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“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Zayn,” he continues, just as loudly. “You want me to be more direct? Fine. Every single time I know you’re racing, I’m terrified something’s going to happen to you.”

The shock must be evident on my face because he keeps staring straight into my eyes, making sure I absorb every word.

“And trust me, I know every fucking time you participate. I don’t need the press filming you and flooding the internet with headlines to figure it out.”

He drags a hand through his hair several times—a rare sign that he’s genuinely nervous—then continues.

“I don’t want me or the others living with that fear anymore. And I don’t want you risking your life like this.”

His confession lands as hard as he knew it would. That’s why he said it. I know what a single second of distraction can lead to.

He knows it too.

But I never once thought Ethan worried about me like that. Never expected to hear him talk so openly about fear, about emotions he usually buries beneath layers of control.

“Fucking hell…” is all I manage as I walk past him and drop heavily into my chair.

“Consider this your first and last warning, Zayn,” he says with his back turned to me. “If you don’t stop yourself, I will.”

It would turn into a complete disaster if the two of us actually fought over this. We both have enough influence to create absolute chaos if we start a war with each other, and neither of us wants that.

I already knew I had to stop.

Knew I couldn’t keep pouring all my frustration into those races forever.

Lately, they’d become my escape. The only thing capable of drowning out the reality that crushes me more and more every day.

They’d become an addiction.

And like every addiction, they are dangerous.

The problem is that I started using them to forget another addiction I still don’t know how to let go of.

“One race a year stays,” I say, staring at the laptop screen after reopening it.

That race is non-negotiable.

No matter who asks me to stop, it’ll happen every single year. Even when I’m old, as long as I’m still able to sit behind a wheel, that race will still take place.

“Today we’re leaving the office at 5 p.m.,” Ethan says, abruptly changing the subject—a clear sign he understood what I meant and accepted it. “The girls want us to go watch a movie.”

“A movie?” I ask, surprised.

“I rented the entire VIP theater from 6 to 11 p.m.,” he replies, heading for the door.

“Of course you did,” I mutter with a laugh.

Anyone who knows Ethan Hardy knows he hates exposing himself in public more than necessary. Outings like that are probably his personal nightmare.

His bad luck is he’s hopelessly in love with Thalia and would never refuse her anything.

So compromise is the only option left.

And he does compromise.

Because that’s what happens when you’re in love—and lucky enough to actually have the person you love beside you.

With that thought lingering in my mind, I reopen the email I’d been writing before Ethan stormed into my office and continue typing.