Chapter 219 Callum
callum
We weren’t fearless. We just learned how to take the corners together. –Auri
Icaught up to Auri just as she started up the steps, my soul reaching for hers, seeking comfort.
The thing was, I knew everything would be fine, and mentally I was hanging onto that, but my body didn’t get the memo. My heart picked up pace, my stomach twisted into knots, my teeth chewed my bottom lip. I felt like I was losing control.
Suddenly, realization of where my anxiety had come from crashed into me.
This was her family, her history, her home.
A place that held both wounds and warmth, ghosts and hope.
I had watched her fall apart when she put her foot down with them.
Saw how long she shrank behind her brother’s shadow while trying to carve a name for herself.
Witnessed how bad her anxiety made her retreat inwards.
So I knew how big of a deal this was to her. Which added to the pressure, because the last thing I wanted was to fuck this up and have this weigh her down.
I’d stared down boardrooms full of billionaires, team principals who wanted my head, the FIA when they thought they could scare me into silence.
This felt worse.
We reached the steps, and just as I took the first one, ready to power through it on sheer momentum—my wife stopped and turned back to me, one step above, close enough that I could see the shift in her expression. The teasing faded, the playfulness softened. This was the real thing.
“Callum.”
The way she said my name hit straight through my chest. I exhaled slowly, shoulders still coiled and braced for the worst. “What?”
She stepped closer. Put her hands on my chest.
I felt it immediately—her palms warm, steady, grounding. Felt my heartbeat where she touched me, like she could physically feel my pain if she wanted to.
“You have nothing to be afraid of.”
I scoffed, looking away. An old reflex. “I’m not afraid.”
“Liar.” She smiled gently. Not calling me out. Calling me in. “But you don’t have to be.”
I swallowed.
“You are Callum Fraser,” she said softly, her hands sliding higher, fingers curling around the back of my neck.
“You are a four-time world champion, soon to be five. A self-made man. Ruthless on and off the track. Untouchable to the rest of the world. A mega-millionaire-almost-billionaire and soon-to-be owner of a Formula 1 team.”
And somehow, I was standing on her family’s front steps, wondering if I was enough.
I rolled my eyes, but my mouth betrayed me with the twitch of a smile.
“Auri,” I murmured, my voice low, thick, honest in a way I wasn’t always good at. But—fuck—I was trying. “I love how strong you are. God knows it’s one of the first things I ever admired about you. But you don’t have to be strong right now. Not for me.”
Her brows pulled in just slightly—not confusion, but recognition.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay if this scares you, too.
It’s okay if we both wobble a little. If I’ve learned anything since my crash, it’s that you are never a burden, and I am never too weak to hold you up.
I know how to survive things, Auri. I know how to take hits and keep going.
You taught me that letting someone help doesn’t make you soft. ”
She inhaled shakily, eyes watering.
“And I know,” I continued quietly, “that things with them aren’t… fully healed. That the texts you’ve sent back and forth have felt stiff and awkward. That you haven’t stood in this house in months. That you’ve only just started letting your siblings back in. I know this isn’t easy.”
Her fingers curled tighter against my neck.
“That’s why I feel like this,” I admitted.
“Because I’ve seen you break. I’ve seen how deep it cuts when family becomes a wound.
I held you through the worst of it. And the last thing I ever want is to be another strike on the list of things you’ve had to survive.
I don’t want to trigger old scars or drag you back into a place you fought like hell to climb out of. ”
My throat worked, voice rasping.
“I’m not afraid of them,” I said. “I’m afraid of letting you down in a moment that matters to you.”
“I wish you could see yourself the way I do,” she said, simple and certain.
“Because I know exactly who you are. And there is nothing you could do that would let me down. I chose you. I made my decision. You are my family now, Cal. Come hell or high water, we are a team. Always. Racing 101, mon amour. That’s a vow we’ve made to each other. ”
That did it.
The smile faded. Something in my chest shifted, sharp and deep. Because she wasn’t talking about titles or trophies. She never was.
She took a breath, and I heard it—something quieter underneath her confidence. Not nerves for tonight. Nerves for me. For us.
“No, it’s not easy for me. I’m so fucking nervous I could throw up. But helping you helps me too. Knowing we’re in this together? That is all I need,” she continued. “You are mine. And I am yours. And that means more to me than all the rest of it combined.”
I looked at her then. Really looked.
And fuck.
The tension loosened, the static in my head going quiet. Like she’d reached inside me and adjusted something I didn’t even know was misaligned.
My hands found her waist without thinking, needing the contact, needing to remind myself she was real.
I had nothing to prove, not to her and not to anyone inside that house.
“You are a good man who deserves the world,” she told me fiercely. “You have seen me at my worst and are still standing here today, married to me, committed to this for life. So please… give yourself the grace that you have given me in all of my darkest moments.”
My throat tightened.
Before I could answer—before I could tell her what that meant to me, a voice came from the top of the steps.
“Aurélie!”
She turned instantly, her entire face lighting up, warmth spilling out of her like sunlight. Her parents stood there, welcoming, open, and something inside me eased even more.
She’d fought for her place in the world, bled for it, earned it. She didn’t need their approval anymore—not the way she once had.
Instead, she chose me.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, eyes soft, affection swelling in her gaze—and then, just to completely wreck me, she slipped into French.
“Tu représentes tout pour moi. Je t'aime, pour toujours et à jamais. Dans cette vie et dans la suivante.”
You are everything to me. I love you, forever and always. In this life and the next.
My heart stuttered, and then—just when I thought she couldn’t possibly undo me any further—she said something that froze me where I stood.
Her voice softened, just barely, slipping into the gentle cadence of Scots Gaelic, shaped by her French lilt, imperfect but earnest in a way that punched straight through my ribs.
“Mo anam.” You are my soul.
I stopped breathing.
Not because she said it flawlessly—she didn’t—and not because it was a phrase anyone would casually learn. No one did. It wasn’t a language spoken anywhere outside of my home country. And suddenly I understood why speaking French to her meant so fucking much.
That term of endearment was sacred. My mother whispered it when she thought I was asleep. My father said it once, grief-rough, after my grandfather’s funeral. It was a phrase reserved for the people you’d bleed for.
I had never taught her that.
And she still found it.
Her accent wrapped around the vowels, softer, sweeter, impossibly intimate.
Three languages between us. Three ways to say the same truth. Three threads binding us tighter than any vow we’d spoken aloud.
She didn’t even look back to see if it landed. I knew she knew what it meant to me when she laced her fingers through mine and tugged gently.
“Viens, mon amour.” Come, my love.
I followed her up the steps, steadier now—grounded and ready.
I didn’t care about the house. I didn’t care about how goddamn massive it was, how the golden glow of the lights spilled across the grand entrance, or how the entire vineyard stretched beyond it in perfect, endless rows.
All I saw—all I fucking saw—was her. The most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on, moving with effortless grace, her pink sundress swaying with each step, her hair catching the soft evening light.
And the words she’d just spoken?
I swallowed hard. She had told me she loved me a hundred different ways. Had kissed it into my skin, whispered it in the dead of night, moaned it against my mouth when she was coming undone in my arms.
But saying it like that? In her native language? It wasn’t just words. It was intention.
My wife had spent most of her life speaking English, adapting to the sport, to the media, to the world that never fully belonged to her. But this was who she was at her core—French through and through, strong-willed, passionate, and all mine.
I squeezed her hand, bringing our clasped fingers up to press a kiss against her wedding rings, the moment sinking deep into my bones.
Then, before I could say anything, before I could let her see how fucking undone I was over her, we reached the top, and the heavy front doors opened.
Augustin and Geneviève Dubois stood in the frame—elegant, composed, carved from the same old-world stone as the chateau behind them. They weren’t intimidating because of their wealth or status. They were intimidating because they were hers.
Auri’s fingers tightened around mine, a silent reassurance that it was okay and we were in this together.
And without thinking, I tightened back.
It was only when her parents’ eyes lifted toward us as we crossed the sprawling landing—sharp and assessing in a way that was so Auri—that she subtly shifted our joined hands behind the skirt of her sundress.
I caught on instantly and tucked my left hand into my pocket, letting the fabric hide the glint of the rings we weren’t ready to explain yet.
It was our secret—for the next few minutes, at least.