20. Callum
The pit lane felt like a wasp nest. Mechanics wheeled trolleys, chattering amongst teams, the odor of hot brakes hung heavy.
The pain in my skull throbbed with every step, but I didn’t slow.
I cut past a cameraman and flashed my pass at a marshal who moved an inch too late.
The Luminis bay loomed ahead, blue and gold and white, busy and painfully loud.
Aurélie was just inside, helmet off, hairline damp, that crease between her brows carved deep. She handed her gloves to a mechanic and reached for a bottle. When she tipped her head back, I saw the guarded flex at the base of her neck, the micro-wince she would’ve murdered anyone else for noticing.
“Good run,” I said, voice even, as I sidled up next to her from behind.
Her eyes flicked up, heat and surprise in one glance. “You shouldn’t be on this side,” she murmured, but I knew I had her when her teeth sank into her delectably plump bottom lip. “Concussion. Lots of light and noise.”
“I’m fine.” Lie. I was petering out fast and wanted to go lay down in our dark hotel room for approximately four business days.
She gave me a slow, devastatingly adorable smile. “Ah, so you’re lurking,” she teased, her voice light despite the exhaustion in her features. I wanted to strip her out of her slutty little race suit, pull her into bed, and curl up beside her.
“Just admiring the show,” I shot back, though my concern for her was increasing by the minute. Leaning closer, I lowered my voice. “I need two minutes.”
She read something in my face and nodded toward her suite, brushing past me. I followed, relieved when the noise dropped a notch as the door shut. We turned to face each other. The distance between us felt both too intimate and too far apart.
Right now, we weren’t Cal and Auri, lovers pressed into the same skin, two names written into constellations that only made sense together.
We were Callum Fraser and Aurélie Dubois—two elite Formula 1 drivers, rivals and champions in our own right, currently standing on opposite sides of a sport’s governing body that would rather see us silenced than heard.
And yet… the way she looked at me made it impossible to forget that I was hers first, and she was mine.
“How’s your neck?” I asked, scrutinizing her every movement, every microreaction.
Aurélie’s jaw ticked, her hand flying up to rub one side of it, almost subconsciously. “Manageable.”
“Uh-huh.” I tilted the tablet I brought with me so the rough trace I’d sketched caught the light. “Who set your brake migration today?”
Her lashes lifted. They were clumped together from sweat and remnants of mascara that had melted off her last night when I kissed her tears away and swore I’d never let the world take her from me again, not even this sport. I intended to make good on that promise.
“Me, with Nico and Rhea.” She gestured toward the pit wall, where a tall redheaded woman in a headset—Rhea, I guessed—was conferring with a systems guy. “Why?”
I pulled up the lap overlay I’d saved. “Because your forward bias seems like it’s sitting three clicks farther forward than anyone sane would ever run on a chassis this twitchy.
Especially not at a stop-start circuit like this.
And your migration curve was flattened. You were loading the nose like a battering ram then catching a loose rear on exit. Pick one. You don’t pair both.”
Her mouth parted. Not in denial, but in calculation. “I asked for rear support on entry after the first run. They said the front was the safer compromise with temps.”
“Safer for numbers,” I said quietly. “Not for your body.” I zoomed the sector and tapped one of her problem areas. “Turn 5. Watch the rebound. Your heave is pogoing. That’s not ‘aero balance.’ That’s rebound too fast and packers too aggressive. Every hit goes straight up your spine.”
Her brows knitted together. “ Pogoing ?” she repeated, her accent turning the word into something almost melodical, like it belonged in her perfect French accent.
I blinked, then huffed out a quiet laugh despite myself. Christ. The garage could’ve been burning down and I still would’ve paused to watch her try to wrestle her tongue around an Englishism that made no sense. Something raw and visceral clawed at my heart, fucking wrecking me.
“Yeah, like a… a children’s toy. A stick with a spring,” I said, miming a ridiculous bounce with my hand. “Up, down, up, down. That’s what your chassis is doing.”
She smirked, shaking her head, a strand of hair slipping from her braid. I wanted to twine my fingers through it and haul her body flush against mine. “Leave it to you to compare my car to a toy.”
I chuckled. “Well, it’s built like a fucking toy.” Then, softer, betraying myself: “And leave it to you to make me explain like an idiot.”
The joke lingered in the air, but so did the ache in my chest. Because even when I was supposed to be furious about sabotage, she could tilt her head and smile at me and I was just… gone. I loved her in that second so much, it stole my breath.
Her smirk faded into something smaller, more tender. “Then explain again. Because I like when you do.”
My chest tightened. Christ, she meant it.
Her eyes tracked every movement of my hands on the tablet, wide and steady, like there was nothing in the world more important than hearing me talk about brake traces and rebound rates.
And it completely fucking undid me. Because under all the noise, the politics, the goddamn sabotage, this was still us—her watching me, me watching her, tethered in ways that had nothing to do with lap times.
“I spoke to one of the engineers back in the bay at Vanguard,” I admitted, dragging my gaze from her mouth back to the screen between us.
I was dangerously close to pressing her against these thin walls and fucking us both through the pain.
“Even he frowned at this. Said no one would run your bias this far forward and leave the rear that loose. Not unless they were clueless or careless. It’s begging for injury and risking their career.
” I paused, catching the flicker of fire in her eyes, the way her lips parted like she was already forming a counterpoint.
God, she was beautiful when she was about to argue.
I leaned in closer, lowering my voice even though we were already behind closed doors. “And then there’s you, staring at me like I’ve hung the stars, when all I’m doing is spelling out what you already know in your bones.”
She swallowed and stared at the line, then at me. “You think it’s incompetence.”
I swallowed the taste of copper. “I think no competent engineer marries that bias to that rear instability and sends you out. Not by accident.”
For a beat, the noise outside of this room carried everything we didn’t say.
She licked her lips, throat working. “I flagged it,” she said quietly. “They told me to drive around it.”
I felt something cold and precise slide into place where the panic had been.
“That’s not setup preference, Aurélie,” I pressed, voice dropping lower, tight with a growing anger toward this team.
“That’s either incompetence or sabotage.
And don’t forget, it only takes one compromised setup, one missed safety measure, one negligent decision from racing control for a driver to pay in blood. We know that part all too well.”
I didn’t need to state the obvious that I was a byproduct of it.
Aurélie’s eyes watered, and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and fold her into me, but I needed to get through what I came here to say.
I also hated seeing her cry. I know what the accident had done to her–and I fucking hated it more than I hated the injuries, or the trauma, or the fact that I wasn’t racing this weekend.
“Think about it. That’s what Senna was fighting for in the nineties when he pushed for the GPDA to come back. He knew the difference between risk and negligence. So do you. So do I.”
Her lips pursed like she wanted to argue, but the trace glowed between us like the evidence it was.
I stepped closer, my ribs protesting, but I didn’t care because suddenly I was breathing her in–sweat and lavender and her .
And all was right in the world for a brief moment in time.
“Maybe it’s time you started thinking about that, mon c?ur.
Not just as a driver in a broken car, but as someone who could change this entire grid if you chose to.
You’ve built an incredible platform fighting sexism.
Use that to your advantage. Address both issues head on.
I’m here to support you every step of the way. ”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Her eyes stayed locked on mine, wide and unwavering, and I swear the air between us turned electric. Without thinking, I reached out, my free hand settling on her shoulder gently, hoping to steady her before I kissed her senseless.
She flinched. Just barely, but enough for me to see.
“Fuck.” I snatched my hand back like I’d burned her, and her face fell. Nope, I hated that reaction and never wanted to see that on her face again. “Baby, this is worse than I thought. Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
Her mouth opened, like she might actually tell me, but then she snapped it shut, hazel eyes flicking toward the floor. “Because it doesn’t change anything,” she whispered. “I still have to drive it. It’s just the car. I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
That stubborn resolve–that absolute refusal to share the weight, even with me–would be the bane of my existence. She carried it all until it ground her down, until she had nothing left but grit and silence. And fuck if I didn’t love her more for that.
I wanted to take all the pain from her. Just a fraction of it, enough to make it easier. But I didn’t know how. Not yet, not until I could review all her telemetry and understand everything going on with her car’s setup.
Before we could say anything else, the door opened and a mechanic poked her head in, headset skewed. “Aurélie, debrief in five. And grab something to eat, you’re running low.”
“Yeah, okay.” She stood straighter, but not before I saw her hand flexing at her shoulder, the twitch she tried to mask as she reached for a water bottle sitting on the small counter in her suite.
I crossed my arms, lips pressed thin, watching her like she might vanish if I blinked.
She caught the look and tried for a smile. “Go rest,” she said softly, eyes steady despite the exhaustion. “S’il te pla?t. I’ll be fine. I love you.”
It melted something lethal in me. My jaw unclenched, my chest loosened by a fraction.
“I love you too,” I murmured, the words heavier than any threat I’d thrown today.
Then I leaned in, voice low and final. “I’ll be watching in FP2.
And Aurélie—” my thumb brushed her knuckles deliberately, “—the way you held that car together? Fighting it every corner and still making it look easy? Fucking brilliant. You have no idea what that does to me.”
Her breath hitched subtly. She leaned just close enough that only I could hear her soft breathing, and then she spoke, raw, laced with fire. “Cal, mon amour, you’ve been my idol for ten years. Who do you think I learned it from?”
My pulse roared. For a second, the garage, the noise, the ache in my ribs–eviscerated. Just her, looking at me like she was ready to devour me, and daring me not to fall apart under it.
She straightened before I could answer, eyes still molten, shoulders squared. She nodded once, then strode toward the mechanic with a sway in her hips that made me ache for an entirely different reason.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.