The meet didn't stay a meet for long.
It became a migration.
Engines turned over in waves—one starter motor after another—until the lot filled with layered sound: bass from speakers, the hollow thump of subwoofers in trunks, the sharper bite of tuned exhausts. Headlights swept across faces and painted the asphalt in moving white blades. People piled into passenger seats and onto curb edges, laughing like they weren't about to gamble their lives on a strip of road.
Jacob slid into the Supra and shut the door, letting the cabin wrap around him. The interior smelled clean—too clean for a twenty-four-year-old car—like the system had manufactured not just parts but history.
His hands rested on the wheel, steady.
His heart wasn't.
Outside, Dom's crew began to roll out in a loose formation. Hector's cars fell in behind and to the side, his laughter carrying through open windows. Vince prowled past Jacob's hood once, slow, as if the Supra had insulted him personally.
Brian's Mitsubishi eased forward from the lot with a confidence that felt practiced. He didn't glance at Jacob at first. He stared straight ahead, jaw set, posture tight in the way men got when they were trying to win something that didn't have a trophy.
Jacob told himself he didn't care.
That he was here because Dom asked.
That he needed to keep the mask of "Jacob Cooper" intact.
That nothing about this was personal.
Then Mia walked past the Supra's front end, laughing at something Letty said, and Jacob's chest tightened in a way that made him hate himself.
He put the car in gear and followed the flow.
Los Angeles at night opened up into a moving tunnel of streetlights. The convoy snaked through industrial roads and underpasses, the city's hum sliding by like water. It felt like a ritual: strangers briefly unified by speed and secrecy, by the shared understanding that the night belonged to whoever dared to claim it.
Jacob kept his distance at first—polite, cautious, forgettable.
But the farther they drove from the meet, the more the pack stretched out, and the more the road demanded decisions.
At a long, empty straight, Jacob glanced left.
Brian was there.
The Mitsubishi slid up beside the Supra with deliberate precision, matching speed like Brian wanted to be seen. The two cars ran parallel beneath orange streetlights, reflections moving across their hoods like ripples.
Brian finally looked over.
His expression was calm, but Jacob saw the effort behind it—the tight control of a man who couldn't afford to look uncertain.
Jacob gave him a small nod, like we're doing this, like they were equals.
Brian's eyes flicked briefly to the Supra's stance, then to Jacob's hands on the wheel, then back to the road.
He was measuring.
Jacob was too, even if he pretended he wasn't.
They drove like that for a minute, two, sharing the lane's edge without crossing it—two men holding their lines, neither willing to be the first to drift.
Then two more cars joined them.
Hector's crew filled the other side—one car sliding in behind Brian, another pulling up behind Jacob. The road became a four-car braid, headlights stacked, exhaust notes harmonizing into something hungry.
Jacob felt the air change.
This wasn't just travel anymore.
This was staging.
A moving prelude to the run.
He reached into the center console and pulled out his phone—his future phone—without letting his face change. He didn't look at it too long. He didn't let the glow paint him. He just tapped, quick and practiced, and dropped it into the cup holder.
The Supra's speakers came alive.
Music spilled into the cabin—smooth, modern, impossible.
A beat that didn't sound like anything on the radio in 2001. A voice that carried a polish and cadence that belonged to a different era. It felt too crisp, too clean, like listening to the future through cheap glass.
Childish Gambino.
A song nobody in this timeline could recognize because it hadn't been made yet.
The moment it hit the air, Jacob felt a sharp homesick ache in his throat. The music wasn't just entertainment. It was an anchor. A reminder that he existed before this—before "Wanted," before chase footage, before myths.
He kept the volume low. Not to hide it—just to keep it his.
But when they rolled past a gap in the road barriers and the sound leaked through the cracked window, he saw the driver behind him tilt his head, confused, like his brain couldn't place the rhythm.
Brian glanced over again, brow faintly furrowing.
"What're you listening to?" Brian called, voice barely audible through the cars and wind.
Jacob smiled without showing teeth. "Something I like."
Brian's eyes narrowed, as if that answer offended him on principle.
"Never heard it," Brian said.
Jacob's smile softened, and for a second the loneliness underneath it almost surfaced. "Most people haven't," he replied.
Brian held his gaze for half a heartbeat too long, then looked forward again, jaw tightening like he'd just swallowed a challenge.
The road dipped, then rose, and lights appeared ahead—clusters of cars parked along a wide industrial stretch, people gathering like moths to a flame. Someone waved a flashlight in a slow arc, guiding the incoming convoy toward the start area.
They'd arrived.
Jacob killed the music with a tap that felt like closing a door on a piece of himself. The sudden absence made the engine sound louder, harsher.
The four cars rolled into position as if pulled by invisible strings.
Hector's voice carried through the crowd, hyping it up, calling names, calling bets. The atmosphere tightened—laughter turning sharp, attention narrowing. People stepped back from the road, forming an aisle of bodies and neon and breath.
Jacob parked where a guy pointed him, then eased forward when Dom's hand gesture told him to. Brian did the same, his Mitsubishi moving with clipped, controlled intent. Two other racers slid into the remaining slots—one from Hector's crew, one from somewhere else in the crowd, each with their own swagger and their own hunger.
Four cars.
Four lanes of potential violence.
Jacob rested both hands on the wheel and felt his heartbeat in his fingertips.
He kept his face neutral, but inside he was splitting into pieces: the cautious mechanic, the ghost driver, the convicted man who never got sentenced, the lonely kid who wanted Mia to look at him like he mattered.
He didn't know which piece would win when the starter dropped his hand.
Dom stood off to the side where he could see everything. Letty leaned near him, arms crossed, eyes bright with predatory interest. Vince hovered close enough to feel involved, too far to be useful. Mia stood slightly behind Dom, watching with a hand near her mouth, like she was bracing for something she couldn't name.
Brian stared straight ahead.
Jacob stared at the road.
The starter walked into the center with a flashlight and raised it.
The crowd's noise thinned into a tense hush.
Jacob's senses sharpened until everything felt too vivid: the faint vibration of the Supra idling, the smell of fuel in the cool night air, the way the asphalt ahead looked slightly patched near the centerline.
He didn't need Speedbreaker.
Not here.
Not yet.
He wanted to prove something the old way.
Or maybe he wanted to prove to himself that the system wasn't the only reason he could survive.
The flashlight dropped.
For a fraction of a second, nothing moved—like the world inhaled.
Then four engines screamed at once.
Jacob launched clean.
Not with a dramatic peel-out, not with smoke and theatrics—just a precise, controlled bite of traction and a smooth surge forward. The Supra's power came on in a way that felt almost unfair, like the car was translating intention into motion without loss.
Brian's Mitsubishi jumped hard too—aggressive, eager, the turbo spool audible even over the crowd. The two other racers surged alongside, one slightly slower off the line, the other clawing for grip.
The road narrowed into a tunnel of headlights.
Jacob felt the car's acceleration press him back into the seat, and he kept his inputs minimal—micro-corrections, breath steady, eyes locked downrange. He didn't fight the wheel. He didn't force the lane. He let the car run true.
And that was the first moment the watchers started to struggle with what they were seeing.
Because Jacob didn't drive like someone showing off.
He drove like someone who belonged at speed.
But the Supra also moved like it had been blessed—too smooth, too eager, too planted.
From the outside, it became hard to tell what was doing the work: the driver's discipline or the machine's unnatural composure.
Brian pulled even with him for a second, the Mitsubishi's nose creeping into Jacob's peripheral vision. Jacob could sense Brian glancing over—measuring, comparing, wanting to see strain.
Jacob gave him none.
He stayed calm, almost boring, letting the car speak without giving the crowd the satisfaction of drama.
The two other racers began to fall back a fraction, their headlights shrinking behind as the front pair—Jacob and Brian—formed the real contest.
But even that contest looked strange from the sidelines.
Brian's aggression was visible—his car's slight twitch on correction, the way he pushed for that extra inch, the way his engine note rose and fell with assertive modulation.
Jacob's line looked… inevitable.
Like he wasn't wrestling for victory.
Like he was simply arriving at it.
Dom watched from the start line, eyes narrowed, reading the race the way he read people. Letty's mouth curved faintly, not impressed so much as intrigued. Mia's gaze stayed fixed on the disappearing tail lights, her expression caught between excitement and unease.
Vince muttered something bitter under his breath, already planning how to spin it.
And as the cars disappeared into the darkness toward the first distant checkpoint, the crowd's chatter rose again—not just cheering, but arguing.
"Is it the driver or the car?"
"That Supra ain't normal."
"Yeah, but look how smooth he is."
"Brian's pushing. That dude ain't even trying—"
Jacob heard none of it.
All he heard was engine and wind and the thin high note of risk.
And somewhere deep under the adrenaline, beneath the calm mask he wore, he felt a sharp, quiet fear:
If he drove too well, they'd want to know why.
If he drove too poorly, Dom would decide he was lying.
Either way, the night was pulling him closer to the truth he was trying to keep buried.
He held the line anyway.
...
The race turned into a narrowing tunnel of sensation.
Jacob's world collapsed into three things: the thin white line to his left, the faint shimmer of patched asphalt ahead, and the angry, steady heartbeat of the Supra beneath him. Everything else—crowd, neon, Dom's gaze, Mia's eyes—fell away behind the rush of air.
The road was imperfect, which made it honest. Old industrial pavement with seams that tugged at the tires. Occasional dips that tried to unsettle the chassis. Darker stretches where streetlights fell silent and the only illumination came from the two cones of headlight cutting forward like blades.
Brian stayed with him.
For a while it was almost clean—two cars in parallel momentum, both pushing, both refusing to yield. Jacob could hear the Mitsubishi's turbo spool through the night like a predator breathing. It rose in pitch every time Brian asked for more, a high mechanical whine wrapped around a deeper growl.
Brian's headlights hovered at Jacob's rear quarter panel, then crept forward, then fell back. A constant pressure. A constant reminder that Brian wasn't here to participate—he was here to be seen as worthy.
Jacob kept his face still, jaw set, hands light on the wheel.
He didn't need to force anything.
The Supra wanted to run.
The system's "Level 1" upgrades were quiet about it—no flashy display, no glowing UI overlay in the middle of the road—but Jacob felt the way the engine delivered power like it had been tuned by a mind that hated inefficiency. The acceleration didn't arrive in a dramatic surge; it arrived like a promise kept continuously. A smooth, relentless pull that didn't stumble where older builds should.
He wondered, briefly, what Brian felt from his seat—if Brian believed Jacob was holding back, or if Brian could sense the same uncomfortable truth: that the Supra's ceiling didn't feel like it belonged to 2001.
The first checkpoint flashed by—an improvised marker, a pair of cars parked on the shoulder with hazard lights blinking like nervous eyes. People stood near them, silhouettes caught in headlight glare, arms raised, shouting. Jacob barely registered them.
The road opened.
Long straight.
The kind of stretch where racing stopped being choreography and became raw math.
Brian committed.
Jacob heard it before he saw it—Brian's engine note sharpening, turbo whistle climbing, the Mitsubishi taking a deeper breath and then pushing like it meant to shove Jacob off the horizon by sheer will. The nose of Brian's car drew even with Jacob's driver-side mirror.
For a moment they were truly side by side, headlights overlapping, two storms running parallel.
Jacob's heart hammered so hard it hurt.
Not fear of crashing—fear of being revealed.
Because this was where instinct took over, where he stopped thinking in words and started thinking in angles and traction and timing. This was where his body remembered every night he'd ever tried to outrun himself.
He kept the Supra steady and gave it more throttle with a slow, controlled squeeze.
The response was immediate.
The car didn't just accelerate.
It kept accelerating.
Where other cars climbed and then began to plateau, the Supra behaved like the horizon had offended it.
Jacob felt it as a subtle change in pressure—his chest pressed back into the seat, the steering going just a touch lighter at speed, the wind noise rising into a constant roar that swallowed the engine note until it was more felt than heard.
Brian's Mitsubishi hung with him… and then it didn't.
It wasn't dramatic. Brian didn't blow an engine or lose control.
He simply hit his top end.
The Mitsubishi's pull stopped climbing. The sound changed—still loud, still aggressive, but no longer gaining. Like a runner hitting the limit of his lungs.
Jacob saw it in the smallest ways: Brian's headlights no longer inching forward, Brian's car holding a position that suddenly felt like effort instead of dominance.
And Jacob's Supra kept pulling away.
In the mirror, Brian's front end fell back by a car length.
Then two.
Then three.
Jacob's stomach twisted, because winning should've felt like triumph—but what he felt was a sick blend of relief and guilt, like he'd taken something from Brian that Brian had needed.
He stayed focused. Hands light. Breathing controlled.
The finish was marked by a cluster of cars and people and a flare of hazard lights that made the road ahead bloom red-orange for a heartbeat. Jacob hit it first, crossing the invisible line and letting off the throttle with careful restraint, easing the car down from violence to speed to something resembling sanity.
Behind him, Brian crossed moments later, the gap undeniable.
The two other racers came in after—one close enough to look annoyed, the other far enough to look humbled.
Jacob slowed and turned at the next wide opening, tires whispering as he brought the Supra around. He pulled into a loose staging area where the crowd had already begun to regroup, a wave of bodies and noise rushing toward the cars like the night itself was hungry.
People slapped the Supra's roof as Jacob rolled in, hands thumping metal like they were congratulating a living thing. Shouts rose—cheers, laughter, disbelief.
"Yo! Supra's a monster!"
"That boy can drive!"
"Damn, Brian almost had you!"
Jacob stepped out and the night air hit him, cold and sharp. His hands still trembled slightly from adrenaline. He forced his breathing slow. Forced his face into something calm.
Brian got out of his Mitsubishi a moment later, shutting the door harder than necessary. His jaw was tight, eyes bright with the afterburn of competition. He looked like a man trying to decide whether to be angry at Jacob, angry at himself, or angry at the physics of the world.
For a heartbeat, the two of them just stood there in the spill of headlights, the road behind them still humming with the echo of speed.
Then Hector barreled through the crowd, laughing, arms spread wide.
"THAT'S what I'm talking about!" Hector shouted, slapping Brian's shoulder first, then Jacob's. "You two made it a race!"
Jacob managed a small smile. "Good run."
Brian stared at him for a beat longer than necessary, then nodded once—tight, controlled. "Yeah," he said. "You got me."
The admission cost him. Jacob could see it.
Brian wasn't the type to fold easily.
The crowd swarmed around them in waves—hands on backs, shouted praise, questions thrown like confetti. Someone offered Brian a beer; someone offered Jacob a cigarette; someone asked Jacob what he had under the hood like it was an invitation to confession.
Jacob laughed it off, careful. "Nothing crazy," he said, the lie tasting familiar.
Dom arrived without announcing himself, stepping through the crowd the way gravity moved through space. People parted instinctively. His face was calm, but his eyes were alive—watching, weighing, collecting.
He looked at Jacob first.
Not admiration. Not suspicion.
Recognition of ability.
Then he looked at Brian.
Recognition too—of nerve, of commitment, of the kind of stubbornness Dom respected even if he didn't trust it.
Letty appeared beside Dom, smirk faint, eyes sharp. Mia was close behind them, her expression bright with leftover adrenaline and a softness Jacob felt like a heat in his chest.
Vince hovered near Dom, looking like he'd swallowed something bitter.
Dom's gaze moved between Jacob and Brian and settled, not on the cars, but on the two men themselves.
"You both drove," Dom said.
It was the closest thing to praise he offered for free.
Brian lifted his chin slightly, as if that mattered to him more than the crowd's noise. "Thanks."
Jacob nodded, trying to keep his relief hidden. "Appreciate it."
Dom held Jacob's eyes a beat longer. "Supra's got legs."
Jacob forced a half-smile. "Yeah. It surprised me too."
Letty's laugh was short. "Sure it did."
Jacob didn't react. He couldn't afford to.
Dom's mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost not. Then he raised his voice just enough for the people nearest to hear.
"Aight," Dom said. "Everybody done burning gas for the night?"
Groans and cheers answered him.
Dom nodded once like he'd expected it. "Good. Then you're all coming back with us."
The crowd perked up.
"Beers at my place," Dom added, like it was the most normal thing in the world. "No drama. Just family."
The word landed heavy.
Family.
Jacob felt it hit him in the ribs, because family was something he'd never deserved in his old life—not with the way he'd lived, not with the way he'd always chosen motion over people.
Brian's expression softened at the invitation, but Jacob saw the calculation behind it too—Brian understood access when it was offered.
Vince looked annoyed, like he didn't want either of them inside Dom's home.
Mia smiled, and that smile made Jacob's chest tighten in a way that felt dangerous.
"Come on," Mia said, looking at both Jacob and Brian. "It's not far."
Jacob nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
Brian nodded too, just as fast.
And as engines began to start up again and the convoy formed for the second time that night—this time not toward a race but toward a house—Jacob felt the strangest thing settle over him:
He had won the race.
Now he was stepping into the part that could ruin him.
Because speed was easy.
People were not.
...
Dom's house didn't feel like a destination so much as a boundary line.
The convoy had rolled in loud—engines popping, headlights sweeping over fences and palm shadows—and then, the moment everyone stepped out, the night shifted. The street noise softened. Laughter took over. Someone's radio carried music from the open trunk of a car. The air smelled like warm concrete, grilled meat, and beer cracked open too fast.
It felt… lived-in.
Not polished. Not staged.
A home that had absorbed too many people over too many nights and decided it liked the weight of them.
Jacob lingered near his Supra for a second longer than necessary, letting the newness of it settle in his ribs. He'd followed them here because he'd won a race, because Dom invited him, because Mia smiled when she said come on.
But standing at the edge of Dom Toretto's yard, with people spilling out onto the driveway like they belonged, Jacob felt something sharper than nerves:
He felt the risk of being included.
Because inclusion made you visible.
And visibility was what killed ghosts.
Inside the yard, Vince was already moving like a guard dog with a grudge—shoulders squared, eyes tracking Brian, tracking Jacob, tracking any stranger who got too close to the center of the family.
Brian, meanwhile, looked like he'd stepped onto a stage he was determined to win. He didn't force it with bravado—he used patience, positioning, timing. He laughed at the right moments. He offered to help with small things—carrying a case of beers, grabbing plates, shifting a cooler.
And every time he did, his eyes flicked—brief, quick—to Mia.
Mia noticed. She pretended she didn't.
Vince noticed too, and he didn't pretend anything.
"So you just show up outta nowhere," Vince said at one point, leaning in toward Brian like familiarity could be claimed by proximity. "And Dom invites you here?"
Brian kept his smile easy. "He invited everybody."
Vince snorted. "Not everybody."
Brian didn't bite. He just held Mia's gaze a moment longer than necessary when she walked by, and the small warmth in her expression—brief, genuine—made Vince's jaw tighten.
Jacob could've stepped into that competition.
He could've played the same game—made a joke, leaned close, tried to steal a laugh.
But he didn't.
He felt too raw for it. Too tired.
And part of him didn't trust himself with that kind of wanting. Wanting made him reckless. Wanting made him forget where the edge was.
So Jacob did the safer thing: he drifted toward the cars.
Leon and Jesse were near the driveway, half in shadow, half in the wash of porch light, talking the way car guys talked when they were happiest—hands moving, voices quick, arguments that weren't really arguments.
Jesse spotted Jacob first.
"Yo," Jesse said, eyes bright with genuine curiosity. "Supra guy."
Jacob smiled, relieved by the simplicity of being addressed by a car instead of a mystery. "Yeah."
Leon nodded toward Jacob's car like it was a person. "That thing runs."
Jacob shrugged modestly. "It ran tonight."
Jesse laughed. "Nah, man. It ran. I heard it pull. Sounded like it never stopped."
Jacob felt a quiet pinch in his chest at the word—never stopped. It hit too close to the truth of him. He softened his smile, kept it human. "I've been messing with it," he said. "Trying to learn."
Jesse immediately leaned in, hungry for detail. "Like what? Fuel? Boost? You mess with the ECU?"
Jacob chose his words carefully—real enough to satisfy, vague enough to survive. "Mostly tuning. Cleaning up delivery. Making it… consistent."
Leon's brows lifted. "Consistent's not easy."
Jacob glanced down at his hands for half a second, then back up. "Yeah," he admitted quietly. "I know."
Jesse grinned like Jacob had just said something that made him trustworthy. "That's what I'm talking about. Everybody wants loud. Nobody wants consistent."
They pulled Jacob into the kind of conversation that felt like air after drowning—gearing, traction, the way different tires spoke through the wheel, how you could feel a car's mood in the first ten seconds of driving it. Jacob found himself answering without thinking too hard, laughing at a joke, nodding along, letting the tension ease out of his shoulders.
He integrated without trying.
And that was the part that made it dangerous.
Mia noticed first, Jacob realized.
Not because she was watching him like a target—because her gaze kept drifting over, soft and curious. She watched him talk to Jesse and Leon, watched him listen more than he spoke, watched him smile and then look away like he didn't want to be caught wanting too much.
Dom noticed too.
Dom didn't stare.
He didn't have to.
Jacob felt Dom's attention like a weight—measuring how Jacob moved when he wasn't being tested. Measuring whether he tried to impress. Measuring whether he tried to take.
Jacob didn't.
He simply existed.
And somehow that made him feel more exposed than racing ever had.
Across the yard, Brian was still playing his own game—steady, careful, trying to earn Mia's attention without looking like he was trying.
Vince kept cutting in, louder, closer, using history like a weapon. He joked about old times Mia had lived through with him. He touched her shoulder too casually. He kept glancing at Brian as if daring him to challenge it openly.
Brian didn't rise to the bait.
He outlasted it.
Jacob watched from the edge and felt an unpleasant tightness in his gut.
Because Brian was good at this.
Good at being patient.
Good at being harmless.
And Jacob knew—deep down in the part of him that listened to engines and lies—that harmless was the most dangerous disguise there was.
Later, when the noise rose and fell in waves, when someone started a story loud enough to draw a small crowd, Jacob felt a shift inside himself.
A decision.
He'd been avoiding Brian. Letting rivalry stay unspoken. Letting suspicion sit in the background like a hum.
But the system in him had always rewarded motion, and even without a chase, Jacob still moved toward pressure points. Toward the thing he didn't want to touch because touching it made it real.
He waited until Brian stepped away from the center—heading toward the side yard, away from the louder voices, like he needed air.
Jacob followed, not too quickly.
He didn't want to look like a threat.
He didn't want to look like a cop either.
The side of the house was quieter. Dimmer. A strip of yard lit by stray porch light and the pale glow of the street beyond the fence. The sounds of the party became muffled—laughter softened, music turned into bass without lyrics, like a heartbeat behind a wall.
Brian leaned against the fence for a moment, staring out into the dark street as if he could see the shape of his own choices out there.
Jacob stopped a few feet away.
"Nice race," Jacob said, as if this was normal.
Brian's head turned sharply, instincts snapping awake. Then he recognized Jacob and forced himself to relax. "You came out here to talk about the race?"
Jacob's smile was small. "Not really."
Brian's eyes narrowed. "Then what."
Jacob took a breath. He tasted beer and smoke and the faint sweetness of someone's grill lingering on the air. He felt the weight of the fence under his palm when he rested his hand there.
He kept his voice low.
"You're undercover," Jacob said.
The sentence landed like a rock dropped into still water.
Brian's body changed immediately—subtle but absolute. Shoulders tightening. Weight shifting. Eyes sharpening into something colder than curiosity.
"What did you just say?" Brian asked.
Jacob didn't flinch.
He'd expected the reaction. He'd expected the denial, the anger, the sudden need to regain control of the narrative.
Instead of pushing, Jacob softened his tone—made it sound like concern rather than accusation.
"I'm not trying to blow you up," Jacob said. "I'm trying to keep you from getting hurt."
Brian stared at him, jaw working once like he was chewing down a response. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Jacob nodded slowly, like he'd heard that line before. "Okay."
The calmness made Brian more suspicious, not less.
Brian took a small step closer, voice dropping. "Who are you?"
Jacob's throat tightened—not because the question was threatening, but because it carried a loneliness he recognized. Brian wasn't just asking as a cop. He was asking as a man who'd walked into a room full of people and realized he might be the only one lying.
Jacob kept his hands visible. Kept his posture open.
"I'm someone who's paying attention," Jacob said.
Brian's eyes flicked over Jacob's face as if searching for seams. "You a cop too?"
Jacob gave a soft, humorless huff of air. "Do I look like a cop?"
Brian didn't answer. His silence said: I've seen weirder.
Jacob held Brian's gaze and let the ambiguity breathe without feeding it.
Then Jacob tilted his head slightly toward the yard, where Vince's laughter cut through at a higher pitch than it needed to.
"Vince is watching everybody," Jacob said quietly. "Not just you. He's suspicious of anyone who isn't already family. And he's territorial in a way that makes people stupid."
Brian's eyes shifted toward the sound, then back to Jacob. "Why tell me that."
Jacob's mouth went dry. He could've said because I like Mia too and it would've been honest, ugly, human.
He didn't.
He said the other truth.
"Because if Vince decides you're a problem," Jacob said, "he won't wait for proof."
Brian's expression tightened. He looked like he wanted to call it paranoia—but something in him recognized the logic. He'd been trained to read environments. And Vince's energy tonight had been the energy of a man looking for enemies.
Brian studied Jacob for a long beat.
Then he said, carefully, "If you're not a cop… how do you know I am."
Jacob didn't answer directly.
He let his eyes drift briefly—just briefly—over Brian's stance, the way he held his shoulders, the way his gaze kept scanning even when he tried to relax.
Then he looked back at Brian.
"You carry yourself like you're always waiting for a door to open," Jacob said. "Like you're trained to be ready when things go wrong."
Brian's jaw tightened again. "Lots of people are ready."
Jacob nodded. "Yeah. But not like you."
Brian took a breath, slow and measured. His voice dropped even further. "So what are you? Some kind of informant?"
Jacob's smile returned, small and tired. "No."
"Then what," Brian pressed. "Because you don't just walk into Dom Toretto's house and call out a cop unless you've got a reason."
Jacob's pulse beat hard in his throat.
He felt the old itch—the urge to run, to disappear, to not let anyone get close enough to touch something real.
Instead he stayed.
"I'm here," Jacob said, carefully, "because I needed… something. People. Work. A place where I'm not… alone."
Brian's expression flickered—confusion first, then something like reluctant empathy.
"You still didn't answer," Brian said. "Who are you."
Jacob met his eyes and chose the only safe answer.
"A guy who likes cars," Jacob said.
Brian stared at him as if that was the most infuriating non-answer possible.
Jacob didn't confirm anything.
He didn't deny it either.
He let the uncertainty sit there like a coin spinning on its edge.
Then he softened his voice, just slightly, and added, "If you ever need to talk—really talk—I'm around."
Brian's eyes narrowed. "Why would I talk to you."
Jacob's smile turned sad for half a second. "Because you're surrounded by people and you're still alone," he said. "I know what that feels like."
The words hit closer than Brian wanted. Jacob saw it in the tiny tightening around Brian's eyes, the way Brian looked away for a heartbeat like he needed distance from the truth.
When Brian looked back, his face had reassembled into control.
"You're playing some game," Brian said. "I just don't know which side you're on."
Jacob didn't argue.
He simply nodded once, as if accepting that was fair.
"Neither do I sometimes," Jacob said quietly.
Behind them, the party roared again—someone shouting, someone laughing, the sound of bottles clinking. Life continuing without caring about secrets.
Jacob stepped back, giving Brian space again, giving the conversation room to breathe rather than making it a confrontation.
"I'm not your enemy," Jacob said.
Brian held his gaze, suspicious and conflicted.
"Yeah," Brian replied, not convinced. "We'll see."
Jacob left it there.
He walked back toward the yard, toward the warmth and the noise, feeling the strange weight of what he'd just done settle into his chest.
He'd warned an undercover cop.
He'd made an enemy more likely.
He'd also—without meaning to—created a thin, fragile thread between two men living lies for different reasons.
Mia's laugh reached him as he rounded the corner, and for a moment Jacob felt almost human again.
Then he saw Vince watching him from across the yard—eyes narrowed, mouth set, like he'd sensed something shift.
And Jacob understood, with a cold clarity that made his skin prickle:
The real race tonight hadn't been on the road.
It had been in the shadows between people.
And he'd just crossed a line he couldn't uncross.