Chapter 17 - Callum
The moment Aurélie excused herself, I knew something had broken. Not in the dramatic, cinematic kind of way. Not a plate smashing or a scream echoing off the walls.
No, this was the kind of break you didn’t hear until it was too late; the kind that split right through your ribcage without warning.
The soft closing of a door was louder than it should’ve been, cutting through the low hum of the suite’s air conditioning and the faint chatter from the hallway.
I’d hurt her. I didn’t know how bad yet. But I could feel it, like gravity between us had shifted.
Everyone else stayed frozen in place, maybe sensing the same thing, maybe not. Marco had stopped pacing. Kimi stared at the door like he expected it to burst open again. Ivy just pressed her hand to her lips like she’d witnessed the aftermath of a car wreck no one had been fast enough to stop.
But I followed Aurélie into the room without thinking. The silence that met me was heavy, carved out of something brittle. She wasn’t here. I glanced over and saw the bathroom door was closed.
I stood there for what felt like forever, watching the seam of the door like it might reveal something. I didn’t know what I was hoping for. That she’d come out laughing? That she’d say she understood? That she wasn’t hurt the way I feared and I was reading into this way too much?
The air in the room felt stale, too warm. Her perfume still hung in the air—lavender, citrus, a note of skin and salt. It smelled like her nerves had been here.
So I knocked once, gently. “Baby?”
No answer, but I couldn’t move, not until I heard her voice from behind the door.
My voice cracked. “You alright?”
“I’m fine.” Soft, steady, not a hitch in it. And I knew, in the deepest, most instinctive part of me, that she was lying. Not to them or to protect anyone else. She was lying to me.
She didn’t speak again for a long time. And when she finally did, it was in French this time. “?a va.”
But it wasn’t. God, it wasn’t. She opened the door a moment later, and for a second, the sight of her hit me so hard I forgot how to breathe.
She was glowing, regal, untouchable. Every inch of her looked controlled.
Her eyes, her lips, the firm set of her shoulders.
Like a woman created from frost and fire.
Then she walked past me without meeting my gaze.
I reached for her waist. I couldn’t help it; my fingers just needed to feel her, to make sure she was warm and solid and—fuck—real.
That she hadn’t already vanished into a version of herself I couldn’t reach.
My hand landed just above the curve of her hip.
Her heat scorched my palm, but she didn’t stop.
She didn’t turn or melt, didn’t reach back or press into me the way she always did, like her body knew mine by instinct.
I whispered her name. “Auri…”
Still, she kept walking. I followed, my heart slamming against my ribs, trying again, this time with both hands, turning her gently by the shoulder before she could leave the room.
She let me, yet when her eyes met mine, there was no softness.
No desperate clinging, no relief, no forgiveness. Just that devastating calm.
Her voice was low. “Not now.”
Two words. That was all it took to gut me.
Not now. Not a no, not yet, not fuck you. Just not now.
But that was worse. Because it meant maybe. It meant maybe not ever. It meant I didn’t get to fix this with one touch or one word or one night. It meant maybe I’d broken something I couldn’t see, and now she had to choose whether I was worth salvaging.
It meant I had no fucking clue how big of a mistake I’d made.
“Auri, please.” The word scraped out before I could stop it. I reached for her again, fingertips brushing her wrist. “Just—just look at me. Talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong, and I’ll fix it, I swear to God—”
Her eyes hardened, and the coldness in them nearly stopped my heart. “You can’t fix everything, Callum.”
It wasn’t a shout. It wasn’t cruel. It was worse. It was quiet and matter-of-fact. A statement of truth that landed like a knife to my heart.
She turned away. The sound of her heels against the floor was all I could hear as she left the room. My pulse pounded in my ears so loud I almost didn’t hear the muted hiss of the shower pipe through the wall. My palms were clammy, my gut uneasy.
The thought of her walking away—of her deciding that this was it, the line I’d finally crossed—knocked the air out of me so hard my chest seized.
It wasn’t dramatic, not a gasp or a choke, just that awful, slow realization that I couldn’t get enough air.
Every inhale felt like swallowing gravel.
Every exhale came too fast. My lungs weren’t working. My chest wasn’t rising properly.
What did I do?
What the fuck did I do?
How did I get this so wrong?
I just wanted to help, to make things better, to take some of it off her shoulders. But I was incapable of even that.
I wanted to give her everything—the world, the entire fucking universe—but all I’d done was hurt her. And I can’t take it back. Can’t un-say it. Can’t un-do it.
Now she doesn’t even want to touch me. Doesn’t want to look at me.
She’s disgusted by me.
The words rattled in my head, constant and badgering, until my body started to believe them. The walls inched closer. My pulse roared in my ears. Air sawed in and out of me, my lungs trying to make room that wasn’t there.
Because I’d been here before. Different rooms, different faces, but the same aftermath. People who loved me until they didn’t, until I said the wrong thing, pushed too hard, opened my mouth and ruined it all.
And then came the silence. The stillness. The relief on their faces when I finally stepped away.
Maybe that’s who I was. The problem. The crack in every foundation.
I’d spent my whole life trying to outrun it—faster cars, louder victories—but it always caught me. And now it had caught her.
My throat burned. I tried to swallow, but it felt like sandpaper. My vision tunneled, edges going dark, and I forced a breath in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way all those expensive therapists had taught me. It didn’t help.
Nothing fucking helped.
With trembling hands, I turned off all the lights, turning to close the bedroom door behind me. Lightning flared through the narrow hotel window, washing the room white for a heartbeat before the dark folded back in.
Because all I could see was her walking away from me, and my mother years ago at the kitchen table, crying into her hands while my father stared at the wall. Pretending it wasn’t my fault. Pretending I hadn’t been the start of it.
It all blurred together in one image: the three of them looking at me like I was a disappointment.
My father, who tried to live through me.
Who pushed until the only thing I learned was that love was earned with speed and trophies and records that still weren’t enough.
Who taught me that better was the only acceptable apology.
That if I could just be faster, smoother, perfect, maybe he’d look at me like a son instead of a second chance at his own failed career.
My mother, who smothered me with safety—hands on my face, telling me to breathe, to be careful, to slow down—and then left anyway, over and over again.
Packed a bag every time she couldn’t handle her little boy climbing into a car built to kill him.
I can still hear the door closing. It sounded exactly like this one.
She’s the one who taught me how to love like that—fiercely, desperately, like protection could save someone.
Like holding them tighter would keep them safe.
She showed me what devotion looked like, but not how to stop it from turning into panic.
And every time she walked away, I learned that loving something that much just meant giving it another reason to leave.
And Aurélie. God, Aurélie. All I’ve ever tried to do is be the man she deserves. The one who doesn’t fuck it up. The one who fights for her, runs to her, chooses her every single time. But I can’t seem to stop breaking things, even when I love them. Especially when I love them.
She gave me her trust, her body, her heart—and I still managed to make her flinch. Still managed to make her look at me like that.
Maybe I wasn’t lovable. Maybe I just wore people down until they broke. Maybe their lives always got cleaner once I was gone.
Once the mirage faded and I wasn’t just the wealthy, flashy race car driver, but the man beneath it all, people realized there wasn’t much worth staying for.
That underneath the noise and the shine, I was just a mess of bad wiring and worse intentions, a collection of almosts pretending to be a person.
And now I was doing it again—to her. To the one person who saw me, who loved me anyway.
The realization pressed down like a hand on my chest, heavy and merciless. I wanted to claw it out. Take back every word. Erase it before it hardened into truth.
But I couldn’t.
And the silence she left in her wake was proof enough.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Marco laugh. A low, short sound, like maybe he’d told a joke he didn’t really mean.
I blinked. The lights in the room were suddenly too bright, and my fingertips ached where my nails had dug crescent moons into my palms. Sound bled back in, one layer at a time. Ivy asking something. Kimi answered with a word I couldn’t catch.
And just like that, the world kept moving.
Aurélie had walked away, and I was still standing here like a fucking idiot, trying to remember how to exist in a space she wasn’t touching me in.
My feet carried me out of the room, my system on autopilot.
The rest of the group was already heading out of the suite.
I watched Aurélie. She smiled for our friends, then she brushed her hair over her shoulder like she hadn’t just shattered in that bathroom.
She nodded along and played her part so effortlessly I almost believed she was okay.