Page 73 of Until The Lights Go Out

My chest tightened. Of course he did. Because apparently private self-destruction wasn’t enough anymore, now he needed an audience. Anger surged hot and sudden beneath my ribs, not just because of the risk, not just because of the crash, but because I knew what this looked like. The headlines. The media scrutiny. The endless commentary questioning whether he was losing control. And somehow, unbelievably, part of me still hurt for him.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.

The race continued around us, but my focus kept snagging toward the Kaz garage as Theo finally limped the damaged car back into the pit lane.

The second he climbed out, I knew: something was wrong—more than just another version of him not giving a shit—something was bone-deep wrong.

He ripped his gloves off violently, tossing them hard enough that one of the mechanics nearly flinched. His helmet followed.

Someone approached him—I couldn’t tell who—and Theo snapped something sharp enough that they immediately backed off. The entire garage went tense. I stared at him from across the garage, my chest tight. And then, like he felt it⁠—

Theo looked up and straight at me. Even from this distance, I could see the fury in his expression. The frustration. The shame buried underneath it. But there was something else, too.

Something fractured. And suddenly, I was angry all over again.

Because he was doing this to himself. Because he kept pushing everyone away and then acting wounded when he ended up alone. Because I was so tired of watching someone I cared about destroy himself piece by piece while pretending he didn’t care if anyone stayed.

Evan was tapping his headset to tell me to go back on in a few, to present an analysis on what this would do for the points toward the championship for Kaz, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. I ripped my headset off and started walking toward where Theo went, as if my body was pulling itself there.

“Maisey?” a producer called after me.

“Sorry, be right back!” I called behind me, already moving straight toward the back Kaz hallways, straight toward him. Because apparently, against all logic and self-preservation, I still cared enough to chase after him when he was actively trying to fall apart.

The private corridors behind the garage were quieter, colder somehow. The roar of the crowd and commentary dulled into a distant hum behind thick walls lined with enormous Kaz branding and polished sponsor graphics. I had walked these halls before for media prep and briefings. I had seen a hundred glossy campaign photos of Theo striding through them in perfectly curated confidence: head high, expression unreadable, the untouchable star of Kaz Racing. But the man leaning against the wall in front of me looked nothing like that.

His forearms braced against his knees as he leaned forward, head dropped into his hands. His breathing was uneven, chest rising and falling too hard, too fast, like the air refused to fully reach his lungs.

For a terrifying second, he looked seventeen again, not the world-famous driver or the reckless party boy the media loved to dissect. Just Theo. My Theo.

Broken open where no one else could see him.

“Give him a minute!” Sebastian’s voice barked from somewhere behind me, clearly keeping people from storming the hallway—team members, PR staff, probably the team principal too, furious about the DNF and the spectacle of it all.

But nobody crossed into the hallway.

Nobody interrupted us.

It felt strange, standing there in the silence after the chaos, like the world had narrowed down to only this moment, only him.

“Theo,” I said softly. His hands dropped immediately, and he stood. Bloodshot blue eyes snapped to mine, raw enough to steal the breath from my lungs. There was no mask left on his face now, no practiced indifference, no sharp smirk or sarcastic remark to hide behind.

Just exhaustion and pain.

“Go away, Red,” he rasped, shaking his head once. “I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

My chest cracked at the sound of it, but anger rose faster—not at him failing, but at the look that told me he was giving up. “Yes, you can,” I snapped, stepping closer. “You don’t get to survive everything you survived just to quit when things get hard.”

His jaw tightened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell I don’t,” my voice echoed sharper down the hallway than I intended, but I couldn’t stop now. Weeks of frustration and fear and feelings I’d tried to bury came surging up all at once. “You fought for this your entire life, Theo. You bled for it. You gave up your childhood for it. You don’t get to stand here and act like it means nothing.”

His eyes flashed. “Maybe it doesn’t anymore.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

I was breathing hard now, pulse roaring in my ears. Somewhere deep down, I knew I should stop pushing him, that I should back off before we crossed a line we couldn’t uncross.

But Theo had always dragged the fight out of me. Even at fourteen years old, sitting on that stupid hill under the stars, he had made me braver than I naturally was. He challenged every soft instinct in me until I learned how to push back.