Page 50 of Break My Heart

Can’t breathe.

Aio:

Good, because you don’t want to around snatch soup. Use the wipes!

Amy:

Brennan just paused the game to ask if I’m okay since I’m wheezing.

Emery:

Aio, you owe me a drink and dry cleaning. I just spewed.

I shut away my hysterical friends the moment I step into the Apex Orion garage. Being in the desert isn’t romanticized like people imagine when they watch The Mummy. There’s no Brendan Fraser to save the day. Here, the only constant is relentless heat. It seeps into everything—tires, brakes, wiring, the way data can overload a system.

Plus, it makes people cranky. Especially me. “Telemetry sync?” I bark without looking up from my pacing.

“Running,” one of the team’s engineers, Mike, replies. “Latency is stable.”

“Define stable.”

“Within tolerance.”

I stop moving.

Mike sighs. “Within your tolerance.”

“Better.”

I head toward the car where its nose is angled toward pit lane like it’s already impatient for Leo to get his game face on. The Apex Orion’s midnight wine color gleams under the artificial lights, but I wouldn’t care if it was bubblegum pink. I don’t see aesthetics. I see what’s now attached to his steering wheel.

The new telemetry system involves lines of code uploaded to a chip beneath the carbon fiber. Input curves and response delays were designed to look effortless. With this, I’ll be able to spot milliseconds before a decision becomes movement. Just as quickly, I’ll know whether the software I prototyped for the team will work or fail.

Because once he’s out there, there’s no separation between driver and machine. My software will either respond to Leo or betray him.

My throat tightens as I step closer, gaze tracking along the steering assembly like I can somehow see through it. Like I can reach inside and hold every variable steady myself.

He’ll fight it. And at two hundred miles per hour, fighting the car is how you lose control.

Or worse.

I exhale slowly, forcing my shoulders to square. It’s going to be fine, I tell myself. What I do is develop systems that maintain precision under pressure, ensuring they work the first time because there is no margin for error.

But there’s a difference between a failing system on a screen and one wrapped around a man I—. I cut the thought off before it can fully form.

This isn’t about him.

It can’t be.

I drag my focus back to the data I know is waiting, to the adjustments I’ve already mapped out. Because fear doesn’t belong here. Control does.

“Christin.”

Dario’s voice cuts through the hum of the garage, and I look up to find him watching me with that quiet, assessing calm that means he’s already ten steps ahead.

“Everything ready?” he asks.

“As ready as it’s going to be. We’ll need to monitor thermal drift carefully. Bahrain’s surface holds heat longer than the models suggest.”