," I said. "And I get it. I do. I just...remember when we weren't two press releases passing in the night?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "I remember."

I remembered everything.

Sneaking out to this truck with college brochures crumpled in her hand, plotting a future where we twisted our careers into the same zip code. Long drives where I'd talk about setups and she'd talk about branding and we'd find the overlap like it was a game.

Now it felt like we were two different series running on the same weekends. Close, but never on track at the same time.

"I feel like I'm failing at everything," she admitted, voice low. "If I focus on school, I miss your race. If I focus on you, I screw up something big at work. There's no...space."

I was quiet for a minute.

"I don't want to be the thing you fail at," I said.

She laughed once, brittle. "I don't want to be the thing you fail at either."

There it was again. Neither of us wanting to be the reason the other person gave something up, or the reason they resented keeping it.

She shifted a little, turning toward me. I could feel her eyes on my profile before I made myself meet them.

I knew what I looked like: tired, older than nineteen, faint half-moons under my eyes from jet lag and too many hotel rooms that all smelled like industrial cleaner.

"You're killing it up there," I said. "Boston, New York, all that. You sound...alive when you talk about your projects. About the campaigns you're pitching."

"You sound alive when you talk about the truck," she said. "When you start in on tire wear and aero packages, you're...you. Even through a screen."

"Yeah, well." I tried for a smile and didn't quite make it. "Hard to be alive on FaceTime when we always catch each other at the worst times."

The wind slipped under the blanket and made her shiver.

I noticed instantly. Without thinking, I tugged the edge of the blanket tighter around her, my knuckles brushing her arm. The contact made something in my chest ache in a way racing never touched.

"I don't like who I am with you right now," she said, the words tumbling out before she could pretty them up. "I'm either distracted or guilty or resentful. That's not...us. That's not how it's supposed to be."

My hand stilled on the blanket.

"I'm not exactly a prize either," I said. "I'm either exhausted or rushed or...somewhere else entirely even when I'm sitting right here. I hate it too."

We looked at each other, the shared misery almost depressingly funny.

"This was not in the plan," she said.

"You and your plans," I said softly. "We never had a real plan for this part, Aves. We just said 'we'll figure it out' and hoped being stubborn would make the distance shorter."

"Are you saying stubbornness doesn't bend geography?" she asked, voice wobbling around the joke.

I let out a breath that might've been a laugh. "Turns out, no."

"Nick," she said. "What are you...what are you saying?"

"I'm saying..." I broke off, looking away, like the trees might give me the words. "I feel like I'm holding on to you with one hand and the wheel with the other, and the gap between them keeps getting bigger. And you...I can hear you reaching for something too. Your life. Your career. The terrifying CEO version of you you're building. And I don't want to be the anchor that keeps you from jumping when you need to jump."

Funny, anchor used to mean steady and safe. Now it sounded like weight.

"I don't want to be the thing you resent," I added, softer. "In a year. In five. In ten."

"You think I don't feel that?" she said. "You think I don't look at my calendar and see all the places I'm choosing...not you?"

The words punched straight through me.

"I don't mean it like that," she started, but it was already out there.

"No," I said, voice rough. "You're right. You are choosing. Because you should."

She glared at me, eyes shiny. "Don't do that. Don't martyr yourself. This isn't some noble thing."

I scrubbed a hand over my face. "I'm not trying to be noble. I'm trying to be honest."

"Then be honest," she said, anger riding shotgun with grief now. "Say what you actually mean, Hartley."

I looked at her, really looked, and I saw the crack we'd both been pretending wasn't there.

"I don't know how to be good at this and good at you at the same time," I said. "I barely know how to be good at this. I'm in the shop or on a plane or in a hotel ninety percent of the time, and the other ten percent my brain's still stuck in a debrief. You deserve someone who can meet you for coffee between classes, who can show up at your presentations, who doesn't have to schedule you around hauler call times."

"And you deserve someone whose life doesn't live in a Google calendar 800 miles away," she shot back. "Someone who can be in the pit box every race, who can say yes to last-minute dinners without checking three project timelines and an internship schedule."

I swallowed hard. "Yeah," I said. "Maybe."

"So what," she said finally. "We just...call it? After all of this? After we survived high school and the show and our first year apart?"

I flinched. "Do you want that?" I asked.

The shitty thing was: I didn't.

Not in the part of me that still pictured porches and sunrooms and meteor showers and her in the passenger seat of every version of my life.
But the part of me that had been drowning for months? That part was exhausted.

"I don't want this," she said, gesturing between us, tears finally spilling over. "Whatever this half-version is. Where we're always disappointing each other. Where every call is a negotiation. Where I'm mad at you for doing the thing I told you to go do."

"I'm mad at you too, sometimes," I admitted, voice low. "For being so good at being away."

That hurt all the way around, because it was true and it wasn't.

"I'm not good at it," she whispered. "I'm just...doing it."

I looked down at my hands, then back at her.

"Aves," I said. "I love you. That hasn't changed. I don't think it's going to. But I don't know how to do this..." I gestured helplessly between us, "in a way that doesn't keep ripping us both up."

"Don't say it," she begged.

I closed my eyes like it physically hurt. "Maybe we hit pause," I said, voice cracking on the word. "You do...you. Boston, New York, all of it. I do this. And we stop trying to stretch something that's not built for this distance until it snaps completely."

Pause. Like we were a show I could binge later when I had more time.

"That's not how people work," she said hoarsely. "We don't...pause. We break up."

I flinched like she slapped me. "I don't want to break up with you."

"I don't want to break up with you either," she said. "I want it to be easy. I want to make it work. I want..." Her voice crumbled. "I want a universe that actually gives us the same city."

We stared at each other, both breathing too fast.

"If we keep doing this the way we are," I said quietly, "we're going to start hating each other. Little resentments stacking up like...bad laps. I don't want that to be what we remember."

"What do you want us to remember?" she whispered.

I swallowed. When I spoke, my voice was barely there.

"Meteor showers," I said. "Truck beds. The time you fell asleep in my hoodie before my first test session and drooled on my shoulder. The good stuff. Not...missed calls and guilt."

The sob that ripped out of her felt like it cracked my ribs.

I reached for her on instinct, then stopped halfway, hand hovering. That hurt more than if she'd pulled away herself.

"So what, we just...walk away?" she asked. "After everything?"

I took a shuddering breath. "I don't know another way that doesn't hurt worse in the long run."

"I hate you," she whispered, even as her whole body leaned toward me.

I let out a broken laugh. "Yeah," I said. "I hate me too."

We sat there wrecked, the cold seeping through the blanket, the sky above us stubbornly blank where the meteors were supposed to be.

"Okay," she said finally, the word sounding like it cut her mouth on the way out. "Okay. Then we...call it."

Saying it out loud made it real.

Her face crumpled. My eyes stung. I nodded once, like I was agreeing to something I knew was a bad idea and doing it anyway.

"For the record," I said, voice rough, "if there was a way to be in two places at once, I'd pick that."

"For the record," she said, "if student loans didn't exist, I probably would've picked UNC."

We both laughed, helpless and miserable.

I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my hand, like I could wipe the grief off. "Do we, uh...is there a script for this?" I asked. "Do we say we'll stay friends? Because that feels like a lie and I'm really tired of lying to myself about how okay this is."

"I can't be your friend right now," she said honestly. "I don't know how to do that without wanting everything we had, and that's...apparently not on the menu."

"Yeah," I said. "Same."

Silence again. The kind of silence after impact, when you're waiting to see what still works.

"I still want you to call me if...if something really big happens," I said. "Good or bad. Even if it's just a voicemail I listen to in a hotel at three a.m."

"I don't know if I can do that," she admitted. "At least not for a while."

I nodded, eyes burning. "Okay," I said. "Yeah. Okay."

I looked at her like I was trying to memorize everything. The curve of her mouth. The little freckles on her nose. The way her eyes always softened when they landed on me, even now.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Anything."

"Do you...regret it?"

I glanced down, then back up. "Regret what?"

"The night," she said. "The promise. All of it."

I shook my head, immediate, fierce. "No," I said. "Never. Do you?"

"No," she whispered. "That's the worst part."

I let out a humorless breath. "Yeah. It'd be easier if we hated each other."

We didn't. We just loved two futures that didn't match.

"Can you take me home?" she asked. "My mom's gonna start texting if I don't show up soon, and I don't think 'sorry, was busy breaking my own heart' is an acceptable excuse."

"Yeah," I said, voice hoarse. "Yeah. Of course."

We climbed out of the truck bed in awkward silence, both moving like we were nursing invisible bruises. I folded the blanket with shaking hands and tossed it into the cab.

The drive back was short and way too long.
The familiar streets looked like a museum exhibit: "Relics of a High School Relationship. Please Do Not Touch."

When I pulled up in front of her house, I left the engine running.

Porch light on. Wind chimes moving. Everything normal. Nothing normal.

We sat there, neither of us reaching for the door handle.

"So this is it," she said, hating how cliché it sounded.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess it is."

She turned to me, eyes shining.

"Nick," she said. "You're going to do it. The racing thing. You're not just 'some dude,' okay? Don't let any owner or sponsor convince you otherwise. You are...you're the real deal."

My throat closed. "You're going to own whatever room you walk into," I said. "Even if they don't know it yet. Don't...don't let anyone talk you into being smaller. Not for a job. Not for someone like me. No one."

The like me sliced through both of us.

"You were never the thing making me smaller," she said. "If anything, you're the reason I applied to half those schools in the first place."

I let out a shaky breath. "Then I did one thing right," I said.

"You did a lot of things right," she said quietly. "We both did."

We held on to that like it was the only thing left that didn't hurt.

"I should go," she whispered.

I nodded, and it felt like my neck might snap. "Yeah."

Her hand went to the door handle, then paused.

"Can I...hug you?" she asked. "Or is that going to completely destroy me?"

"Probably," I said, broken. "But I'm selfish enough to want one anyway."

She leaned across the console and I met her halfway.

The hug felt like every goodbye we'd ever had rolled into one. Her arms around my neck, my arms locked around her waist, both of us clinging way too hard for two people allegedly being mature and practical.

"I love you," I whispered into her hair.

"I love you too," she choked. "That's not the problem."

We pulled back at the same time, like we'd rehearsed it.

"Bye, Nick," she said.

"Bye, Aves."

She got out before I could change my mind.
She made it halfway up the walk before she turned back.

I was still there, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, forehead resting against it.
For one wild second, I almost threw the door open. Almost ran after her. Almost took it all back.

Instead, I put the truck in drive and left.

Later, when the worst of the sting had scarred over, I'd tell myself we hadn't failed each other.
We'd just reached the edge of what our teenage version of love could stretch around.

We just didn't know yet that the universe wasn't done with us.

That there'd be a boardroom, a sponsorship, and an entire shop between us the next time our worlds collided.

                                       🏁🏁🏁

It was three weeks after Avery and I officially broke up.

I was in some bar in Mooresville, one that apparently didn't check ID's, surrounded by guys from the shop, the noise loud enough to drown out the silence in my head.

First there was her, some girl with a laugh like wind chimes and a smile that didn't ask questions.

She kissed me in the neon glow of a beer sign, her hands warm on my neck, and for five minutes, I forgot.

That was the point.

After that, it was easy.

A girl in a hotel bar after a race in Texas.

A brand rep in Charlotte who liked fast cars and faster goodbyes.

A waitress in Tennessee who didn't care that I left before sunrise.

None of them were Avery. That was the whole point. They were distractions. Soft places to land when the loneliness got too loud. Warm bodies to remind me I was still alive, even if I didn't feel like it.

But here's the thing about distractions: They only work if you don't look too close, and I never did.

Then there was Briana. Victory Lane. My first Truck win. Blonde hair, big smile, wearing my merch. The way she'd kissed me like a reward before I'd even gotten the confetti out of my eyes.

The way it had felt...nice. Easy. Disposable.

The way I'd broken up with her four months later over the phone, sitting in a hotel room two time zones away, staring at a replay of the race that had made her think we were some kind of epic love story instead of a convenient caption.

                                         🏁🏁🏁

The motel art was crooked. That was the first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes.

Some faded watercolor of a lighthouse hung half an inch off level over the bed, creating a weird shadow in the cheap lamplight. The AC unit rattled in the wall like it was losing an argument with itself. My duffel sat open in the corner, clothes spilling out, a familiar little disaster zone in a town I wouldn't remember the name of next month.

I checked my phone: 2:13 a.m.

No new messages. The last text was from Logan about the truck's entry list for next week. Before that, my mom had sent a thumbs-up to the photo I'd texted of the P6 finish.

Nothing from her. Nothing for weeks.

I laid back and stared at the ceiling. The room smelled like stale air freshener and someone else's cologne.

If I held still enough, I could almost convince myself I was back home. Back in my own bed. Back before I'd driven away from her porch with my hands shaking on the wheel and her voice saying bye, Nick echoing in my chest like a rung bell.

My ribs hurt.

We'd had a long night at the shop before this weekend, and I'd taken a stupid jab into a jack handle climbing out of the truck. It wasn't broken, just bruised, one more ache layered over the rest, but every time I breathed, it pinched.

I rolled onto my side and stared at the blank wall.

Meteor showers, truck beds, the time you drooled on my shoulder.

I had said that like it was a list of things we got to keep. Like breaking up clean meant I could tuck those memories into my pocket and pull them out whenever I wanted without bleeding all over them.

Except it didn't feel like that. It felt like every time my brain went near that night, the one where the sky had gone all-out for us, it hit a live wire.

I threw the covers back, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and scrubbed both hands over my face like I could erase the ache.

This is stupid, I told myself. You're being stupid.
I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt anyway.

The night clerk barely looked up when I crossed the lobby, key card in hand.

"Know anywhere still open?" I asked. My voice sounded like I'd smoked a pack with my coffee.

He blinked, then shook his head. "Everything closes at midnight, man."

I hesitated. "Tattoo shops?"

That got his attention. He squinted, then grabbed his phone. "There's one out on 17," he said after a minute. "Says they're open till three. 'Night Owl Ink.'"

Of course.

"Thanks," I said.

The parking lot was half-empty. My old F-150 sat under one of the lights, paint catching the orange glow. It looked more beat-up under the motel lamps than it ever had back home.

I slid behind the wheel and just sat there for a second, fingers tapping restlessly on the steering wheel.

This is stupid. You don't need a tattoo to prove anything. You're nineteen. You should not be making permanent decisions at two in the morning because your heart hurts.

I turned the key in the ignition.

Night Owl Ink was jammed into a strip mall between a closed nail salon and a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The neon sign flickered like it was trying to decide whether it was worth it.

I parked, sat there another thirty seconds, then got out before I could talk myself out of it.

The bell over the door chimed when I walked in.
The place was small but clean. Flash sheets lined the walls; skulls, roses, snakes, generic stars. A girl with purple hair sat behind the counter watching something on her phone.

She looked up, took me in my team hoodie, tired eyes, indecision probably hanging off me like smoke, and arched a brow.

"You look like a guy who either just won something or just lost something," she said.

"Bit of both," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.

"Fun," she said, deadpan. "You know what you want?"

Yes. No. I had no idea.

"Something...small," I said. "Here." I tapped my left side, just below my ribs. "I want to be able to cover it up."

Her mouth twitched. "Scandalous."

I huffed out half a laugh.

She slid a clipboard toward me. "Fill this out. You over eighteen?"

"Yeah," I said automatically.

She gave me a look.

"Yeah," I repeated. "Nineteen."

"Cool," she said. "I'll get Pete. He's up."

The paperwork blurred a little as I filled it out. Name, age, "any blood thinners or medical conditions," emergency contact.

I almost wrote her name in that box. I put my mom's instead.

A guy in his thirties with stretched ears and a full sleeve came out from the back, wiping his hands on a paper towel.

"You the meteor kid?" he asked.

I blinked. "The what?"

The purple-haired girl tilted her screen toward me. "He was stalking Pinterest," she said. "Said you sounded like a stars guy."

Pete shrugged. "I've done three infinity signs and a quote in French tonight," he said. "I'll take something interesting."

I swallowed. "Yeah," I said. "Meteor...something. Shower."

He jerked his chin toward the back. "Let's sketch."

The chair was cold under my shoulder blades as I sat.

"So," Pete said, flipping his sketchbook open. "Talk to me. What're we putting on you that you're still gonna want when you're forty?"

"Optimistic," I muttered.

He smirked. "Better than planning for regret."

I stared at the blank page.

My first instinct was to say nothing. Keep it shallow. "I just think space is cool," or whatever.
Instead, what came out was: "There was this night."

His pencil paused.

"Okay," he said.

"Back home," I said. "Little town, nothing to do. We drove out to this field behind the track. Laid in the back of my truck, watched this meteor shower. It was..." I blew out a breath. "It was one of those nights that felt like...proof. Like the universe had actually shown up for once."

"Mhmm," he said, pencil moving again. "You still with her?"

It hit harder than it should have, coming from a stranger at two-thirty a.m. in a shop that smelled like disinfectant and ink.

"No," I said. It scraped on the way out. "Not anymore."

He glanced up, something softening around his eyes. "Got it."

He sketched for a minute, lines and arcs, little bursts of light. He turned the pad around.

A cluster of fine-lined stars near the center, with a few streaks cutting across, like motion caught mid-fall. Understated. Not cheesy. Elegant, even.

"Too much?" he asked.

I shook my head. My throat was tight. "It's good."

"You want dates, words, anything like that?"

I thought about the exact date. I knew it. It was burned into my memory like a lap time.

"No," I said. "Just...this."

"Cool," he said. "Shirt off, lie back. You're lucky, ribs are everybody's favorite."

"Can't wait," I muttered.

The needle bit in, sharp and bright. I clenched my jaw out of habit, the way I did when I took a hard hit in the truck. Breath in, breath out, ride it out.

At some point, the pain tipped over into something else...focus. Every sting lining up with flashes behind my eyes.

Her hand in mine. Her hair spread out on my hoodie.

"Happy branding, Hartley."

"Ask me again when you're famous."

"Almost done," Pete said quietly. "You're sitting well."

I blinked the burn out of my eyes that had nothing to do with ink.

When he finally pulled back and wiped my side clean, I sat up carefully.

He held a mirror out.

The design curved just under my ribs, tucked in the space only I ever saw naked. Small, but not insignificant. Like a secret.

"You can say you hate it," Pete said lightly. "I'll just cry later."

I swallowed. "No," I said. "It's...yeah. It's perfect."

"Good," he said. He started wrapping my side, talking aftercare, lotion, no pools, no sun.

I nodded at the right times, but my head was somewhere else, trying to reconcile the ache in my chest with the ache under the bandage.

I paid, tipped more than I should have on my current paycheck, and stepped back out into the night.

The sky over the strip mall was mostly empty. Just a few stubborn stars cutting through the haze.

I leaned against the truck and looked up anyway.

"This is stupid," I muttered to myself. "You're not supposed to get tattoos about girls."

Windshield hearts. Meteor showers.

The bandage tugged when I breathed.

"It's not about her," I lied out loud. "It's about...a night."

I heard Avery's voice in my head, amused and fond.

That's branding, Hartley. You tell the story before everyone else catches up.

I climbed into the truck and shut the door, the cab suddenly feeling smaller than it ever had before.

Later, when someone asked me about it on the rare occasions anyone saw it, I'd say something vague.

Means I'm a dreamer, I'd joke. Or: Just liked the design.

I never told anyone the truth. That there was a version of me who believed that if I couldn't hold onto her, I could at least carry the sky we'd shared.

That every time the needle hit my skin, I was bargaining with a universe that hadn't listened the first time we asked for a way to stay.

                                       🏁🏁🏁

I remembered the first time Jordyn asked about the tattoo. I knew she had to have seen it because we had been sleeping together for weeks, but the night she finally asked, I nearly froze.

I was halfway out of my T-shirt when my shoulder reminded me it hated me.

"Son of a bitch" I hissed, the cotton catching on the sore muscle. My ribs weren't much happier; last week's brush with the wall had left me a patchwork of purple and yellow.

"Hold still," Jordyn said behind me. "You're going to dislocate something trying to be macho."

She peeled the shirt the rest of the way off, careful around my shoulder, then tossed it on the back of the couch. The motorcoach was quiet except for the low hum of the AC and the muted TV looping practice highlights.

"Turn," she said, nudging my hip. "Let me see the damage."

I turned obediently, letting her inspect me like a very sarcastic team doctor.

"Jesus," she murmured, fingers hovering over the bruise blooming across my side. "You look like modern art."

"Limited edition," I said. "Hartley: Abstract Pain."

She snorted, then her gaze caught on something else and stayed.

"What's the story behind this?"

It took me a second to realize she wasn't talking about the bruise.

Her fingers were resting just above it, on the ink.

Meteor streaks, small and dark, scattered over my ribs.

I felt everything in me go a little too still.

"You've had this the whole time and I never thought to ask about it." she said, voice light but eyes too sharp. "I feel cheated."

"Guess you're usually distracted," I tried.

"Flattered," she said dryly, but her focus didn't move. Her thumb traced one of the tiny lines, slow. "When did you get it?"

"Few years back," I said.

"What is it? Stars?" she asked.

"Meteor shower," I said, before I could stop myself.

"Of course you're specific," she said, soft. "Why meteors?"

Because one night when I was seventeen, we lay in the bed of my old truck and counted them until our necks hurt. Because she said, "Make a wish, Hartley," like she really believed I could turn the whole sky into a promise.

"Used to sleep out behind the track sometimes," I said instead. "You're lying there, you look up, and it's just you and whatever's up there. Puts shit in perspective. Figured if I was gonna put something on me forever, it should be something that reminds me of that."

Not a lie. Just not the whole story.

Jordyn's mouth curved. "Deep," she said. "Didn't peg you for the poetic type."

"Please don't tell anyone," I said. "They'll take away my 'dumb jock' membership card."

She huffed a little laugh, but her thumb kept moving, tracing the pattern like she was trying to memorize it.

"No initials," she noted. "No dates. No car number. I'm impressed. Most drivers I know would've gotten a checkered flag with their own face in it."

"Yeah, well," I said. "Figured I see my car enough during the week."

"True," she said. "So..."

Here it came.

She glanced up, eyes searching mine.

"Is this for someone?" she asked lightly. "Or just you and the cosmos having a moment?"

The question sat between us, heavier than it had any right to be.

For half a heartbeat, I thought about telling the truth. About a blanket and gas-station coffee and a girl who wrote our names next to imaginary job titles in the margins of her chemistry notes. About wishes you only said in your head because out loud made them too real.

My chest tugged.

"Just me," I said. "Dumb kid trying to make a big feeling smaller."

Her jaw flexed, just once. If I didn't know her, I might've missed it.

"Right," she said. "Big feelings." Her tone was light, but there was something brittle under it. "Very on-brand for you."

"Hey," I said. "I'm capable of being shallow."

"That's the thing," she said quietly, almost to herself. "You're not."

I pretended not to hear that.

She looked back down at the tattoo. "You know what it looks like?" she asked after a moment.

"What?"

"Like one of those cheesy country songs," she said. "Driving out to the middle of nowhere, counting stars, talking about the future..." She smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Windshield hearts and all that."

My throat went dry.

I thought of Avery's Sharpie looping A + N 4-ever on my old truck's dash. Of her drawing little hearts in the fog on the inside of the glass we'd just fogged up.

"Something like that," I said.

Jordyn's gaze flicked up, really meeting mine this time. Whatever game she was playing around the edges, it slipped for half a second, and I saw it.

She knew.

Maybe not the details. Maybe not the truck bed or the exact number of meteors we counted. But she knew this wasn't about her. Knew it had roots somewhere she'd never been invited.

"It's not for me," she said, voice soft but clear.
It wasn't really a question.

I forced a half-smile. "Not every tattoo has to be for somebody," I said. "Sometimes it's just...where you came from."

She held my gaze, and for once, didn't crack a joke to save us.

"Yeah," she said finally. "Sometimes."

Her hand dropped from my ribs. The air felt colder where her fingers had been.

She sat back on her heels, smile sliding back into place like she was in front of a camera.

"Well," she said, bright again. "At least it's not a snake."

I blinked. "I do have a snake."

She rolled her eyes. "I've seen the calf, Hartley. That one I know all about. Very shedding-your-skin, 'I'm a changed man' of you."

"Hey, self-improvement looks good on me," I said, grateful for the shift, even if it felt hollow.
Her laugh was real this time.

"Yeah," she said. "It does."

She leaned in and kissed the spot just above the bruise, carefully avoiding the ink.

"Anyway," she said, pushing to her feet. "Ice pack?"

"Top drawer of the freezer," I said.

She padded to the tiny kitchen area, bare feet silent on the floor.

I lay back against the couch, staring at the ceiling, feeling the ghost of her fingers on the tattoo and the weight of everything I hadn't said pressing against my ribs from the inside.

When she came back with the ice pack and settled it over the bruise, she didn't mention the meteors again.

She curled up against my good side, head on my shoulder, eyes on the TV.

Her hand didn't wander back to the ink. She didn't have to. We both knew what she'd seen, and from the way her body went just a little too relaxed, like someone resigning themselves to something they'd already suspected.

The tattoo had just confirmed what the rest of my behavior had been spelling out in slow motion.

There was a part of me she was never going to get because I'd given it away a long time ago, under a sky full of falling stars.

                     
                                        🏁🏁🏁

Present day

My motor coach was a hell of a lot nicer than that old motel, but it didn't feel any less empty.
King bed, white duvet, PeakForm welcome basket on the dresser. A little hand-written note from someone in marketing: Thanks for letting us be part of the journey, Nick!

My firesuit hung from the closet hook, faint rubber and fuel smell clinging to the fabric.

Tomorrow it would smell like sweat and brake dust and hopefully Victory Lane champagne.

I lay on my back on top of the covers, arm flung over my eyes, ribs throbbing dully where the belts had dug in during practice.

The meteor shower tattoo pulsed under the old ache like it was reminding me it existed.

You really outdid yourself today, Hartley, I thought. Hauler makeouts, bathroom gossip that I wasn't supposed to hear, but it got back to me anyway. Avery talking to Jake. Awkward halfway confessions next to a food table. Ten out of ten emotional whiplash.

I rolled onto my side and pushed my T-shirt up, fingers brushing the lines of the ink by habit. It had been there long enough now that the edges had softened, just a little. It had grown with me, stretched over muscle, faded a shade or two.
Still there. Still ours.

I closed my eyes and the coach ceiling vanished.
Truck bed. Cold metal under my back. Her shoulder warm where it pressed against mine. Sky full of light like somebody had shaken glitter over the universe.

Ask me again when you're famous.

We're a mess.

You and your plans.

Maybe we hit pause.

Pause.

God, I had really said that.

I'd thought I was being...what? Mature? Responsible? Giving her a way out before she resented me for every missed call and rain-delayed race?

You did the right thing, I told myself for the ten-thousandth time. You both did. You were kids. The odds were stacked.

He never stays.

The bathroom gossip words slid in uninvited, as sticky as the smell of Jordyn's lingering hairspray.

Since Makenna there's been Kaylee, the yoga girl, that engineer, the nurse...

They all thought they were special.

They all got the same speech when he got bored.

I had wanted to march out and argue with a stranger.

Tell her it wasn't boredom. That I hadn't sat down with Briana or Kaylee or any of the others and thought, time to ruin your life. That I'd believed every time I was being...honest. Just honest too late.

Intent doesn't change impact, man.

Logan's voice joined the chorus in my head.

You're Mr. Thirty Percent.

I dug my heel into the mattress like I was bracing in a turn.

The thing nobody in that bathroom knew, is that there was one person who'd gotten the other seventy.

She just didn't know how much of me I hadn't gotten back.

I thought about the field again. About the way her voice had sounded when she said don't say it. About the hug that had felt like losing something and trying to memorize it at the same time.

We didn't fail each other, I had told myself afterward. We just ran out of track.

I'd believed that. I'd needed to believe that so I could climb into a truck the next week and not drive it straight into a wall.

But lying here, years later, with her laughter still buzzing in my ears from hospitality and the weight of her stare on my back when I walked away... I wasn't so sure.

Maybe we hadn't failed each other, but I had definitely failed at being the version of a man I thought that nineteen-year-old kid would grow into.

The one who got the sponsor and kept the girl.
The one who didn't stand in the strip-mall parking lot at two-thirty in the morning getting a meteor shower tattooed on his ribs because he didn't know what else to do with his grief.

"You're an dumbass," I told the ceiling.

No argument came back.

I let my hand rest over the tattoo, palm covering the streaks of ink like I could shield it.

Tomorrow, Avery would be on the pit box. She'd watch me strap into a car that had her brand's logo on the hood and her name somewhere in the fine print of a deck that got us there.

She'd smile for cameras and say all the right words about synergy and partnership and belief in the underdog.

And I'd go out there and try to be the guy we both had once pictured on a blanket under a much kinder sky.

All-in on the track. Thirty percent everywhere else.

I turned onto my stomach and buried my face in the pillow, the way I did on weeks when I couldn't tell if the buzzing in my veins was adrenaline or panic.

"Get your shit together," I muttered into the cotton. "You've got four hundred miles tomorrow and eight million eyes on you."

The universe did not answer.

It just kept being quietly cruel, the way it always had been when it came to us.

Outside, I could hear the generator running. A truck beeped backing up. My phone buzzed with another text from Cameron about call times.
I didn't move my hand from my ribs.

If there was ever a future where I told her about this tattoo...about why, about when, it was a long way off.

Right now, we were two people who loved different futures at nineteen and were still dealing with the fallout at twenty-eight.

We'd just both climbed back onto the same track.
And whether we liked it or not, there were no more pauses left.