Avery's POV

By the time I got back to my Charlotte apartment, my blazer felt like armor I couldn't wait to peel off.

I dropped my bag by the door, toed my heels off in the entryway, and bee-lined for the kitchen. The under-cabinet lights blinked on with a soft click, throwing the countertops into a warm glow.
I poured a glass of wine, braced my hands on the counter, and let my forehead drop into the hollow between them.

Kent Motorsports. PeakForm. Nick.

I'd made it through the meeting, the sim demo, the lunch, and the brand-philosophy cage match without crying, passing out, or saying, Actually, I used to make out with your potential brand asset behind the high school bleachers. I lost my virginity to him in the back of his pickup.

So, professional success all around.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

Helena:
Got a call from Cameron on the drive back.
They're in.
Pending final paperwork, PeakForm is choosing Kent + Hartley.
You did good, Avery.

A second later:

We'll talk terms tomorrow. For tonight, celebrate. 🥂

I stared at the screen. There it was. The thing I'd wanted: a big, career-making deal locked down. Multi-year. High-profile. The kind of thing that got you promoted, invited to panels, asked for quotes in AdWeek.

I typed back:

That's great news.
Congrats to all of us.

I added a champagne emoji because that's what people did when they were appropriately excited.
Then I set the phone down and leaned back against the counter, staring at the ceiling.

You should feel proud, I told myself. And I did. In a cerebral, bullet-pointed way.

-Identified driver fit
-Persuaded risk-averse brand
-Steered agency, team, and sponsor toward a cohesive story

But beneath all that, thrumming under my ribs: You just tied the rest of your career to the boy who broke your heart and kissed a blonde in Victory Lane a month and a half later.

I shook myself out of it, grabbed my laptop, and curled up on the couch with a blanket and a new Google Doc titled:

PeakForm x Kent Motorsports - Narrative
Framework v1

Work was safe. Work made sense. Work didn't kiss anyone in front of fifty thousand people.

I typed until the words turned blurry, positioning statements, campaign pillars, content arcs. Every time my brain started to drift toward the way Nick had looked in the sim, or the way he'd said we in the conference room, I shoved it back onto the track of deliverables and KPIs.

By midnight, I had three pages of strategy and one firm, sour truth lodged behind my sternum:
The past was not going to stay politely in the past just because I had a deadline.

                       
                                       🏁🏁🏁

Ten Years Ago

The college spreadsheet glared back at me like it was mocking me for not having my life together yet.

I had three tabs open: one for in-state or adjacent schools, one for "reach" schools, and one that might as well have been titled "delusional, but what if?" The AP Chem lab rubric sat under my elbow, half-highlighted. My highlighter streaked an accidental neon line up my wrist when my hand slipped.

"Perfect," I muttered. "Now I look like I lost a fight with a Post-it."

My phone buzzed on the comforter next to me. For the first time in history, it wasn't Nick.
I checked it anyway.

Group chat. Karen complaining about rehearsal. Someone sending a meme about senioritis. I silenced it and tossed my phone back down.

The house was quiet. Mom was at the store, Dad on second shift at the plant. The air conditioner hummed, wind chimes on the porch jingled every time the breeze picked up. It was one of those afternoons that felt like it was holding its breath.

My brain was juggling a test, my essay draft, and the fact that I still hadn't figured out how to tell Nick that Boston wasn't just a pipe dream anymore, that there was a real possibility I could get out, too. My guidance counselor had said the words "strong candidate" and "merit package," which sounded suspiciously like you might have options, Cole.

Except every time I went to type an email to admissions, I thought about Nick's face when he talked about North Carolina. About Mooresville and race shops and how you could practically smell horsepower in the air.

We'd said we'd figure it out together, which was a great plan, if reality felt any less like quicksand.

I dragged my pen down the side of my notebook, turning bullet points into little stars, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach that had been there since fall.

Outside, I heard the familiar rattle of a muffler and the grind of a too-eager downshift.

My heart did a stupid little flip.

Nick's truck.

He was supposed to be working at the parts store until five. It was barely after three.

I froze, pen hovering above my paper, waiting for the sound to keep going past our cul-de-sac.
It didn't.

Engine off. Door slam. Footsteps.

The wind chimes jingled again, louder this time.
Someone knocked...three short knocks, too quick to be a stranger, too polite to be my parents.

My pulse picked up.

I dropped the pen, wiping my highlighter-streaked wrist on the hem of my oversized T-shirt as I padded down the hall.

The moment I opened the front door and saw his face, my brain did the worst possible thing.

Someone died.

"You look like somebody died," I blurted.

"Uh," he said. "Hi?"

He was pale. Not just "I stood under fluorescent lights all day" pale. This was the I saw something life-altering pale. His hair was a mess like he'd run his hands through it a thousand times. He was breathing too fast. And he had paper clenched in his hand like it was either a winning lottery ticket or a felony charge.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Can I come in?" he said.

"Is it another speeding ticket, Nicholas, I swear to God..."

"It's not a ticket," he said quickly, eyes wide. "It's...just, let's go to your room before I throw up on your porch."

"Wow," I said. "Compelling pitch."

But I stepped back anyway, letting him in, the familiar smell of him; motor oil and cheap soap and the peppermint gum he always chewed cutting through the cold air of the foyer.

He kicked his boots off without me even having to glare at him, which was another red flag. Normally he liked to test the limits of how much dirt he could track in before my mama threatened his life.

He followed me down the hall, the paper still clamped in his hand.

My room looked the way it always did: bed made, throw pillows in a vague approximation of Pinterest, desk covered in notebooks and sticky notes, one wall taped over with magazine clippings and photos and scrap paper full of song lyrics. His hat hung from the corner of my mirror, exactly where I'd hung it last week because "it smells like you and gas station coffee and I like that."

I sat on the edge of my bed.

He just...stood there.

"Okay," I said, crossing my legs. "You're freaking me out. What happened?"

"I got an email," he said.

"The IRS?" I deadpanned. "Your mom's going to have a stroke."

"Kent Motorsports," he said. "Road To The 28."

For a second, the words didn't make sense. Like they were in English, but my brain couldn't articulate them.

Then they slotted into place and my stomach dropped.

"You..." I started slowly. "You got an email. From Kent."

He held the printout out to me with both hands shaking, knuckles white.

My hands were also shaking by the time I took it.

The Kent Motorsports logo bled down the top of the page in grainy, black-and-white glory thanks to the store's awful printer. Still, it hit me like a punch.

We'd watched the announcement for Road To The 28 online weeks ago. He'd scoffed at the reality-show gimmicks, then gone quiet, jaw ticking the way it did when he was thinking too hard about something.

"If this is the only way in..." he'd said softly.

I'd stayed up until midnight helping him edit his video submission.

Now, the words in front of me blurred.

Dear Nicholas Hartley,
Thank you for your submission...
...selected as one of fifteen finalists...
...compete for a full-time NASCAR Truck Series ride...

I read the whole thing once and then again, slower, just to make sure my brain wasn't fabricating.

"Read it out loud," he said hoarsely. "I need to...hear it. Make sure I'm not hallucinating."

So I did. Every single word, my voice tripping on "pleased to inform you" and "finalists will report to Kent Motorsports headquarters in Mooresville, North Carolina on..."

My throat closed up.

Four days.

"Finalist," I whispered. "Fifteen out of hundreds. That's..."

Everything you ever wanted.

"Insane," he said.

"Incredible," I corrected automatically, because if I didn't default to logic I was going to start screaming.

God, his face.

He looked like every wish he'd ever made on a meteor shower had gotten together and sent him a formal letter.

"They picked me, Aves," he said, words tumbling over each other. "They actually... I'm in. I get to go. I get to compete. For a ride in a real truck. With a real team. In NASCAR."

The way his voice cracked on that last word nearly did me in.

"You're in the top fifteen," I said, my rational brain kicking in and grabbing a clipboard. "You still have to win it."

"I know," he said. "But this is...this is the only way I even get to try. We can't...my parents can't buy a ride. I don't have sponsors beating down my door or a big last name or some fancy pedigree. This is it."

He didn't say my way out, but the words hung in the air anyway.

The email crinkled where my fingers tightened.

"When?" I asked, even though I could already see it in the body of the letter.

"In four days," he said.

My head snapped up. "Four days?"

"Yeah." He let out a strangled laugh. "They want us there for this combine thing. Interviews, media stuff, tests, whatever. Then they start the show. Cameras and elimination rounds and all that. If I make it all the way through, I'm there for a few months at least."

Months.

Not abstract "someday we'll move away" months.

Specific, scheduled, "in four days you drive away from this town and keep going until the GPS runs out of road" months.

"It's North Carolina," he rushed on, like that might calm the buzzing under my skin. "Race shop country. Like I always talked about."

I knew his Dream Geography by heart.
Mooresville. Concord. Kannapolis. Places where race teams had real facilities and drivers were spotted in grocery stores and the local schools had mascots that made sense with car numbers instead of tractors.

His eyes had always gone distant when he talked about it. Not in a way that left me out, exactly, but in a way that made me very aware that his future had always had more laps than mine.

"I know," I said, my voice coming out softer than I intended. "I'm just...processing."

"Same," he said quickly. "One minute I'm scanning oil filter barcodes, the next minute I'm...this."

He gestured helplessly at the letter. At the massive blank space where our plan used to live in my mind.

"Do your parents know yet?" I asked.

He shook his head. "You're the first person I told."

Something hot pricked behind my eyes. Of course I was.

We'd been each other's first call for everything since we were fifteen. First failed test. First podium. First college brochure. First panic attack.

"You picked me before your mom," I said, trying to keep it light.

He shrugged, suddenly shy in a way that made my chest hurt.

"Figured if it was real, you'd tell me," he said. "And if it wasn't, you'd help me bury the evidence and pretend the parts store computer caught a virus."

A laugh punched out of me, shaky and too loud.

"Okay," I said, brain snapping into checklist mode because the alternative was curling up on the floor. "First things first. We tell your parents. Then your boss. Then we figure out what you need."

"I don't... I mean, they said housing's covered, travel's covered," he said. "I just gotta get there with my bag and try not to sound like an idiot on camera."

"You will absolutely sound like an idiot on camera," I said briskly, grabbing the notebook off my nightstand. "We'll work on that."

The relieved smile that softened his face told me I'd picked the right lane.

This was what I knew how to do: take chaos and put bullet points on it.

"Wardrobe," I muttered, scribbling. "Do you own anything that doesn't have a stain or a sponsor logo?"

"My flannel's nice," he protested.

"Your flannel looks like it survived a small wildfire," I said. "You'll need at least one decent button-down for interviews. And...a haircut, probably."

"What's wrong with my hair?"

"It's giving 'auditioned for a boy band,'" I said. "We're going to find you a barber."

"You say that like I have money," he said.

"I have babysitting cash," I said. "And I'm invested in my boyfriend not looking like he lives under the bleachers when he goes to meet TV people."

The word boyfriend settled between us like something warm and solid..

His shoulders relaxed a fraction. He sat down next to me, the bed dipping under his weight, our thighs touching in that familiar way that felt more like gravity than choice now.

"Aves," he said quietly. "Look at me?"

I did. He looked terrified.

"What if I don't get it?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper. "What if I go up there and I suck and I'm just...TV filler? Then what? I quit my job, leave everybody, make a fool out of myself, and come home with nothing."

My heart clenched. He could be so stupidly cocky in a car. Outside of it, the fear crept in. Money. Time. Being from nowhere. The ticking clock of "you're good, kid, but without a sponsor..."

"Then you come home," I said firmly. "We regroup. You keep racing here. Maybe another door opens. Maybe it looks different than you thought. But you go."

He looked at me like I'd just told him the sky was green.

"Why?" he asked, his voice cracking on the single syllable.

Because I've seen you after every Saturday night race at the local track, bones humming, eyes lit up even when the car was junk and the payout was gas money.

Because when you drive, you're more you than any other time.

Because if you stay and you watch someone else make it with half your talent, you'll resent me for being the anchor you chose instead.

"Because this is what you've wanted since you were old enough to say 'vroom,'" I said instead, aiming for light and landing somewhere near raw. "Because you'd never forgive yourself if you didn't try. Because the worst thing that happens is you come back with a story. And the best thing that happens is...everything you've ever dreamed of."

His eyes shone. He blinked hard.

"And you?" he asked. "What happens to you if I go?"

The question hit me in a place I'd been studiously ignoring.

What did happen to me?

College applications. Essays. Maybe Boston. Maybe somewhere closer if that fell through. Part-time shifts at the coffee shop. Late-night FaceTimes if the Wi-Fi cooperated. Watching him on a screen instead of from the stands.

"I'm not going anywhere for a few months," I said carefully. "I'll still be here. Applying to schools. Drinking terrible coffee. Bullying you via FaceTime."

"So you're okay with this?" he asked. "Really?"

No.
Yes.
Both.

I twisted the pen between my fingers until the cap squeaked.

"I'm..." I exhaled, trying to find words big enough for all of it. "I'm scared," I admitted. "For you. Of what happens if they're awful or if you're hard on yourself. Or if some producer decides you're the villain of the week. I don't like not being able to protect you from that."

His brows flew up. "You think you protect me?"

"Obviously," I said. "I'm the only thing standing between you and some truly terrible decisions."

He snorted. "Fair."

"But," I added, and when I looked up this time, I let him see the steel under the fear, "I'm more scared of what happens to you if you never get this shot. I'm not going to be the reason you stayed."

There it was, the ugly truth I'd been circling for months.

His face softened in a way that made my chest ache.

"You're not a reason I'd regret," he said quietly.

"Not now," I said before I could stop myself. "But in ten years? When you're still here and someone else is on TV doing what you could've done? I don't want to be the face you see when you think 'what if.'"

He flinched like I'd slapped him.

For a second, I thought I'd gone too far. That I'd pushed him away in my eagerness to shove him toward his dream.

Then he took a shaky breath.

"I love you," he blurted.

The words still caught me, even after all the times we'd said them. Not because I doubted them, but because they still felt like a miracle every time they came in his voice.

I smiled, small and fierce.

"I know," I said. "I love you too. Which is why I'm telling you to go."

His eyes went glossy. He blinked fast like dust had suddenly appeared in my extremely clean room.

"So you'll...wait?" he asked.

The way he said it...hopeful and scared and so much younger than he looked when he had a helmet on made my throat burn.

We hadn't said the word out loud yet.

Wait.

Like this was some movie montage where one person went off to war and the other stood by a window with a letter pressed to their chest.

"We're not talking deployment," I said, forcing a smile. "We're talking a few months. Six hours away. It's not going to be fun. But we'll call. We'll text. We'll...whatever Wi-Fi in North Carolina in the year of our Lord two-thousand-and-whatever can handle."

He laughed, the sound watery. "You make it sound like they farm by candlelight."

"I've seen pictures of your dream town," I said dryly. "There were more pastures than Starbucks."

"Starbucks is not the measure of civilization," he said.

"It is for me," I said. "But I'm willing to slum it for your career."

He squeezed my hand, and I realized our fingers had laced together at some point, like they always did, as easy as breathing.

"What about your career?" he asked. "Boston? UNC? Marketing empire. World domination. All that."

I hated that my first instinct was we'll figure me out later.

It should've been equal. His dream. My dream. Meeting in the middle somewhere.

Instead, it had always been: get him out first. He needed the track in his bloodstream. I just needed...out.

"It's still happening," I said, shrugging with one shoulder like it was no big deal. "This doesn't change my applications. It just means...for a while, we're not in the same zip code."

For a flicker of a second, something tightened in his eyes.

"We can handle that," he said quickly. "Right?"

I hesitated.

It was tiny, a hitch in my breath, a pause in the rhythm we'd built, because the truth was, I didn't know. I'd seen enough doomed long-distance relationships in movies and real life to know the statistics weren't in our favor. Two overworked teenagers miles apart with bad Wi-Fi and big dreams?

It sounded like a recipe for heartbreak.

"Right," I said, anyway.

Because what was the alternative? Ask him to stay? To be small so I wouldn't have to stretch?
I wasn't that girl.

I refused to be that girl.

"Okay," I said briskly, shoving all that into a box labeled later misery and slamming the lid. "Now that we've had our emotional movie moment, we need to go tell your parents before your mom assumes you joined a cult."

His mouth twitched. "My mom would absolutely assume that."

"Exactly," I said, handing the letter back to him. "Come on. Operation Get Nick Ready for TV starts now."

I stood and he followed, our hands finding each other again, fingers slotting together like they lived there.

On the way out, I snagged his hat from my mirror and jammed it onto his head backwards.

"You're about to be on national television," I said. "We need to prepare America."

"For what?" he asked, half laughing.

"For this," I said, waving at his face. "And all of this." I poked his chest.

His skin was warm under his T-shirt. He caught my wrist gently, tugged me closer. The paper crinkled in his other hand.

"Come here," he murmured.

His mouth found mine, and for a second, everything else faded. The fear, the logistics, the four-day countdown. It was just Nick and the faint taste of mint and ChapStick and the way he always exhaled through his nose when he relaxed into a kiss.

I tried to memorize it.

The angle of his head, the way his fingers slipped from my wrist to the back of my neck and into my hair. The soft scrape of his stubble against my chin.

If this was the beginning of the end, I wanted to have something concrete to replay later, when the sound cut out and the picture froze.

When we pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine.

"You're going to crush this," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady.

"You're very biased," he said.

"Yes," I said. "But I'm also rarely wrong."

He laughed, and the sound loosened something tight in my chest.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go tell my mom I'm leaving."

We walked down the hallway side by side, the email crackling softly between his fingers, our joined hands swinging just a little.

I stared down at the white paper, at the black ink that had split our future into a before and after, and tried very hard not to think about the other email sitting unread in my inbox from a Boston admissions office.

In four days, he'd point his truck toward North Carolina, and chase everything he'd ever wanted.

I told myself I'd chase mine, too. That I wouldn't be the reason he stayed. That love and ambition could coexist if we just tried hard enough.

I didn't know, standing there in my hallway with his fingers tight around mine, that this was the last time things would feel simple. That years from now, we'd both look back at this day, not just as the start of his Road To The 28, but as the moment we both, in our own ways, chose our futures and hoped the other person would still be standing in them.

For now, all I could do was squeeze his hand, lift my chin, and walk out to the living room with him.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Nope," he said, grinning anyway.

"Good," I said. "Means you're taking it seriously."

He laughed again.

And I let myself believe for that one, suspended moment that we could have it all.