Avery's POV

Race mornings always started too early and somehow too loud.

By the time I stepped into the garage, coffee in hand and credential clipped to my blazer, the place was already alive in that particular NASCAR way that feels half military operation, half traveling circus. Air guns screamed in the distance. Golf carts zipped by too fast. Crew shirts flashed in team colors under bright morning sun. Somewhere a scanner was already crackling with a crew chief sounding stressed before the engines have even fired.

Usually that rhythm settled me. Usually work was where everything clicked into place. Today it didn't help nearly enough.

Because Nick Hartley was somewhere in this garage.

Nick Hartley, who kissed me in a lightning hold yesterday like he had every right in the world to do it.

Nick Hartley, who texted me half the night in that infuriatingly direct way of his until I fell asleep staring at my ceiling and replaying every second.

Nick Hartley, who I now have to face in broad daylight like I am a functional, professional adult and not a woman whose entire internal operating system has been taken apart and reassembled incorrectly.

Marina fell into step beside me, sunglasses already on, phone in hand. "You look tired."

"I slept."

She glanced over. "That was not what I said."

"I'm fine."

She hummed, which is Marina speak for I do not believe you but I'm choosing to be entertained by it.

We reached the PeakForm hospitality setup, where Cameron was already talking to two guests and Devin was squinting at an analytics dashboard on his tablet. Everything was polished and camera-ready. Logos clean. Product displays set. VIP guests being gently herded toward premium coffee and curated enthusiasm.

PeakForm did this part well. They always do.

The difference today was that for the first time since this whole partnership started, nobody's talking about potential. They're talking like they already backed the right horse.

I heard it in fragments before I even set my bag down.

"...starting near the front again..."

"...that small team has real speed..."

"...PeakForm got in early..."

"...Hartley's the real deal..."

And annoyingly, hearing it did a dangerous little thing to my chest.

Because I already knew he was the real deal.

That was part of the problem.

"Morning."

I froze before I could stop myself.

Nick's voice was low and easy and much too close.

I turned, and there he was in his firesuit, zipped down at the collar for now, PeakForm ball cap low, all broad shoulders and lazy confidence and a deeply unfair race-day face. He looked calm. Awake. Entirely too good for a man who sent me no promises at midnight and then probably slept just fine afterward.

He looked at Marina first, because of course he does. Safe. Smart.

"Marina."

"Hartley," she said, eyeing him over the top of her sunglasses. "Try not to create a social clip for me today that gets legal involved."

"No promises."

Then he looked at me. Not long. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough.

"Cole."

"Hartley."

That's it. That's all, and somehow it still felt like he put his hand back on my waist.

Marina's eyes flicked between us for half a second, too sharp for my liking, but Cameron called her name from the hospitality entrance and the moment broke before she could decide to become a problem.

Nick shifted his water bottle from one hand to the other. "Glad you made it."

I forced my expression into something neutral. "Pretty sure it would've been noticeable if I skipped race day."

His mouth twitched.

He stepped a little closer, not enough to be inappropriate, just enough that if anyone looked over it would read as sponsor-driver cordiality.

"You sleep at all?" he asked quietly.

I should not like that he asked like that.
Like he actually wanted the answer.
Like the answer mattered.

"Enough," I said.

His eyes held mine for one dangerous second too long, like he knew that was not a real answer and was deciding whether to call me on it.

Then Reid yelled for him from the stall and the spell broke.

Nick stepped backward, all professionalism again. "Guess that's my cue."

"Try not to embarrass the sponsor."

He grinned.

"Baby, I'm about to make the sponsor look brilliant."

Then he turned and walked away before I could recover from him saying baby enough to say a single useful thing.

I stood there for a full second staring at his back like an idiot.

From beside me, Marina said very mildly, "Interesting."

I nearly choked on my coffee.

"Do not start."

"I didn't say anything."

"You absolutely did."

She smiled into her phone and walked off.

I hate everyone.

The pre-race went by in the blur it always did. Grid walk. Media hits. Last-minute sponsor requests. VIP introductions. A photo Cameron insisted on with the car and the full PeakForm group, because apparently yesterday's group photo did not do enough damage.

Nick was all focus once the actual race routine started.

That part, at least, was familiar.

Something in him changed when race time got close. The playful edges sharpened. The charm quieted down. Even standing still he looked like a live wire pulled tight and contained only by discipline.

I've seen plenty of drivers up close now. Big names. Former champions. Guys with entire PR teams built around mythmaking. They all have their own version of race-face.

Nick's was simpler. He looked like a man who has spent too much of his life clawing for every inch he had and had no intention of giving a single one back.

The command to fire engines rolled over the speedway.

The sound started as an eruption and settled into a wall. Deep, violent, physical. It rattled through the grandstands, through pit road, through my ribs. The crowd swelled with it, that strange collective roar of thousands of people recognizing that whatever comes next is now out of human hands.

Nick was in his car. Belts cinched. Window net up. Helmet on. And that was that.

The car rolled off pit road, and I took my place with the rest of the PeakForm group near the box, headset on, timing screen in hand, trying very hard to remember that I am here to do a job and not to stare at the driver of the No. 28 like he personally invented tension and sex appeal.

The green flag dropped, and almost immediately, the announcers started in.

"Keep an eye on that twenty-eight today," one of them said as the field came up to speed. "Nick Hartley qualified well again, and that Kent Motorsports car had serious pace in practice."

Another voice jumped in. "This kid keeps showing up. Single-car operation, not the deepest budget in the garage, but they are doing more with less every week."

Cameron folded his arms, visibly trying not to look smug. Marina didn't even bother trying.

By lap ten Nick was already proving them right. The car was good. Not just flashy-good for a restart. Not just hanging-on good. Actually good.

He settled into the race with that precision that made everything look calmer than it was. Smooth entries. Smart exits. Never wasting movement. He picked off one car, then another, then another, and by the time the first long green-flag run really stretched out, he was up there with the names everybody expected to see up front.

The broadcast couldn't leave him alone.

"There he is again, the twenty-eight of Nick Hartley. This is becoming a trend, folks."

"What I love is how efficient he is. He doesn't abuse the tires, doesn't overdrive the entry, and when the run comes to him, he starts hunting."

"And let's say it, PeakForm looks pretty smart right now. They could've written a bigger check to a bigger organization, gone with a safer branding play. Instead they took a chance on Kent Motorsports and Nick Hartley, and suddenly they're attached to the story of the season."

Cameron looked over at me like he wanted external validation for his own genius.

I kept my face composed. "It was a strong strategy."

He grinned. "That sounded almost sincere."

I did not tell him that the strategy currently has my pulse running ten beats too fast.

The first caution came out around lap thirty-two for a harmless spin in the back half of the field. Nothing major. Just enough to tighten everybody up and put the crew sequences into play.

Nick came down pit road in fourth. The stop was fast. Clean. Kent perfect.

He rolled off third.

The whole PeakForm area erupted like they won the race already. Cameron clapped Devin on the shoulder hard enough to nearly dislocate him. Marco woo-hooed. Marina was filming everything. One of the guests said, "This is insane," like he did not fully believe a smaller team could actually do this in real time.

I didn't say anything. I just kept staring at the timing line where the 28 flashed in the top three and felt this ridiculous swell of pride I had no business feeling that strongly.

He is so good.

That was the truth of it. Not just marketable.
Not just promising. Not just a fun underdog narrative for brand decks.

Good.

The restart was chaos. The leader spun his tires a touch. Second got aggressive. Third went low. Nick threaded the middle like he could see openings before they existed, and suddenly he was second.

The crowd reacted to the move in one loud, rising swell. The announcers lost their minds.

"Hartley! What a restart!"

"Wow! The twenty-eight just split them!"

"That is not a driver from a timid little underdog team right there. That is a guy who believes he belongs."

I made the mistake of smiling. Marina caught me instantly.

She lowered her phone just enough to murmur, "You are not being subtle."

"I am literally standing still."

"Yes," she said. "And glowing. Which is worse."

I glared at her. She went back to filming.

The middle part of the race turned into exactly the kind of test that separated cute stories from serious race teams.

Long green run. Lap traffic. Changing balance. Pit cycles that matter. No room for fantasy.

And Kent didn't fade. If anything, Nick got stronger. The car looked planted through the center. He started reeling the leader in a tenth at a time. Logan's voice over the radio was steady and clipped. Reid sounded almost eerily calm, which meant he was probably one heartbeat away from spontaneous combustion but chose professionalism.

Nick gave feedback in short, clean bursts.

"A little free off two."
"Still good through center."
"Need a touch more rear drive."
"Tell me where he's better."

No drama. No ego. Just information.

The broadcast booth kept circling back to him because they couldn't help it.

"I'll tell you what, if you're a bigger team watching this, you've got to be wondering how much longer Nick Hartley stays a secret."

"He's not a secret anymore."

"And this is why the PeakForm deal matters. That money goes into better equipment, engineering help, development. You can literally watch the speed show up week over week."

"Yeah, but money doesn't drive the thing. The driver still has to deliver. Hartley is delivering."

That line lodged somewhere deep in me and stayed there.

Money doesn't drive the thing. The driver still has to deliver.

Exactly.

PeakForm bought possibility. Nick turned it into results.

By the final stage, the whole conversation had changed.

He was not the fun side story anymore. He was an actual threat.

Cameron was openly beaming now, and honestly, he earned some of it. PeakForm may have taken some heat at the beginning for not signing a legacy name. There were articles. Pundits. Quiet little industry murmurs about visibility versus upside. Why tie your brand to a scrappy single car team when you could buy your way into a top tier organization with guaranteed camera time?

Because this was better, that's why. Because an underdog became a main character in real time, and suddenly every camera in the place was looking exactly where your logo lived.

With forty laps to go, Nick took the lead on pit strategy timing and pure execution.

The stop was perfect. The cycle fell his way.
He cleared the leader on the restart with a move so clean it almost looked easy.

It was not easy. Nothing about this was easy.

The crowd volume changed when he hit the front. It was louder, yes, but it was something else too. Surprise melting into belief. People love a favorite. They love an underdog even more when the underdog stops asking permission and starts taking the race away from richer people.

The booth sounded delighted.

"Nick Hartley to the lead!"

"Listen to this place!"

"Single car Kent Motorsports, PeakForm on the hood, and the twenty-eight is out front!"

"This is the kind of story sponsors dream about. If Hartley pulls this off, PeakForm's gonna look like absolute geniuses come Monday morning."

I stopped breathing for a second. There it is.
The dangerous possibility. Not just strong run. Not just validation. Win.

It hung there over pit road like heat haze.

Nick leading. Then leading some more.
Then started having to manage traffic.

Every lap felt like ten. I was supposed to be monitoring sponsor deliverables and guest reactions and post-race content contingencies.

Instead I was standing there with my headset crooked and my heart halfway up my throat watching the scoring pylon flick by like I could influence it with pure will.

Cameron said something to me about contingency social copy if he wins.

If.

I nodded like I heard him. I did not hear a word.

The caution came with nineteen to go.

Of course it did. Of course the universe would not let this be easy.

A piece of debris. Nothing dramatic. Enough to reset the field and turn the final stretch into a knife fight.

Pit road exploded into motion.

The stop was good, but one of the powerhouse teams beat him out by inches.

Nick restarted second. My stomach dropped.

Around me, PeakForm guests were practically vibrating.

Marina had abandoned all pretense of composed brand management and was openly muttering at the timing screen.
Devin was refreshing data that no longer mattered because no model in the world can calculate what desperation does on a late restart.

Green.

The leader got a good launch. Nick stayed with him. Third shoved him into one.
He caught it. Drove off hard. Held second.

The announcers were shouting now.

"Hartley's still there!"

"He is not going away!"

"Look at the twenty-eight hang on the outside!"

He fought. God, he fought. For six laps it looked like he might do it anyway.

He got to the leader's quarter panel twice.
Showed the nose. Tried the high lane. Then the low lane. Burned his stuff a little too hard trying to complete the run.

And with three to go, the bigger team finally edged clear enough to breathe.

Nick crossed the line second.

Second.

It should have felt like heartbreak. There was some of that, yes. A sharp little ache for how close it got. For the fact that I let myself imagine the win. For the way the team on the box went half-feral and half-deflated in the same breath.

Mostly it felt like arrival.

The crowd gave him a real cheer on the cooldown lap.

The broadcast booth sounded almost disappointed.

"That's a career statement for Nick Hartley."

"No win today, but make no mistake, the garage noticed. The fans noticed. The industry noticed."

"And PeakForm has to be thrilled. This is exactly the kind of return you gamble on when you bet on talent instead of brand familiarity."

"One car. Smaller budget. Bigger fight. That twenty-eight team just made a lot of people believe."

Cameron exhaled like he had been holding his breath for twenty laps.

Then he laughed.

"We're going to own the internet tonight."

Marina nodded without looking away from pit road. "Already do."

I should have been thinking about rollout language. Hero shots. Post-race captions.
Interview angles. The exact phrasing that framed this as proof of concept rather than a noble almost.

Instead I was watching Nick bring the car down pit road, window net down, and all I could think was that he told me earlier he was about to make the sponsor look brilliant.

And he was right.

He climbed out on pit road to a swarm of cameras.

Reid grabbed him first. Then Logan. Then Marshall.

It was not victory lane, but the Kent guys celebrated like people who knew exactly what this meant. Not a lucky fuel-mileage nonsense run. Not weather roulette. Not strategy chaos that dropped them into relevance for ten minutes.

Speed. Execution. Legitimacy.

Nick pulled off the helmet, and even from here I could see it on his face, that mix of adrenaline and frustration and satisfaction that belonged to competitors who wanted more but knew damn well they just changed the conversation anyway.

The interview started almost immediately. I could hear parts of it from where I was standing near the wall.

"Nick, incredible run. You nearly pulled off the upset."

He pushed a hand through sweat-damp hair and smiled that crooked, wrecking smile of his. "I don't know if we think of it as an upset anymore."

Cameron actually slapped my arm. "That is such a good line."

I barely felt it because Nick kept talking.

"We've got a hell of a team. Kent gives me a fast car, PeakForm came in and believed in what we were building, and every week we get a little better. Today hurts because we were close, but we're not here to almost be part of the show. We're here to race with these guys."

The announcer sounded delighted.

"That partnership with PeakForm seems to be paying off in a big way."

Nick nodded toward the hood logo still bright under the lights and says, "They took a chance on us when they didn't have to. I'd say today makes them look pretty smart."

Everything around me blurred for half a second. Because I know that line will get clipped and replayed and written into social copy and maybe end up in a headline.

But right now it felt like something else too.
Like truth. Like gratitude. Like a man who knew exactly who showed up early.

Maybe I was making it worse for myself because then, as if he could feel it, Nick looked toward the sponsor area.

Toward us. Toward me. Again, that's all it took.

Marina's voice arrived beside me like a knife.

"If you pass out, I'm not carrying you."

"I'm working."

"You've said that a lot this weekend."

I hate that she was learning patterns.

Post-race became a blur after that.

Cameron got pulled into interviews about strategic alignment and brand authenticity. Devin was ecstatic because live engagement numbers were apparently doing obscene things. Marina was coordinating photo selects before the car had even made it through inspection. Guests were suddenly talking like they were visionary believers from the start.

Everybody wanted proximity to a story once it became real.

That part, at least, I understood.

What I did not understand was how I was supposed to walk into the Kent hauler ten minutes later with the rest of the PeakForm group and act like my pulse is not staging a full mutiny. But work is work, so I did it.

The hauler was loud in the specific way small-team success was loud. Not champagne soaked chaos or giant organization machine celebration.

Better than that.

Crew guys grinning too hard. Someone yelling for water. Someone else swearing they told everybody the long-run speed was there. Marshall trying and failing to act measured. Logan being impossible.

Nick was in the middle of it all, still half in his suit, hair damp, cheeks flushed, looking alive in a way that almost made me angry because nobody should be allowed to look that good after detonating my emotional equilibrium and nearly winning a race on the same weekend.

Cameron got to him first, all handshakes and praise and polished sponsor talk.

"That was a statement run."

Nick nodded. "We're just getting started."

"You made us look very smart today."

He smiled. "Told you I would."

Then his eyes flicked past Cameron and landed on me.

And just for a second, the noise around us fell away.

There was too much in that look. Too much heat still under the race-day adrenaline.
Too much knowing. Too much this is not over.

Then Logan barrelled in from the side and ruined everything.

"Can somebody get a camera on Cameron before he floats away?" he said. "Man's been grinning like he personally tightened lug nuts."

Everybody laughed. The spell broke.
Thank God. Unfortunately.

We did the official sponsor congratulations. Photos. Handshakes. Cameron talking long-term upside while basically vibrating with vindication. Marina taking enough content to fuel three days of digital rollout. Devin reading out numbers nobody asked for.

Through all of it, the narrative was locked in.

PeakForm didn't buy a logo placement.
They bought in at the exact right moment on a driver and team climbing together.

And the whole garage knows it now.

Later, when the immediate frenzy thinned out and I finally got a second near the back of the hauler to breathe, Nick found me.

He stepped into the narrow pocket of space beside the storage cabinets, not cornering me, just close enough that I can smell sweat and rubber and race fuel still clinging to him under the cleaner scent of whatever he splashed on his face after the interview.

"You okay?" he asked.

That should not still undo me this much.
It did anyway.

"You just finished second in a Cup race," I said. "Why are you asking me that?"

His mouth tilted. "Because you look at races like they happen directly to your central nervous system."

I let out one startled laugh despite myself.

"That was ridiculous."

"Good ridiculous?"

"You had the whole broadcast booth ready to build you a monument."

"Sounds expensive. Kent would hate that."

I shook my head, but I was smiling now and I could feel it happening and apparently I was powerless to stop it.

"You realize PeakForm is going to make an entire campaign out of this."

"They should." He said it simply

Then he leaned a fraction closer and lowered his voice.

"Told you I'd make the sponsor look brilliant."

Heat rushed through me all over again.

I folded my arms because it gave me something to do other than touch him, which would have been catastrophic in a fully populated race hauler.

"You also nearly gave Cameron a spiritual experience."

"He'll recover."

I met his eyes.

This close, the race was still on him. In his posture. In the adrenaline humming just under the surface. In the way his focus hasn't fully come down yet, making everything about him feel sharper, brighter, more dangerous.

"You were incredible," I said before I could stop myself.

Nick went very still. For half a second I considered diving headfirst through the floor.

Then his expression changed in that quiet way that always got me worst. Not smug or teasing, just warm.

"Yeah?" he asked softly.

I could have lied. I didn't.

"Yeah."

The noise of the hauler surged back around us. Someone yelled for him up front. Logan, probably. Maybe Reid.

Nick didn't look away.

"Avery."

That tone again. That impossible tone.

I swallowed. "You should probably go enjoy being the story of the day."

He smiled, slow and tired and pleased in a way that felt earned now.

"Maybe later."

Then, because he was incapable of letting me leave a conversation breathing normally, he added in a voice only I could hear:

"You look even prettier when I can tell you were worried about me."

And then he walked away before I could do a single thing about it.

I stood there in the back of the Kent hauler with my arms still folded, my heartbeat doing something deeply unreasonable, and the absolute certainty that this weekend had become unmanageable.

Because Nick Hartley nearly won a race.
The broadcast booth fell in love with him.
PeakForm now looked like the smartest sponsor in the sport.

And somehow none of that is the most dangerous thing that happened.

The most dangerous thing was still him looking at me like that after.