Chapter 18 Callum
Auri smiled at me, all angelic and bridal and perfect. “You’ve always been pain and poetry, Callum Fraser. You break things open just to let the light in.”
Somewhere far away, the sea murmured against the rocks—a hush, a promise, that the earth itself was listening.
“Occupational hazard,” I murmured, unable to fight a grin.
Tears glittered in her golden-green eyes. “Ouais, and this is why you’ll always be my favorite kind of trouble.”
The words hit like sunlight through glass, shattering and beautiful all at once. For a moment, everything around us just… stilled. The air, the sea, the breath between us.
Trouble? Maybe. But what we really were was transformation. We’d collided, yes, but what came after wasn’t ruin. It was rebuilding. It was everything I didn’t know could survive the crash, the chaos, and the havoc we’d wreaked on the way to each other.
Colette’s voice was soft but steady when she spoke again. “Your vows have been spoken, and your promises made. Now, you’ll seal them with a symbol that holds no beginning and no end, just as love should. May the rings be brought forward.”
Out of the corner of my eye, Marco moved first—fumbling toward my side, trying and failing to look composed as he pressed a small velvet pouch into my palm.
Ivy mirrored him across the aisle, the picture of elegance despite her blotchy cheeks, tugging a silk ribbon loose from Auri’s bouquet to reveal its twin pouch.
They shared a knowing glance before stepping back again, both sniffling far too dramatically for people who’d sworn they wouldn’t cry.
“Don’t drop it,” Marco whispered loudly.
“Don’t ruin the moment,” I shot back.
Auri laughed through her tears, shaking her head. That sound was light and unguarded, hitting me square in the chest.
She looked down at my hand, at the platinum band resting against my skin.
Sunlight flared across it, dazzling and clean.
I had it engraved for her, a hidden message on the inside: Racing 101 - Since Spa.
The moment I first saw her and have since been hers.
She couldn’t see that inscription, and she didn’t yet know the significance of it.
But she would soon, when the time was right.
Then she lifted her hand, revealing my ring between two fingers, and I almost forgot how to stand upright.
I've seen beautiful things in my life. Cars worth millions, cities carved into mountainsides, the woman standing in front of me now the most beautiful of them all.
But nothing—nothing—had stolen the breath from my lungs like this ring. Because she had picked it herself, possibly aided in the design, because the band wasn’t simple or understated or traditional by any means.
It was deliberate, unique, and crafted with a story I hadn’t heard yet.
Platinum caught the sunlight first. Cool, clean, eternal.
A foundation built to last. Then the gold in the middle, gleaming warmly, a carved band of chevrons around the entire ring, like a trail of motion.
The grooves were shallow but sharp, tapering toward a disruption in the flow, a curve that looked devastatingly familiar at first glance.
Not ornamental. Not random. It looked… alive. Like movement immortalized.
The pattern carried a whisper of a track, yes, but this was more than that. It was designed as devotion. Direction as declaration. Every line leading somewhere—back to her, back to us.
Tiny diamonds rimmed the edges in an unbroken circle, each one catching the light like a spark before it faded. Not ostentatious, but infinite. A circuit of brilliance that mirrored the pavé on her engagement ring, two halos orbiting each other endlessly.
The ring didn’t look engineered. It looked breathed into being. Like how she breathed life into me.
My eyes drifted back to the curve—the rise cutting through the center—and something inside me tilted. It was Eau Rouge. Raidillon.
My corner. My favorite track. My beginning, even if I hadn’t always known the reason.
At the apex of that line sat three rubies. Three perfect, burning points of red.
I didn’t yet understand the full meaning of the ring, but my body knew before my mind caught up. It called to something in me—instinct before intellect.
The first ruby burned for the moment I first saw her, a flash of brilliance that re-wired everything I thought I knew about hunger and hope.
The second for the time I almost lost her, when my crash and her miscarriage and the realities of loss taught me what fear really was.
And the third for every day she chose me, not as a rival or a ghost, but as the woman I would follow into forever.
Heat. Recognition. Reverence.
I looked up at her because I couldn’t not.
Auri was already smiling at me in that way she reserves for fragile things. For miracles she’s afraid to touch too hard.
“There’s a story behind this ring,” she murmured, voice trembling just enough for me to feel it in my chest. “One I can’t wait to share with you later.”
Later.
There was more. I could feel it—the confirmation of intention braided into every curve of gold and platinum. Every detail a love letter written in a language only we would ever understand.
My heart stumbled, tumbled, tried to catch itself and failed. I had to glance away from her for a second just to steady the ground beneath me.
Because this ring wasn’t just a piece of jewelry. It wasn’t a symbol. It was us. Past, present, and everything still ahead, etched into metal like a map I hadn’t learned to read yet.
This wasn't a ceremony anymore. It was a heartbeat.
Two trembling hands.
Two bands of metal catching light.
Two lives tying themselves together.
“Callum,” Colette said, forcing me back into the moment, “as you place this ring, repeat after me.”
I turned the platinum band between my fingers, the metal warm from my skin.
“With this ring,” she said.
I breathed it out as I reached for Auri’s left hand. “With this ring.”
“I seal the vows I’ve spoken and all the promises still unspoken.”
I slid the band over her knuckles, slow and steady, just above her engagement ring. The metal caught the sun, a gleam of platinum and fire. The movement felt instinctive, like muscle memory. Like taking Eau Rouge flat-out, trusting the curve, trusting the car, trusting myself.
As natural as breathing. As natural as loving her. Every beat, every breath, every piece of me bound up in that motion.
“I seal the vows I’ve spoken and all the promises still unspoken,” I echoed quietly.
Her fingers flexed against mine, trembling, her light pink nails catching light. My eyes met hers, tears swimming in their depths softly, beautifully, the way she always did when her heart was too full to contain.
Then it was her turn.
She took my hand, tracing the lines of my knuckles before sliding the band home. She turned the ring, and when I saw the interior, something inside me fell to its knees.
Engraved along the curve was her handwriting. The soft rise of her m, the deliberate downward stroke I’d seen a thousand times.
mon amour, mon champion
Not a phrase or a famous quote, but her own vow written in a circle, to be pressed against my heartbeat for eternity.
No beginning. No end. Just the truth of us.
Her voice shook but didn’t break. “With this ring, I seal the vows I’ve spoken and all the promises still unspoken,” she said softly, her accent lilting over each syllable, that sweet French melody I’d fallen for, crashing and burning straight into her arms like Icarus hadn’t fallen from grace but barreled right into it.
The way her tongue curled around every word was devastatingly gentle, catastrophically romantic enough to send me into overdrive. “For today, and every day after.”
The gold was warm against my skin. The air smelled like salt and sunlight. For one perfect second, everything else fell away.
“For today, and every day after,” I repeated, hypnotized by her.
And then Colette clasped her hands in front of her chest. “And now,” she announced, “we’ll bind what the heart has chosen.
I understand the two of you have chosen to include a handfasting today.
” She glanced between us. “This is not something most of us here are accustomed to, but I had the honor of doing my research to help guide it.” Her lips curved with something close to awe.
“And I can tell already, it’s perfect for you. ”
Auri smiled shyly, eyes shimmering, and I swear the entire island tilted toward her.
Colette continued, her voice low, reverent. “This Celtic tradition symbolizes the binding of two lives—two souls—into one shared path. The ties do not restrain; they represent choice. The choice to love freely, fiercely, and faithfully, every day.”
I felt the ribbon in my pocket before I moved. The weight of it had been against my heart all afternoon.
I pulled out the strip of Fraser tartan. My mum sent it with a note that said, Let it bind you to something better than we were.
My throat burned as I smoothed the fabric between my fingers.
They’d been through hell, my parents. Years of silence and shouting and trying again anyway. I used to think that was what love was: endurance at all costs. But I know better now. I don’t want to survive love; I want to live it.
And that’s what this is. A promise not to repeat the past, but to rewrite it.
Auri smiled through her tears. “It’s beautiful.”
I reached for her hands—dainty, shaking, perfect—and placed the tartan across them. “This ribbon has seen fights and forgiveness,” I murmured. “It’s seen two people try and fail and try again. But it’s still holding strong. That’s what I want for us.”
Then I began to wrap it. Once, twice, each movement slow and intentional. Precious like a prayer and steady like a breath.
I hesitated, debating whether I should speak my intentions out loud or keep them to myself. Then I figured this marriage would only ever be as strong as what we gave it—together. So I cleared my throat.