Page 72 of Until The Lights Go Out

“Maisey, you’re live in thirty,” Evan told me, walking by with his clipboard and color-coded chart. I straightened immediately, slipping into work mode like muscle memory. Focus on work. That’s what mattered. Not Theo. Not the weird tension crackling between us every time we entered the same room. Not the fact that some stupid part of me still noticed him before anyone else.

The cameras started rolling.

I delivered the opening smoothly, confidence sliding into place the second the red light blinked on. Strategy updates, tire windows, projected pit deltas. The words came easily now. This is mine, I earned this. A steady mantra I gave myself during every live interview. I lost myself in the rhythm of the race, in the constant calculations and rapid-fire analysis, until the world narrowed down to timing screens and sector splits.

Then lap thirty-two happened.

“Yellow flag Sector 1,” someone called in my ear.

The entire garage shifted.

I looked up sharply toward the screens. One car sideways.

Smoke was wafting up above it, and I felt my anxiety jump right to my throat, constricting around it and cutting off the air. I could feel the heat, see the smoke like it was around me. My leg pulsed like it did the day I was in the car, crushed under warped metal. Ripping off my flame-resistant gloves to help with grip and my flesh burning as a result.

Debris from the crash was covering the track. Another car swerved around it but clipped gravel, and I heard a gasp from the garage.

“Oh no,” I whispered. Because I knew that car.

Kaz blue. Theo.

My stomach dropped so fast that it physically hurt.

The screens replayed it almost immediately—Theo locking up into Turn 1 after a failed overtake attempt, forced wide before slamming over the curb hard enough to damage the floor.

The garage erupted into noise around me.

“Telemetry’s compromised⁠—”

“Box, box.”

“Floor damage confirmed⁠—”

My pulse was roaring in my ears.

No.

No, no, no.

On screen, Theo’s hands jerked violently against the wheel as he fought the car back under control. Aggressive. Reckless.

He wasn’t just racing, he was spiraling. He was being too risky with his moves. This could have been avoided.

“Maisey, talk,” the producer hissed urgently in my ear through my headset.

Right.

I swallowed hard, forcing myself back into analyst mode while my heart still hammered violently against my ribs.

“Well,” I managed carefully, eyes locked on the monitors, “that was…ambitious from Bauer.” The understatement of the fucking century. “He was pushing far too aggressively into the braking zone there,” I continued, voice steadier than I felt. “You can already see the instability through the rear—” More chatter on the radio meant I held off, clicking off my live mic for a moment and looking around, trying to take stock of my surroundings.

“He’s not listening to the engineers,” one of the Kaz strategists muttered nearby.

I froze. “What?”

The strategist looked like he regretted saying it out loud.

“He ignored team orders,” he admitted quietly. “They told him to hold position.”