Chapter 18 - Callum
We reached the lobby’s glass doors. They looked too clean to be real, showing our group in a crisp reflection. The valet stood just beyond them, framed in a blur of headlights and golden hotel light.
A gust of air caught us as the doors opened automatically.
It carried Auri’s perfume away, lavender and skin-warmed citrus replaced by something colder, damp and metallic, like the world outside was washing her away from me.
The moment it disappeared, I panicked. Her scent was always the thing that grounded me.
And now I was floundering, drenched in the clarity of reality and voices.
Out under the covered circle drive, the rain sliced sideways in sheets, carried by the wind. I could hear it pelting the pavement relentlessly. It was the kind of storm that made everything smell like wet asphalt and tension.
Aurélie stepped toward the valet without hesitation, chin high, movements smooth and practiced. Every part of her screamed elegance, power, composure. It reminded me of last night.
Of what I gave her. Of what she gave me.
When she dropped to her knees and looked up at me like I was everything. When she offered herself—not just her body, but her trust, her will, her submission. When she begged me to take control. And I did. Fully, completely, unapologetically.
I’d held her in my hands and wrecked her so completely, that it rewired something inside me.
In that moment—on that bed, with her wrists bound and her voice shaking and her heart so fucking open—she didn’t just give me control.
She gave me her. The last threads she’d been holding on to, the ones that had yet to be discovered, just as mine had been.
I’d shown her a version of myself I didn’t even know existed. Dark. Grounded. Hopelessly devoted. A man who wasn’t just in love with her. A man who would never let her fall.
Exploration. Together. Always together, even now, when she was furious at me and I battled my own darkest compulsions—those voices that whispered I wasn’t enough, that I would always ruin the things I loved.
The memory cut through the turmoil in my chest like a clean breath.
It didn’t fix anything, but it brought clarity.
This woman was mine. This was just another mountain to climb, another challenge to overcome, another storm to weather, soaked and shivering, but still holding her hand at the end of it.
All relationships took work. My parents’ marriage surviving what it had was proof of that. So the one Aurélie and I had been building this year—brick by brick, against impossible odds—was worth everything. And I would never stop fighting for it.
I looked at the sway in her hips as she walked ahead of me, the curve of her spine beneath that tight black dress, the grace in her movements, even now. She looked like a goddamn queen. Like she ruled every inch of the ground she walked on.
And still, I followed. Not because I was weak, or defeated, or unsure, but because she was the one I’d chosen to follow.
I believed a king was only as powerful as his queen.
A man with true strength didn’t need to dominate the world around him.
He needed to earn the loyalty of the one woman who saw through the armor.
Behind every so-called great man was a woman who could have burned the kingdom down and chose instead to build it with him.
Not out of duty, but out of power. Strategy.
Restraint. For she knew vengeance, and she knew how to play the long game.
And loving her was the longest game of all. Not ego, not conquest. Just devotion.
So no, I wasn’t going to let this break us.
I’d seen her at her most vulnerable, and she’d seen me at my most fucking primal. We were two sides of the same coin. Chaos and clarity, fire and ash. We didn’t just collide; we combusted. And still, something sacred remained.
Because that’s what twin flames do. They burn until the smoke clears, and then they choose each other again.
It was the kind of darkness I used to bury, the kind I thought would scare someone like her away. But she hadn’t flinched. She’d welcomed it. Begged for it. Begged me. To take control, lead, break her down and carry her through it. And I had, not with cruelty, but with adoration.
I’d praised her with every strike of the crop. I’d whispered devotion between every filthy command. She took it—God, she took all of it—because she knew I would never take her farther than she could go.
I knew her better than anyone.
We were made for each other.
Not in the way people write about in love songs.
In the way galaxies collide, the way wild things recognize one another.
Soulmates, yes, but not gentle ones. Forged in fire, shaped by scars and tears and brutal lessons.
They weren’t soft. They were savage. They didn’t complete you.
They exposed you, and demanded you rise anyway.
Because at the end of the day, it was deciding you’d still show up through the wreckage.
This love wasn't meant to be easy. We were meant to be worth it, to go to war for it. Every bruise, every bared truth, every night we broke apart and crawled back toward each other in the dark—this was love in its rawest form. And love that didn't flinch from adversity. Love grew inside the ache.
Because that was the thing about us. We didn’t fall in love by accident. We chose it. Every. Single. Day. Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt. That was the inevitability of it—we kept choosing anyway.
Love wasn’t a soft place to land the way movies painted it out to be. It’s both the storm and the anchor. And Aurélie and I… we smoldered until we caught on fire, but we kept walking through the smoke. Hand in hand, again and again.
It was always her, and it was always me. And it was always going to be us.
She wasn’t my destiny. She was both my rival and my reckoning. A mirror held to my flaws, my fears, my hunger to control, and the one person who made me want to be better anyway. She didn’t make me whole. She made me aware. Of what I was, what I wanted, and what I refused to lose.
I didn’t need to beg anymore. We were past roses and promises—not that those would ever stop being important—but what we had now was raw and real and earned. All I had to do was remind her that I would choose her every time.
So when the valet pulled around and my blacked-out McLaren rolled to the curb like a predator in the dark, I didn’t hesitate.
I snagged her by the waist, one arm tight around her middle, and hauled her toward the passenger door, rounding the hood so we were mostly hidden from the hotel entrance, just shadowed enough under the circle drive to disappear into the storm.
Our friends stayed awkwardly by the valet stand, pretending not to watch. They just stood there, frozen in confusion, unsure if this was a lovers’ quarrel or a full-blown detonation. The valet ducked his head when I backed Aurélie against the car.
“Callum, what the fuck?” she snapped. She planted her feet, jerking her arm away, but I was stronger and faster.
“You already agreed to drive with me,” I told her, forcing her to face me. “No going back on that now, love.” I smiled enough to flash my dimple. Just enough to make her want to slap me. Or kiss me.
She scoffed, lips curling into a sneer. “That was before you tried to steamroll—non, bulldoze—fuck, whatever this is!” she snapped. “You don’t get to do the nice play now after you man-grabbed me!”
I blinked, then burst out laughing. “The nice play? Man-grab?”
“Manhandle! Just—shut up! You know what I mean!”
I forced myself to rein my amusement in. Even furious, she was fucking perfect. But underneath the sass, I heard the crack in her voice, the hurt she was trying to hide.
“Auri, if you’re trying to make me regret manhandling you, maybe don’t say it while pressed against my car.”
She hissed. Actually hissed. I froze, then grinned, heat curling in my gut.
“Jesus, you really are unhinged. What do you want? For me to tame you, or chase you into the dark and fuck you against the pavement?”
“Neither. Both. Putain, whatever!” she spat, shoving at me again. “You think this is romantic? Just because you’re—” her hands waved wildly at me “—hot and feral and know how to whisper things that short-circuit my nervous system?”
Her voice broke at the edges. She loathed that I could still make her feel this way. That was the worst part: she wanted to stay mad, and I was ruining it.
I had her. Fuck, I had her, and she hated that.
“You’re this mad,” I said slowly, knowing it would irritate the hell out of her, “but you still think I’m hot and feral?” She squinted at me and crossed her arms. She looked adorably pissed off. I tilted my head. “Be honest with me, baby, how soaked are you right now?”
Her jaw dropped.
“You know what? Don’t answer. I’ll find out soon enough.”
She scoffed, cheeks flushed. “Tu es tellement chiant,” she muttered. You’re so annoying.
“Don’t flatter me with your dirty talk until we’re alone,” I retorted with a wink.
A clap of thunder broke the moment, reminding me that we were very much in public and too many sets of eyes were on us.
Shit.
Our friends were watching with way too much amusement, standing by their chauffeured car.
“We’ll meet you guys at the restaurant,” I shouted to them, catching Marco’s gaze over the hood of the car. He winked at me, a nefarious grin on his face as he leaned down and whispered something in Ivy’s ear that made her face turn beet red before they climbed into their car.
I opened the passenger door and moved Aurélie closer with one firm hand at her hip. She blinked up at me, hazel burning like autumn leaves on the verge of a storm. I knew that look, that tension. I wanted to drown in it.