Chapter 27 - Callum
The rain didn’t fall—it attacked. Thick sheets hammered the visor, turning every lap into a knife-edge gamble between instinct and insanity.
My hands cramped around the wheel, tendons screaming, but I didn’t loosen my grip.
Not when the season was shifting beneath my feet and every choice I’d made since in my life had led me right here.
Sector two was a blur of spray, aquaplaning, Dutch orange smoke bleeding into the grey sky. The kind of conditions that made rookies pray and veterans question their life choices.
But I didn’t pray.
I hunted.
And when I crossed the line in P1, engine roaring like a final declaration, something burst open inside me.
My first win since the world changed.
Since summer break. Since we got married. Since the sport started reshaping itself around truths we forced into the light.
I climbed out of the car to the thunder of the crowd, taking it all in—the chaos, the history, the weight of the rain on my skin.
And then I saw her.
Always, always the first thing my eyes found.
Aurélie stood just beyond the podium barriers, soaked head to toe in champagne and rain, hair plastered to her cheeks, boots dripping, and looking at me like I was still the boy she’d seen a decade ago—bright-eyed, rough-edged, and destined to collide with her.
She waved like a total fangirl.
She was the only fangirl I’d ever care about.
When the celebration ended, she slipped beneath the rail like she belonged there—because she did—and I caught her before her boots even hit the concrete.
“Still got it, old man,” she teased against my mouth, breath warm despite the cold storm around us.
I tugged lightly on the end of one of her braids, smirking. “Language barrier, love. Pretty sure what you meant was ‘my sexy, ageless husband remains undefeated.’”
She rolled her eyes, but her smile softened, blooming into something reverent. Something only I ever got to see.
Then she kissed me—hard, messy, rain-salted, champagne-sticky, victorious.
And for one second, I wasn’t a four-time world champion.
I was just a man in love with the woman who made the world worth slowing down for.