Nick's POV

The weirdest part wasn't that Avery was here.
It was that she was here and nothing about her surprised me.

Sure, the blazer was new. The heels, the tablet, the way people deferred to her without her having to raise her voice. Those were all upgrades.

But the tilt of her head when she listened? The tiny crease between her brows when she was thinking? The way her eyes went sharp when someone said something half baked?

Same girl.

Same girl, upgraded armor.

"After you, Ms. Cole," I'd said, and she'd walked past me into the sim room like she owned it. Like she didn't notice my heart doing laps.

Which, obviously, she didn't. That would be too easy.

The sim room lights were low, screens wrapping around the rig like a cocoon. Monitors sat on a side desk, already lit up with data from earlier sessions. It smelled like plastic, rubber, and the faint ghost of sweat. Glamorous.

"Wow," Cameron said, stepping in behind us. "This is...intense."

"It's a fancy video game," I said, because somebody had to say it. "Just don't tell Jared I said that."

"Video games don't usually have eighty-thousand-dollar steering wheels," Devin murmured, eyes already devouring the setup. "This is beautiful."

"Take all the pictures you want," Marshall said. "As long as you don't post my lap times."

Marina hovered near the door, assessing the room like she was thinking about lighting for future shoots. Avery stood off to the side, tablet in hand, posture relaxed but eyes taking in every angle.

I climbed up onto the platform and dropped into the seat. Belts still warm from earlier. The wheel fit my hands like it always did.

We'd done this a thousand times.

Just not with her watching.

"You want a run?" Marshall asked Cameron.

"Oh, absolutely not," Cameron said. "I like to pretend I could do this. I'd prefer not to have that fantasy shattered in front of my employees."

"Coward," Marco muttered, earning a nudge from Avery.

"You done with Martinsville?" Jared called from the console.

"Yeah," I said. "Let's do something fast enough to impress the suits."

The sim screens flickered to life, loading into Charlotte under the lights. Familiar walls, familiar marks. The digital version smelled less like beer and burnt rubber than the real place, but it still did the job.

"Alright, give 'em a few pace laps," Marshall said. "Talk through what you're doing."

I pulled the belts tight, settled my feet on the pedals. Muscle memory kicked in.

"Okay," I said, more for the room than myself. "Charlotte. We're rolling. Pit road speed first. Don't speed. NASCAR hates that."

A couple of chuckles behind me. Good. Laugh.
Relax. Ignore the fact that Avery is somewhere over my right shoulder.

"Out onto the track," I said, easing up off pit road. "First lap, we're building heat. Tires, brakes. Feel for grip. Car's gonna be a little lazy until everything comes in."

The digital car hummed under me as I rolled up through the gears. Hands light on the wheel, eyes far ahead.

I spoke as much for them as to keep myself from fixating on the fact that we were in a dark room and Avery was close enough I could probably reach out and touch her if I tried. Not that I was going to try. I liked my hand attached to my arm.

"Entry, I'm lifting here," I said, backing out of the throttle and letting the car settle. "Feel the front bite. If it doesn't, I know we're too tight. If it snaps loose, I know the rear's too free. Either way, I'm feeding that back to the crew chief."

"Do you actually think all that in real time?" Devin asked, somewhere off to the left.

"Not in full sentences," I said. "It's more, y'know, vibes."

Avery snorted quietly. The sound zinged through me.

"Hey, Hartley?" Cameron said. "What does PeakForm look like in this picture? Be honest. You already use our stuff, don't pretend you don't, I saw your Instagram."

Of course he'd seen my Instagram. That's probably why I was in this room.

I eased into the gas off four, watched the virtual wall slide by. "Honestly? Right now, PeakForm's just...my stuff. Shirt in my gym bag. Shorts I throw on for a run. Bottles in the fridge that I drink because they work and don't taste like melted candy."

"Romantic," Marina murmured.

"I thought you wanted honesty," I said.

She made a noncommittal noise that might've been amusement.

Cameron chuckled. "And if this deal goes through?"

I rolled into one, groove by muscle memory.

"Then it's part of the job," I said. "Gear in the hauler. Product we test as a team. Stuff we can put in front of fans and say, 'Hey, this isn't just a logo. This is actually what I use when I'm trying not to suck on Sundays.'"

Avery's voice came, clear and professional. "And what does not sucking look like to you?"

I smiled without meaning to. Classic her. Turn everything into a metric.

"Top tens as a baseline," I said. "Top fives when we unload close. Wins when we hit it. No DNFs I can control. No excuses."

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

"That plays," Cameron said. "Keep going."

I picked up the pace, lap times tightening. The sim rig transmitted every bump, every ounce of load in the corners. I narrated lines and adjustments, how we'd tighten the car as the sun went down, how we'd read tire wear, where I'd steal half a lane if someone was blocking the bottom.

The more I talked, the more the nerves burned off. This, at least, was mine. Racing. Explaining. Making something that looked insane feel almost understandable to people who'd never sat behind the wheel at 180.

"Okay, bring it down," Marshall said after a few laps at qualifying pace. "Before you make the rest of us look lazy."

I lifted, let the car roll, and coasted back to pit road, hitting the button to exit the sim. Screens blinked back to neutral. The restraints felt tighter now that I wasn't moving.

I unbuckled, swung my legs out, and dropped down from the rig.

"You made that look disgustingly easy," Marco said. "I hate you a little bit."

"That means it'll cut well in edit," Devin said, already checking his monitor. "We got great audio from you explaining stuff. Fans are gonna eat this up."

Cameron clapped me on the shoulder. "That was impressive," he said. "I got motion sick just watching."

"You should see him do it for real," Marshall said. "There's more yelling."

"Hey, I only yell when somebody blocks me like an idiot," I protested.

"You yelled at air last week," Max called from the doorway.

"The air deserved it," I shot back.

More laughter. Good. Easy.

But my eyes kept drifting back to Avery.

She was looking at the sim data on one of the monitors, expression focused. The screen lit her face faint blue, highlighting the tiny scar on her chin from when she'd wiped out on my parents' driveway on a bike when we were twelve. She'd cried like the world was ending. I'd carried her inside, bleeding and furious.

Now, she wore thousand dollar shoes and people with six-figure budgets waited to hear what she thought.

"You look annoyed," she said without glancing up.

"Just realizing you still know how to ruin my fun," I said.

She huffed a small laugh. "You call that fun?"

"Better than spreadsheets."

"Spreadsheets pay your bills."

"Touche."

She looked up then, really looked, and for a second we were just...there. No sim. No bosses. No brand between us.

"Any concerns?" she asked, and I knew she meant the deal, not us. Obviously. That would be too easy.

"Just the usual," I said. "People want polish. They get me instead."

Her mouth twitched. "They came here because they want you instead."

"Yeah, well," I said. "We'll see if they still feel that way after I get wrecked three races in a row and somebody online calls me overhyped reality-show trash."

Something flickered in her eyes...anger on my behalf, fast, then gone. "Then we'll handle it," she said.

We.

The word lodged somewhere deep.

"Alright," Marshall said, clapping once. "Let's grab the conference room before the shop kids steal all the sandwiches."

We migrated back out of the sim room and up the stairs to a glass-walled conference room that overlooked the shop. The No. 28 sat directly below, a big, silent promise.

Lunch was laid out on the credenza; sandwiches, salads, chips, fruit trying very hard to look appealing next to cookies. Marina immediately took a bottle of water and a salad. Marco went for the biggest sub he could find. I grabbed whatever was closest and tried not to look like I was calculating how many more of these meetings it would take to lock my seat down.

Everyone settled around the table. Laptops opened. Notepads appeared.

Avery sat across from me, slightly to the left, close enough that if I stretched my legs too far under the table, I'd hit her ankle. I kept my feet tucked like a polite person. Mostly because running into her accidentally-on-purpose felt like something eighteen-year-old me would do, and I was not that kid. Not anymore.

"Okay," Cameron said after we'd all taken a first bite. "We've seen the shop. We've seen the sim. Now I'd love to talk about...philosophy."

"If I'd known there was a philosophy portion, I'd have brought my glasses," I said.

He smiled. "You already passed the physical test," he said. "Now I want to know how you think."

He glanced at Avery. "You mind driving this part? You've been living in the weeds of it."

She nodded, wiped her fingers on a napkin, and tapped something on her tablet. The screen behind me switched to a slide I couldn't see but assumed involved words like positioning and narrative.

"If PeakForm moves forward with Kent and with Nick specifically," she said, "we're not just putting a logo on a car. We're writing a thesis about what performance looks like in this garage, and in the lives of the people watching from the stands and the couch."

Her voice shifted into presentation mode; crisp, confident. I'd heard echoes of it when she'd argued with teachers about curriculum, when she'd told guidance counselors exactly why their suggested college list was nonsense.

Now she wielded it like a scalpel.

"From our perspective," she went on, "Nick's value isn't just his lap times. It's the way his story maps onto our target audience's internal narrative. He's not a prodigy who got everything handed to him. He's the guy who took a weird, one-shot opportunity and stayed. That has weight."

She flicked her eyes toward me briefly, then back to Cameron.

"The question," she said, "is how comfortable PeakForm is building a campaign around that, around the grind, the fear, the days where the car's a 'dump truck', your words, and the best you can do is bring it home in one piece."

Marina tilted her head. "We don't shy away from struggle," she said. "We just...prefer it to be aesthetic."

Marco choked, covering it with a cough. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper.

"Aesthetic struggle doesn't build loyalty," Avery said calmly. "It builds envy. It makes people feel like they'll never measure up. What Nick does publicly, when he admits he's frustrated but accountable? That builds trust. Which, for a performance brand, is more valuable than a six-pack in good lighting."

Cameron nodded slowly. "We want trust," he said. "We just don't want...meltdowns."

"Luckily," I said, "my meltdowns are usually contained to the radio channel."

Marshall snorted. "Usually."

I spread my hands. "Look, I'm not going to pretend I'm a robot. I care. Sometimes that comes out spicy. But I'm not out here trying to get canceled. I just don't want to be that guy who only ever says, 'the PeakForm Ford was great today, the crew did a great job, we'll look at the data and move on.'"

"You say that like it's a crime," Marina said.

"It's not a crime," I said. "It's just boring. Fans see right through it. You can't build a story around a cardboard cutout."

Cameron looked between us; Avery on one side, me on the other like he was watching a really good tennis match.

"So what I'm hearing," he said, "is we have to get comfortable with a little...texture."

"That's a nice way to put it," I said.

"Rough edges," Avery corrected.

My eyes snapped to hers.

She said it blandly, like she wasn't also calling back every time anyone had said I was "a little much" growing up. Like she hadn't been the one person who never tried to sand those edges down, just redirect them.

"Rough edges make people believe the smooth parts," she added, looking back at Cameron. "If all they ever see is highlight reels, they tune out. If they see the work, the cracks, the days he finishes twenty-seventh and still shows up on Monday? They believe him when he says the product's part of his process."

"And you're confident you can...manage that?" Marina asked.

"Manage me?" I said. "I'm right here, you know."

Avery didn't smile, but her eyes warmed. Just a little. "I'm confident we can set guardrails," she said.  "Nick can send me anything he wants to post when he's mad, we tweak if needed, and he still sounds like himself. That way the internet won't catch fire."

"She's good at that," I said before I could stop myself. "Annoyingly good."

"High praise," Cameron said.

Marina sighed, but some of the tension had gone out of her shoulders. "Fine," she said. "We'll try it your way. Guardrails, not scripts."

Devin typed something that was probably guardrails, not scripts into a note titled brand gospel.

"Good," Cameron said. "Because I don't want a corporate robot."

He turned to me. "I want you. The guy who still looks like that eighteen -year-old from Road To The 28 when he talks about bringing the truck home. Just with better media training."

"I can probably manage that," I said.

Avery's gaze caught mine for a half second, and I swear there was something like pride there. It landed harder than it had any right to.

The rest of the meeting moved into details; deliverables, content calendars, legal language I tried very hard not to let my eyes glaze over for. I added input when it touched my world: what we could logistically shoot on race weekends, how much time I could realistically give to campaign stuff without tanking performance.

Through it all, Avery steered.

She translated corporate speak into racing speak and back again so smoothly you'd think she'd grown up in both worlds instead of one. She knew when to push, when to let something go, when to glance at me as if to say, okay with this?
Every time, I found myself nodding before I even realized why.

By the time the PeakForm crew packed up their laptops and Marshall walked them to the door with promises of follow-up emails, my brain felt used up.

I lingered in the hallway outside the conference room, watching Marina and Devin step into the elevator. Cameron clapped me on the shoulder on his way past.

"Good work today," he said. "We'll be in touch soon."

"Sounds good," I said. "Thanks for coming out."

He smiled. "Try not to tweet anything insane in the meantime."

"No promises," I said.

He laughed and disappeared behind the closing doors.

That left Avery and me in the suddenly quiet hallway, sunlight slanting through the big windows, dust motes floating in the air between us.

She tucked her tablet under her arm. "You did well," she said.

"You sound surprised."

"I sound impressed," she said. "There's a difference."

Silence stretched. Not quite comfortable. Not quite not.

"Look," I said before I could talk myself out of it. "I know this is...weird."

"Understatement," she said.

"But I appreciate you going to bat for me in there," I said. "You didn't have to."

"Yes, I did," she said. "You're the right fit. If you weren't, I wouldn't be here."

"What if I told you I was glad you're here?" I asked, voice coming out rougher than I meant it to.

She held my gaze, something unreadable in her eyes. "I'd tell you we have a lot of work to do," she said softly. "And not a lot of time."

Work. Safe word.

I nodded, letting her off the hook. Letting myself off it too, maybe.

"Then I guess we better not waste it," I said.

She gave me a quick, tight smile. "I'll send over the recap and next steps," she said, stepping past me toward the stairs. "Try not to loop it in digital Martinsville before then."

"Can't make any promises," I called after her.

She didn't look back, but I saw the curve of her mouth as she disappeared around the corner.

I leaned against the wall for a second, head thunking back gently against the painted drywall.

Adult Avery in the flesh was everything I'd expected and worse.

If I wasn't careful, she was going to be the thing that made this whole "no Plan B" life feel precarious again for reasons that had nothing to do with sponsorships or seats and everything to do with an old meteor shower and a house we used to build in the sky.