Page 89 of Until The Lights Go Out

“But also…” I smiled before I could stop myself. “I don’t know how to explain this properly, but it was so easy and natural, as if we had kissed before.” Serena’s eyes bulged out. “We hadn’t ever. Promise, you would be the first to know.”

“God, I can’t even imagine if you kissed him when he was that shitty kid, yuck.”

“He wasn’t—” I cut in.

“Yeah yeah yeah, he was just deeply misunderstood and had to repress his emotions because of his shit father. I know, I know. But he’s still on my shit list until he redeems himself, and that is a tall order.”

“I can handle myself.” I glared at her half-heartedly.

Serena’s entire face melted. “Oh, babe. I know you can; you’re a secret psycho.”

I choked out a laugh. “What does that even mean?”

“You’re so cute and wholesome looking, but you can mess a man up if you want to.”

“Oh well, yeah obviously. No one fucks with my friends.”

“Next we’re gonna work on applying that to yourself, too!”

“Oh wow, should I be paying you a therapist fee now?”

“Nah babes, my advice is free!” We burst out laughing at that, descending into sore bellies and red cheeks by the time we got it together again. She reached over and squeezed my hand, her thumb brushing softly across my knuckles. “You and me, till the end,” she whispered, linking our pointer fingers in a long-standing tradition of solidarity.

I was hit with this overwhelming wave of affection for her, for this room, for silly glitter eyeshadow and oversized sweaters and morning debriefs and coffee cups cluttering the bedside tables—girlhood in all its tiny, sacred forms. Just being loved gently by someone who knew every ugly part of you and stayed anyway.

“Till the end, and then some,” I replied like I always had.

Serena sat up abruptly. “Okay enough emotions. We’re late, it’s time to go make Theo drool!”

27

THEO | PRESENT

RACE WEEKEND FIVE - MIAMI GRAND PRIX - DAY AFTER RACE

Kissing Maisey had genuinely rewritten my brain chemistry.

That is the only explanation. The day after the race was passing in a blur of misery because suddenly every single thing that wasn’t her felt unbearable. Meetings dragged twice as long. Media questions sounded muffled and distant through the constant replay of her mouth against mine. Every engineer briefing dissolved into static the second my brain remembered the way she’d looked up at me in my driver room like I was still worth saving.

It was torture.

Actual psychological warfare.

I sat through debrief after debrief with my leg bouncing violently beneath the table while telemetry graphs glowed across giant screens. The team droned on about braking instability and floor damage while all I could think about was Maisey’s fingers in my hair.

I’m losing my fucking mind. At one point, an engineer asked me a direct question, and I apparently stared at him in complete silence for so long that Sebastian had to answer for me.

“Mate,” he muttered under his breath beside me afterward, “you look concussed.”

I wasn’t concussed.

I was worse.

I was in love with Maisey Andrews, and apparently one kiss had been enough to destroy whatever fragile self-control I’d spent the last decade building. I had spent a decade wishing that I would have defied my father, done anything I could have to get to her that day. I had spent every moment regretting not going to her.

After I got my F1 contract and moved my mom and brother to a new apartment, I had spent every cent of my first- and second-year salary on them, making sure they were happy and safe, making sure my father was far away from all of us. I was setting them up for a better life. I wouldn’t change that, but I wish I would have trusted that that part was inevitable—that I was always going to push to make it to the dream. Not for my father, never for him, but for my family.

Kissing Maisey had felt like my whole world was altered. My thinly built walls were crashing down. I had convinced myself that she deserved a life outside of ever seeing me again, that she was better off without me. Everything had shifted. The paddock looked different. The air itself felt different, like the entire axis of my world had tilted slightly and only I could feel it. For years, I had gotten used to existing with this dull ache in my chest whenever it came to her, something buried deep enough to ignore most days. But that feeling had vanished. I wouldn’t fail her again; I wouldn’t let her slip through my fingers or not tell her how I felt. I had spent a decade growing and healing and learning to be anyone but my father.