27. Callum
The grandstands roared with energy. Colorful flags waved, chants echoed, engines snarled like beasts straining at their leashes. It was electric, but all I felt was the tension coiled in my chest. It was heavy enough to crush me.
Since Friday, neither me or Aurélie had dared bring up anal.
The way she’d taken me so perfectly, the trust she’d given me, the way it shattered and remade me?
No. I think, maybe, we were both saving it for after the checkered flag.
Maybe we both knew the difference between the ache of wanting and the ache of racing pain, and right now, one had to wait.
She found me before on the grid after the warm-up, her navy and gold race suit gleaming under the Austrian sun.
Her braids were tucked in neatly, her helmet under one arm, and her smile— God , that fleeting smile—was the kind of thing meant to reassure, but I knew her too well; it masked more than it revealed.
“You okay?” she asked, voice soft but threaded with steel.
I tried to force a grin, but it didn’t stick.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I don’t like you climbing in there knowing what we do about the brake bias, the packers, the dampers.
” I gestured in the direction of her car, as if to emphasize that it was a death trap.
“You could barely move after qualifying yesterday.” My head throbbed with the faint echo of my slowly healing concussion, cameras flashed around us, and everything else faded into static.
Her fingers flexed once at her side before she reached for me. She hooked her finger into my belt loops and tugged me closer, pressing the lightest kiss to my jaw. It felt like déja vu. Back in Shanghai, after our first little coffee date.
Which reminded me that I had never taken her on a real date. And I needed to do that.
My mind was clearly on anything of substance today.
“Mon amour,” she whispered, trying to drag me back from the edge.
But I shook my head, nerves spiking, gut twisting into knots. “Auri…”
Then she said it. “Baby.”
The world slowed. My breath caught. And when I looked down into the glittering golden-green depths of her eyes, I reminded myself she was real. She was here. That nightmare—her in white, holding our child, Morel barreling into them—that wasn’t real. This was.
Aurélie Dubois was one of the best drivers on the grid. She’d held her own this long, she was brilliant, relentless, and most of all, she knew how to counteract a sabotaged car.
I forced myself to believe it. Even if my heart hammered like it was trying to break out of my chest.
“I’ll see you after the race. Drink some water, and stay away from as much light and noise as possible. D’accord?”
Somehow, that brought a small smile to my face, but it did nothing to ease the ache in my chest. “D’accord. But Auri, I swear to God, if you feel like that thing is falling apart, pull over . I don’t trust it, I don’t trust your team, and I sure as fuck don’t trust Morel.”
She sighed. “You know I will.”
She left me then, walking back toward her car, helmet cradled against her side.
Every instinct in me screamed to go after her, to drag her back into my arms, shield her from everything that could go wrong out there.
I wanted to lock her away somewhere safe, where dampers and brake bias and barriers couldn’t touch her.
Where Morel couldn’t touch her. Where the sport couldn’t ask her to risk her life just so she’d keep her spot on the grid.
But she wasn’t mine to protect like that. She never had been.
Auri didn’t need saving, least of all from me. She was fire and grit and brilliance, and she’d built her place here with bloody knuckles and sheer will. The best thing I could do was stand back, let her fight, and love her enough to believe she’d come back to me in one piece.
As I turned and left the grid, the roar of the crowd swallowing me whole, I held onto that truth like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
And suddenly I understood why she was so fucking mad at me after Montreal. I promised her I would come back to her, and then I almost didn’t. And then I disappeared ? No matter how unintentional, I couldn’t imagine the pure terror she must’ve felt.
Now, the crippling anxiety that I’d been burying since I was a teen threatened to claw its way to the surface.
I tried to leave that version of me back in Scotland.
The emotionally neglected boy who was caught in the middle of his parents’ marital issues.
Who grew up with slammed doors and silences that were more deafening than shouting.
Who learned too early that love could be conditional, that his presence could tip the balance of a house already fractured.
I spent my childhood convinced I was a burden.
Too loud, too needy, too much.
Only valuable to my father to live vicariously through me rising through the racing ranks.
And my mother. God, she worried for me, but her concern was wrapped in exhaustion and her own pain.
When she and my dad fought, she’d vanish for days, leaving me in his hands.
He was ruthless, obsessed with molding me into something worth his sacrifices, pushing harder than any coach ever could.
To him, I was his second chance at this career.
Racing then became my only escape. The one place where I knew the rules, where chaos bent to control. My mother loved me, but even that love felt laced with guilt, as though she regretted bringing me into a life splintered down the middle and tattered at the edges.
Every tear, every scrape, every failure only seemed to confirm it.
So I told myself I’d cut loose from all of it.
My heritage, my accent, my roots. Leave behind the broken boy who never felt wanted, never felt enough.
Even if my relationship with them is better now, more normal, the damage was done.
I couldn’t bear the thought of ever being someone else’s burden the way I’d been theirs.
It was better to bury it, run faster and chase glory, than risk letting anyone see the mess I came from. Distraction used to be my best friend—really, anything that kept me from looking back.
But standing here now, watching Aurélie climb into the cockpit of her car through a screen, all of it came roaring back.
Because she’d chosen me— me —despite the wreckage I came from.
And for the first time, I wanted to hold on to every part of my past if it meant she could see the truth of me and still stay.
It terrified me, that much power in her hands.
It terrified me even more how much I craved it.
And if I let the fear win, if I let it crack me open, I wouldn’t survive watching her race today.
The lights went out, and the race began. The cars launched off the grid. Marco surged into the lead, his aggressive start paying off in the opening laps. Tobias, meanwhile, was... Tobias. Struggling to find rhythm, missing braking points, and already losing places.
Aurélie was in the thick of it, battling in the midfield.
From the garage, I watched as her car darted into corners, her lines precise, her timing flawless.
She didn’t just defend her position—she owned it, forcing others to react to her moves.
Every time she pulled off an overtake or held off a challenger, I leaned forward, gripping the edge of the telemetry station.
“Come on, Auri,” I muttered under my breath as she defended against Morel through Turn 6, the two cars inches apart. Her radio crackled with tension, her engineer urging her to stay calm, but I could hear it in her voice—she was pushing harder than ever.
Then it happened.
Lap 23. Tobias, our reserve driver, attempted an overtake on Morel at Turn 14—a move that screamed desperation and recklessness. He misjudged the braking zone, locking up the rear tires. The car spun out, the rear slamming into the wall with a sickening crunch of carbon fiber.
The garage went silent, save for the replay looping on the monitors. I stared at the screen, my jaw hanging to the fucking floor. My car . My championship car . My season . And it was in pieces against the barriers.
Totally fucking different than when I crashed into the barriers.
“Idiot,” I muttered under my breath, the word slipping out before I could stop it.
But it wasn’t just about Tobias. It was the weight of what this crash meant. For the team, for the titles, for me.
Aurélie’s radio crackled again over my headset, pulling me back to her race. She was still fighting, clawing her way through the pack. Hunting where she could, defending when she had to. She was losing pace with every sector.
By the final laps, she was running P11, her tires screaming for mercy.
Turn 3’s uphill curve was brutal. I watched her onboard camera on my phone the entire time, studying how she had to muscle the wheel just to keep the front planted.
At Turn 5, the rebound bucked so violently, there was no doubt it rattled straight through her spine.
By the final sector, the car slid under her, rear tires screaming, traction bleeding away.
And still she fought, still she made it look easy, still she persevered.
But I saw every flinch, every microcorrection, every second I knew it stole from her body.
On the last lap, she dove into Turn 12, taking the inside line and muscling past a rival. The move was audacious, calculated, and absolutely fucking flawless .
When she crossed the line in P10, stealing the final point, I let out a breath that felt as though it had been burning my lungs for the last two hours.
The garage erupted in a mix of cheers and frustration. Marco had taken P2, but Tobias had thrown away a decent haul of points.
And Aurélie had salvaged something out of nothing.
That was my woman in a nutshell: tenacious and persistent.
But I couldn’t unhear her voice in my ears. Fix it. Are you even listening? I couldn’t unsee the way her car fought her every single lap.
And now, I saw something else, something that alarmed me. My gaze flicked between the monitor in the garage that had the live footage of the race, and my phone that was tracking her on-board camera.
From her car, she was disconnecting her steering wheel. She set it on top of the car and tried to pull herself out. Her movements were agony in real time. She reached for the halo, hands visibly shaking, and it clearly took everything she had just to haul herself upward.
Aurélie collapsed against the bar, her head dipping forward and her body sagging with exhaustion.
She rubbed at her neck as if it couldn’t hold the weight of the helmet any longer, then fumbled with the wheel to reattach it.
Every action was slow, labored, as though her muscles were rebelling against her commands.
And still, when the wheel locked into place, she slumped forward again, resting on the halo like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
From the network footage, she staggered when she climbed out, and then I saw Kimi rush in to catch her.
At first, he’d been grinning, probably ready to tease her, but the second he saw her falter, the smile dropped from his face.
She missed a step, knees buckling, and nearly crumpled against the sidepod before he was there.
He shot an arm out, helmet under the other one, bracing her.
Her legs gave just enough to make my gut twist, and she didn’t even pretend to be strong.
She leaned into him, likely just as much out of choice as it was necessity.
My eyes burned. My nostrils flared. Fury boiled so hot it was a miracle I didn’t storm out of the garage right then and there to rip her team a new one. But that would undermine her, make it look like she needed me to fight her battles. And that was the last thing she needed.
Still, every part of me was vibrating with helpless rage. Because what I’d just watched wasn’t a tough race. It wasn’t “normal aches and pains.” It was a driver being broken down piece by piece, sabotaged into suffering for no fucking reason.
And if this sport thought I was going to sit quietly and watch them destroy the woman I loved?
They didn’t know me at all. This wasn’t just fuel for my anger anymore.
It was fuel for hers. Because if I knew Aurélie—and God, I did—this wasn’t going to end with her collapsing in Kimi’s arms. This was going to end with her standing in front of the GPDA and demanding they change the goddamn sport.