Chapter 121 Callum （His Ending）
callum (his ending)
He made love to me like I was his forever the last time I was in his flat. Then he disappeared like I was forgettable. He must've thought I'd let him. –Aurelie
The room was dark. The kind of dark that settles behind your eyes and starts whispering maybe you should stay here forever.
I hadn’t turned the lights on since I got home.
Head pounding, ribs bruised, muscles screaming with every movement.
The migraine hadn’t let up in two days—not since the post-crash adrenaline wore off and left me with nothing but a high-pitched ringing in my ears and the ghost of Aurélie's voice on repeat.
I’d pulled the blackout curtains closed, shoved my phone under a pillow, and done absolutely nothing but lay flat and breathe.
The flat was a mess. Not in the usual way, not like I didn’t care. I'd stumbled inside, half held up by Dom. I’d dropped my bag in the kitchen. Dom had rifled through it for my things. I’d stripped and changed on my way down the hallway to my room needing to just sleep.
Pretty sure the kitchen counter still had takeout containers from the meal Dom had forced me to eat. The bathroom had my damp towels still on the floor, my toiletries scattered after a quick shower to rinse off the shitty race, smell of fuel and smoke, and sweat from traveling.
My bedroom was dark, still, too quiet, and it was the only place I could function. If you could call laying flat in the dark with a migraine that made your skull feel like it was trying to crack itself open functioning.
But it was the only place I could stand to be that reminded me of her.
Aurélie curled into me, smelling like that addictive lavender shit from black bottles I’d found in her bag.
Aurélie splayed on the floor in front of my full-length mirror in that blush-pink dress, ruining me, wrecking me, claiming me as much as I did her.
I hadn’t responded to her.
And it killed me.
Her messages sat unread, but not because I didn’t want to read them. I did. I’d stared at the notifications for hours. Played her last voice memo on low in the middle of the night when the pain meds weren’t enough and my chest hurt more than my head.
Aurélie
Je t’aime.
That was her last text to me.
Fuck.
The thing was, she shouldn’t have to carry this. Not the guilt. Not the worry. Not me.
I didn’t want her seeing me like this—stripped down, disoriented, hollowed out by my own fear. I was supposed to be the strong one. The four-time world champion. The man who held her up in the shower when she broke and told her she never had to be alone again.
And now I couldn’t even stand upright for more than ten minutes. I was still wearing the compression vest under my hoodie to help with the swelling.
I stayed in the dark so I didn't have to see my unshaven face or bloodshot eyes or be reminded of the man she didn’t deserve.
I ghosted her without ever meaning to. Every part of me wanted to pick up the phone and text I miss you.
But what would come after that? Her showing up to clean me up? To be strong when I couldn’t be?
No. I couldn’t do that to her. So I let the silence stretch. Until my doorbell app chimed from my phone, the soft single note making me wince. I glanced over at it.
No fucking way.
I grabbed it with trembling fingers. Tapped on the notification… and there she was. Her hair was falling, her face had splotchy makeup. She looked tired and worried, and yet she was still the most beautiful fucking sight I’d ever seen.
My breath caught. She was watching the door like she was praying to it. She knocked again and waited.
I didn’t move. My brain was still playing catch-up, and when it finally realized it was real and faced with the one person who’d seen every piece of me, I panicked.
She shouldn’t see me like this.
And then her face crumpled. She slapped a hand over her mouth, tears pouring from her eyes, and it made my heart break in half.
She wiped her eyes as she bent over to look at my doorbell, and then her voice hit the intercom like a fist. “I came here. But maybe I should’ve gone to Paris.
I have five hours until I meet my realtor for a property I’ve been dreaming about.
I’ve got interviews. I have a full face to paint.
A movement to lead. But I came here first, because you mattered more than all of it. ”
Realtor? Interviews?
Fuck. Her head’s already somewhere else. She's planning a new life without me.
My head throbbed harder, vision tunneling as I sat up fully. Pain flared across my rib cage.
Why had I let it go this long? Why had I let her show up here thinking we were done?
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feet hitting cold tile. My head screamed. My body begged me to lie back down. But something deeper—something primal—pushed me to move.
Then she disappeared from the screen. I blinked and sat up straighter, trying to zoom in, but the camera had lost her. What good was this fucking thing if it couldn't track someone standing in front of my door?
“What the hell—”
A thud.
Then the unmistakable click click of a lock being worked from the outside.
I scrambled up, half-tripping over a pair of sweatpants on the floor, nearly knocking over a lamp, and sending a bottle of ibuprofen clattering to the floor. My heart went sideways in my chest.
She’s picking my fucking lock.
Of course she was. Of fucking course. That’s who she was—this unruly, feral, brilliant woman who refused to be shut out by anyone. Especially not by me, after everything we'd shared, after the weeks our team had been forcing us apart.
By the time I reached the hall, still in a hoodie and boxers, light from the hallway was spilling in. My front door was swinging open, and I was pretty certain this was some kind of record for picking both a bottom lock and a deadbolt.
In the doorway was my Aurélie. Her eyes were glassy, remnants of makeup running down her tan cheeks. Her hair was long and loose in waves that had always driven me crazy, and her lips were parted as if she couldn't believe I hadn’t stopped her.
As for me? I was frozen.
This wasn’t the woman I was avoiding. This was the woman I loved. And she’d come to break my fucking door down to prove it.
This was close contact—the kind you couldn’t pull away from. The kind that left bruises and scars and burned through excuses. The kind that made you want to live again.
Relief hit me harder than the crash, because she came back. She touched down in my orbit like she always belonged there. She came home to me.
Even though I didn't deserve it, I was done running from the wreckage. I wanted to crash into her all over again.
TO BE CONTINUED…