Nick's POV

Some people say racecars don't have a smell.

Those people have never sat in one after a full sim stint with the belts dug into your suit and the fan only half doing its job.

I peeled my gloves off finger by finger and flexed my hands, trying to get feeling back in them. The shop sim rig hummed as it shut down, screens going dark around the digital version of Martinsville I'd been beating my head against all morning.

"Session time: two hours, seventeen minutes," Jared, the engineer's voice came over the headset. "You gonna get out of the seat or marry it, Hartley?"

"Depends," I said, clearing my throat. "Seat have good benefits?"

A couple of guys in Kent polos laughed as they walked past the sim room door.

I unclipped the harness, swung my legs out, and hopped down from the rig. My fire-suit sleeves were tied around my waist over a sweat-darkened PeakForm performance tee.

"Not terrible, man," Jared said, tapping at his tablet. "Corner entry's better than last week. Still giving away a little on exit, but your hands look quieter. You actually slept?"

"Shocking, I know," I said, scrubbing a towel over my face. "Figured I'd try this new thing where I act like a professional."

"Tough change," he deadpanned. "Don't worry, I'll ease you in."

I flipped him off without heat and tossed the towel over the back of a chair.

Outside the sim room's glass door, the shop was a familiar buzz: air guns, voices, the occasional clang of a dropped tool. Chassis on stands, the stripped-down shell of my No. 28 waiting for attention in the main bay.

My car. For now anyway.

"Hartley!"

I turned at the sound of my name. Max, our team manager, phone welded to his hand as usual stood in the doorway, expression in that annoying neutral space between good news and you're not gonna like this.

"What's up?" I asked.

"You done playing video games?" he said, jabbing his thumb toward the hallway. "Marshall wants you in his office."

"Sure," I said. "Give me a sec to..."

"Now," he said, mouth twitching. "Before he decides he likes someone else for the car."

My stomach did that stupid little dip it always did when anyone joked about my seat.

"Great," I muttered. "Love that for me."

I grabbed my water bottle and followed him out, nodding at the guys I passed. A couple of crew members were arguing cheerfully about lunch orders. One of the shop dogs Mabel, a chunky mutt with vertigo-level confidence trotted by with a stray zip tie in her mouth like a prize.

Marshall's office sat on the second floor, overlooking the shop through a stretch of tinted glass. He liked to joke it let him "glare at everyone equally."

Max didn't bother knocking. He pushed the door open and jerked his head for me to go ahead.

Marshall Kent sat behind his desk, sleeves rolled to the elbow, tie crooked. He'd traded the TV-host polish from the Road To The 28 days for something more lived-in. More tired, sometimes. I couldn't blame him. Owning a Cup team would age anybody.

He glanced up as I stepped in, lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"There he is," he said. "Close the door."

That tone, light, but not casual made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked, shutting the door and dropping into the chair across from him. "Because if this is about the sim wall I allegedly 'kissed' last week, I maintain it jumped out at me."

"This isn't about the sim wall," he said. "Though I reserve the right to yell at you about that later."

Max took the other chair, flipping his phone face down on his knee.

On Marshall's desk, his laptop screen showed an email thread I couldn't read upside down. There was also a printed deck, edges square, logo I didn't recognize on the front.

I forced my knee to stop bouncing.

"Okay," Marshall said, leaning back. "Short version: we've been in talks for a few months now with a potential primary sponsor for the 28."

I sat up straighter. "Big?"

"Big," he said. "Multi-year, category exclusive, lifestyle-performance space."

My heart rate kicked up. We'd been patchworking sponsorship for too long; race-to-race deals, partial seasons, logos that came and went. A full-time primary for more than a year at a time? That was life-changing.

"Who?" I asked.

Marshall slid the printed deck across the desk so it stopped in front of me.

The logo on the front hit like déjà vu. Clean lettering. Simple geometry. A brand I'd already been wearing because it fit and it wasn't overpriced and it made me feel like someone who had his life together.

PeakForm Athletics.

I let out a low whistle. "Damn."

"Yeah," Max said, unable to keep a grin from creeping in. "Damn."

I flipped the deck open, scanning fast. Brand story. Target demographics. Imagery I'd seen on Instagram, people in matching sets doing things like box jumps and mountain runs and looking unreasonably pleased about it.

"We're not across the finish line yet," Marshall said. "But we're in the final laps. They've narrowed their motorsports play to us and one other outfit. They want to make a decision this quarter."

"Okay," I said, trying to keep the cautious part of my brain louder than the part already picturing a full season of a PeakForm hood on my car. "So what do you need from me?"

"Your best manners," Max said.

I shot him a look. "You say that like I have options."

Marshall smiled. "We've got a meeting later this week," he said. "Their CEO, their head of brand, and their agency lead are coming in. They want a shop tour, a technical rundown, some time with you. Get a feel for the 'fit,' as they put it."

Agency lead. Of course.

"Agency?" I asked. "They bringing in external for this?"

"They already did," Marshall said. "Hartwell & James. Big outfit. Charlotte and New York. They do a lot in performance, wellness, outdoor, live events."

The name landed like a pebble dropped in my stomach.

Hartwell & James.

I'd seen their logo on a press release last month for some arena naming rights. Clean, expensive, the kind of firm that didn't answer the phone unless you were paying by the hour.

"They're the ones who've been quarterbacking this," Marshall went on. "We've had a couple of exploratory calls with their team already. Smart group."

He flipped through an email on his screen, then looked back at me.

"Their senior director for strategic partnerships will be point on this," he said. "She's the one running point with us."

He picked up a sheet of paper, scanned it.

"Name's..." he squinted, "Avery Cole."

The world didn't tilt, exactly.

It just... shifted.

The fluorescent light hum faded. The shop noise blurred into one long, distant note. All I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears and the faint echo of a Greyhound station PA announcement from ten years ago.

Avery Cole.

Of course she'd have a job title like that. Senior Director of Something Important. Of course she'd be the one building deals between giant brands and racing teams, because when I closed my eyes and pictured her at eighteen she was already smarter than everyone in the room.

"Avery," Marshall repeated, oblivious. "You know her?"

I realized I'd been staring at the desk a bit too long.

Keep it together, idiot.

"We're from the same town," I said, forcing my voice not to crack. "Grew up together. Haven't...seen her in a long time."

Marshall's brows went up. "Small world."

"Yeah," I said. "Something like that."

He studied me for a second longer than I liked, then let it go.

"Personal history aside," he said, "she's sharp. She's the reason we're still in the running. PeakForm trusts her. She pushed them toward a 'real driver, real story' angle instead of chasing the biggest name on the grid."

He tapped the deck. "That's you, son. The reality show nonsense finally paid off."

I huffed. "I knew Road To The 28 would come in handy someday."

"At the time, I thought it would get me some cheap shop labor and good television," he said dryly. "Didn't expect it to turn into my supposed anchor driver."

Max snorted.

Anchor driver. The words landed somewhere between my ribs and my old tattoo that still ached when I thought too hard about the night I'd decided I didn't need a Plan B.

"So," Marshall said, sobering. "Here's where we stand. We've got the performance. We've got the story. What we need now is the human."

I frowned. "Pretty sure I'm sitting right here."

"You know what I mean," he said. "They're not just buying lap times. They're buying you. How you carry yourself. How you talk about the brand. How you talk about their customers. They're nervous about polish. They're also obsessed with authenticity. It's a fun little needle to thread."

"Story of my life," I muttered.

"You can handle it," he said. "You've been doing your own socials for years without setting anything on fire."

"Yet," Max put in.

I flipped him off again, half-hearted.

"When are they coming?" I asked.

"Thursday," Marshall said. "Morning flight in for the New York folks, shop tour, lunch, then we throw you in a firesuit and let them watch you sweat in the sim for a while."

"Great," I said. "Nothing says 'stable investment' like watching me loop it in digital Martinsville."

"You're not going to loop it," he said. "You're going to do what you always do...work your ass off, be honest, and make them feel like idiots if they pick anybody else."

It should've been that simple.

Show up. Be the guy I've been for the last ten years. The kid off the reality show who out-drove a checkbook.

But the name was still echoing.

Avery Cole.

She'd gotten on that bus with a backpack and a Boston University acceptance packet and disappeared into the life she said she wanted.

I chased my own path. Fought. Won my way into a truck ride on a TV show. Built a career one race, one season, one sponsorship at a time.

I'd learned to stop looking for her name.

Mostly.

"Nick?" Marshall said.

I blinked. "Yeah. Sorry. Just...processing."

He nodded like he understood more than he said.
"Look, if this is weird for you..."

"This is fine," I cut in too fast. "It's fine. We're adults. People from home exist. Sometimes they show up with PowerPoints."

Max snorted.

I took a breath, slowed down. "Seriously," I said. "I'm not going to tank the biggest deal of my career...a deal that keeps this team up and running because my past decided to wear a blazer and schedule a meeting."

"Good," Marshall said. "Because this? This is big, kid. This is security. It's better cars, better testing, more long-term people on the payroll. Not just for you, for everybody downstairs. We nail this, nobody has to worry about whether the 28 is showing up at the track next year."

The weight of that settled on my shoulders the way a helmet did; familiar, heavy, fitting in a way I'd learned to live with.

"No pressure," I said.

"Always pressure," he said. "You're used to it."

He was right. Pressure and I were old friends.
But as I walked out of his office with the PeakForm deck under my arm and that damn name echoing in my head, it hit me:

I'd spent ten years becoming someone other people could build a brand around.

I had no idea who I was supposed to be when the one person who knew me before any of this sat across a table and looked at me like a case study.

In the locker room, I swapped my fire-suit for jeans and pulled my shirt over my head, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Same face. Older around the eyes. Hair shorter, because helmet hair didn't tolerate the shaggy teenage thing.

I turned a little, and the ink along my left ribs shifted with the movement: a small cluster of black and grey lines, half-abstract, half-recognizable if you knew what you were looking at.

Meteor shower.

I'd told people it was about the night Road To The 28 called. The night everything changed. It wasn't a lie.

It just wasn't the whole truth.

My phone buzzed on the bench.

A calendar invite popped up on the screen.

Meeting: PeakForm x Kent Motorsports - Initial On-Site

Attendees: C. Ellis, M. Fox, D. Patel, M. Kent, M. Alvarez, N. Hartley, A. Cole (Hartwell & James)

I stared at the last line until the words blurred.

Then I hit "accept."

Rough around the edges or not, Thursday was coming.

And if Avery Cole was the person holding the pen over my future, I was damn well going to make sure she saw the version of me who'd turned "no Plan B" into ten years of staying.

Even if it meant facing the person I'd once wished on a meteor shower for and asking her silently and stupidly to believe in me one more time.