Chapter 23 - Aurélie
The movers worked quietly, heavy boots echoing through the nearly empty flat. Every room had already been cleared. All that remained were a few final items in the kitchen from drawers I’d forgotten about in the chaos of packing.
I opened the second drawer beside the stove, fingers skimming past old takeout menus and mismatched rubber bands. And then I saw a small, half-burnt birthday candle—pink and cheap, the wax curled at one end. It rolled forward as I pulled the drawer out, bumping against my fingers .
I stared at it for a long time.
I remembered the day I’d put it in here.
It was on my birthday a few months ago, April tenth.
It felt like a lifetime ago that I’d bought myself a cupcake from the café around the corner, lit that single candle, and sat in silence while the wax dripped.
Nobody had called. My family had texted in our group chat, but that was the extent of it.
Because it wasn’t really my birthday. Not to them. It was our birthday. And since étienne was the favorite child… it was his birthday. I was always the one people forgot.
Except Callum.
He hadn’t known it was my birthday. He’d simply sent me a DM that day about seeing pistachio croissants and thought of me.
That was all, and yet, it meant everything. It meant someone saw me, heard me, thought of me without being told to. Even now, I remembered how my heart ached reading that message, like it was learning a new rhythm.
He may never know the extent of what that small gesture did for me, and I loved him all the more for it. Even then, he found ways to show up for me.
I picked up the candle, rolling it between my fingers, thumb grazing the blackened wick.
That version of me—the one who blew out a candle alone and sang happy birthday to herself—she was still here, but now she was… loved. Healing.
But she wasn’t the one driving anymore. I dropped the candle into the open trash bag beside me. She had gotten me this far, but I didn’t need her to take me the rest of the way.
The movers’ footsteps echoed faintly from the living room. I was supposed to be doing a last sweep—checking drawers, emptying shelves—but my body ached, my head throbbed, and I just wanted to be done.
The bathroom was the last stop.
I yanked the top drawer open, grumbling under my breath as stray hair ties and half-used tubes of mascara rolled around. “Of course they didn’t check these,” I muttered under my breath. “God forbid someone touches the tampons.”
The drawer stuck halfway out, and I tugged, but it didn’t budge. I shoved my hand to the back of the drawer to help dislodge the object preventing it from opening. My fingers closed around a cardboard box. When I pulled it out, my stomach churned.
It was a box of pregnancy tests. There was one left inside—a non-digital blue-dye test. My heart slowed, then sped up in uneven bursts. I knew exactly when I’d bought it. The last time I’d taken one, it had been positive.
I’d been with Santino at the time, and while the loss had saddened me, I was okay. Somewhere deep down, I’d understood and accepted that the universe had intervened before it could tether me to a man who thrived on control and cruelty. Who groomed and assaulted me.
But this time, it was Callum’s. The man who kissed the ground I walked on. The man who belonged to me and I to him.
My stomach turned to ice. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t possible.
I sat down hard on the closed toilet seat, the box rattling in my hands. The tile blurred beneath me and I couldn’t catch my breath.
It had been just over a year since the last time. Just over a year since I’d stared at that faint pink line, and then watched my body betray me days later. Where I sat in a sterile hospital room receiving news about my reproductive health all alone and turned my world upside down.
And now I was cramping again, bleeding and dizzied by the same dread.
It could still be nothing, I told myself. But honestly, I already knew.
My hands moved on their own, shutting the door and tearing the wrapper open. The sound of plastic split the silence like a scream, making me feel more alone than ever. I stood, pulled my leggings and panties down, and sat. The pee hit the stick, and then I laid it on the counter.
I reached for a tampon, already feeling the hot trickle leaking down the little braided tail of it. When I pulled the old one out, I froze. Blood soaked it, deep and dark and thick with clots. Not small ones. These were large, jelly-like, and unmistakable.
The kind you only saw once you knew.
I sat there, half-naked and trembling, staring at the evidence in my own hands.
No. No, no, no.
My body knew exactly how to kill its own hope.
I changed the tampon, feeling like I’d left myself somewhere outside my body. By the time I stood and turned toward the sink, my vision was narrowing to a tunnel.
The test was waiting, and there they were: two blue lines, bold and clear as day.
Positive.
The world tilted.
“This—” My voice broke. “This can’t—”
The rest dissolved into a sound I didn’t recognize.
A ragged sob ripped from somewhere low and primal, the kind that left my throat raw after.
My legs gave out and I crumpled to the floor, clutching the counter with one hand and the test with the other.
The tile pressed into my knees, cold and merciless.
Tears came hard and fast. Grief, anger, shame, disbelief—all of it surging at once, violent and unrelenting.
The IUD was supposed to protect me. I had done everything right. How could this happen again?
And worse—how could I tell him? He’d been covered in this blood.
He’d kissed me through it. He’d laughed with me through it.
I lied through my fucking teeth after we just agreed to complete transparency.
That we’d figure it out together. And I let myself believe it was just a flare-up.
I let myself hide. And now… I knew what it really was.
The next sob that escaped me was nearly silent. I collapsed to my ass, legs sprawled beneath me like a broken marionette and curled forward, forehead to my knees, and let the waves hit until my throat burned and my chest heaved with nothing left to give.
“Aurélie?” The voice jolted me upright. Shit, it was one of the movers.
“Madame Dubois?” Another voice called out, closer this time. “We’re ready for the last box!”
I stared at the bathroom door, disoriented, the test still trembling in my hand.
“Coming!” My voice didn’t sound like me.
I scrambled to flush, wipe my face, and rinse my shaking hands under the faucet. My reflection was pale and red-eyed. I slipped the test into the pocket of my hoodie, stuffing all the thoughts and emotions into an overflowing corner in my mind.
By the time I opened the door, the smile was back in place. Aurélie Dubois, the woman who always kept it together.
But the truth was pressed against my womb in my pocket, pulsing in time with it. Two blue lines and all the love I may never get to give.
I carried the last box to the door, thanking the movers in perfect, polite French, as if I hadn’t just found my heart bleeding out in the bathroom. They didn’t notice anything strange, which meant I was doing a good job at pretending I was okay.
When the flat was finally empty, I stood in the doorway for a moment and stared inside. There wasn’t a single emotion that tied me to this place, so dropping the keys on the counter didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I turned and walked to my car. My fancy navy blue Alpine A110 gleamed in the dull light.
It suited me. Or maybe, the version of me I used to think I had to be.
But all I could think about was getting my hands back on my vintage Porsche 911, tucked safely in the family garage on the estate.
I wanted to feel the grind of old mechanics beneath me again, to touch something real—something I rebuilt with my own two hands.
The drive from Paris to the southern countryside was like second nature at this point.
My home life had always been lived in layers.
This wasn’t just a road trip; it was a retracing of old patterns.
A lifetime of drives from our estate outside Marseille to Paris for holidays, anniversaries, and galas.
Back then, I resented every kilometer of it. Now, it brought peace to the turmoil inside me.
Sunlight slanted through the windshield in pale, watery streaks.
The motorway hummed beneath the tires. A blur of highway signs and villages slipped past—Rouen, évreux, Lisieux.
The world was happening at a distance. I kept my music low, fingers clenched around the wheel, body going through the motions because stopping would mean collapsing.
At a gas station somewhere outside Caen, I stopped for fuel and to change my hygiene products. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and I stared into the mirror for too long.
I felt alone. So, so alone. My mind spiraled, remembering the last two times this had happened, both times ending in sterile doctor’s offices and hushed conversations about hormones and bad luck and poor ovarian reserve.
Between the endometriosis—which doctors had only confirmed after my last miscarriage, when complications forced them to perform an exploratory laparoscopy—and the premature ovarian insufficiency, I just felt…
worthless. Defective. Like my body was an apology I was always one breath too late to make.
Callum wouldn’t want me to feel this way.
I winced as I climbed back into the car, popping an ibuprofen just to dull the stabbing ache that refused to ease. The weight of the test in my pocket was unbearable.
Do I call him? Not call? Maybe just… plant the seed?
My hands shook slightly as I tapped his name on the screen and backed out of the gas station.
The second I heard his voice, something in me loosened.
“Hey,” he answered softly. “You okay?”
It was hushed. I could hear the echo of other voices in the background, and I imagined him half-turned away, phone against his shoulder, shielding our call.
“I’ll be at the new house in a couple hours,” I murmured, tears springing to my eyes unbidden. “There’s… something I want to tell you.”
There was a pause, and then muffled movement on his end. Voices grew louder. Laughter? Discussion? A door closed, but the noise remained, just muffled now.
“Sorry,” he said, breathier now. “I’m still at the hotel. Kimi and Marco are here. We’re going through GPDA prep stuff and the proposals Beckett sent over.”
“Oh.” I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth. “Never mind. We can talk later.”
“Aurélie.” His voice grew more alert. “Is something wrong?”
I hesitated, then exhaled slowly as I pulled back onto the main stretch. “It can wait. Go take care of this, mon amour. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mhmm.” It came out a little shrill as I bit back the emotions threatening to pull me under.
“Okay, baby. Call me if you need anything. I’m here,” he said, like a promise.
Just a little bit longer, I told myself.
So I kept driving.