Chapter 17 - Callum #2
But she didn’t look at me a single time. My throat burned. My chest felt like it was collapsing inward, inch by inch, second by second.
She shut me out.
Fuck. I made her shut me out.
I’d meant everything I said. Every word about doing the right thing, about making space, about building a better future. It wasn’t about ego or strategy. It was about her. About making sure this sport became worthy of her.
But I hadn’t thought about how it would sound. Not really. Not to her. I still didn’t know the extent that this bothered her. Was it because of what I said? Was it something else altogether?
I saw the flicker in her eyes the second I said it. The What? that alerted me to my fuck up. The way her smile disappeared like a switch had flipped inside her.
And now she wouldn’t so much as glance at me. I followed her into the lift, stood beside her like a stranger, staring at her reflection in the polished steel doors while she focused on the numbers ticking.
I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t even know if I could, because she’d never acted this way toward me. Not even at the beginning of the season when she’d been professionally cordial with me. There had always been something.
Since then, she’d given me everything, and I’d taken it with both hands, promising I’d never let her fall. Now I feared that maybe I already had. What if she never let me close again?
The lift ride was maybe sixty seconds long.
Longest minute of my life.
“Okay but real talk,” Ivy said, voice breezy, “is it normal for my cuticles to be shaking?”
Kimi snorted. “Just your cuticles?”
Marco chimed in with, “Mine are already halfway drunk.”
Ivy grinned, gesturing to Aurélie. “This one hasn’t blinked in a full twenty seconds, but she looks hot as hell doing it.”
That earned a few soft laughs.
Aurélie gave a polite smile that she’d been trained to wear.
The kind that didn’t touch her eyes. She stood beside me, close enough that I could feel her heat, but it didn’t reach me.
Not really. The soft buzz of the lift, the faint scrape of metal cables above us.
It all felt too loud, too steady for the chaos in my chest. Then someone said something about the press.
Or public statements. Or the “united front” we’d shown tonight.
Her voice slid in, emotionless. “Loyalty makes for good PR.”
It was a soft murmur, but the whole elevator heard it. Ivy winced. Kimi went still. Marco glanced at her, brows raised.
I reached for her hand. Just instinct, desperation, that primal, aching need to feel her, to make sure she was still there. Just enough to signal something, anything—I’m here. I’m sorry. Please—but she pulled her hand away like she hadn’t even noticed.
Or maybe she had. Maybe that was the point.
My chest went tight. It wasn’t obvious, just a casual shift as she grabbed the handle of her purse with both hands in front of her,
I leaned closer, just a breath away. “I arranged a car,” I murmured, voice low enough that only she could hear. “Just us. After dinner.”
Aurélie didn’t turn. “Of course you did,” she responded softly. It was a bullshit, clipped response. Neutral enough that no one else would clock it.
Except I did. I heard the chill beneath it. The resignation laced with a careful distance she’d never used on me before.
Not even when she hated me.
God. She used to bite when she was angry. Snap. Push back. Kiss harder.
This was just… quiet.
Ivy made some joke about hoping Victor Reinhardt didn’t show up soaked again, and everyone laughed. Marco said something about making a bingo card of GPDA drama.
But all I could hear was the sound of her voice inside my head. Of course you did.
Suddenly, it all clicked. Of course I did. Just like I’d done everything else tonight—alone. Without telling her or thinking about how it would be received. She’d been blindsided by something that should have been talked about in private first.
Okay. I could fix this. It would be fine. I just needed a moment to explain it all.
I turned to look at her again. She was staring straight ahead, hands still clasping her purse, expression controlled and perfect.
Too perfect.
I leaned toward her anyway, because I didn’t fucking care if our friends heard.
They were all smart enough to realize that suddenly Aurélie and I were most definitely not okay.
“Or we can forget that altogether and we can just drive there,” I murmured.
“Only if you want. We don’t have to talk, just—just be in the car. Just us.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s fine.” Nothing else. That was it. No warmth or any indication of emotion. Just a neutral agreement spoken as if we were strangers confirming a ride share.
The doors slid open. Light spilled in. She stepped out first, not bothering to wait for me. Maybe that’s what I deserved. Maybe she was better off without me. Maybe this was what caring looked like now: staying still, giving her distance, not dragging her back into the mess I’d made.
Except I really didn’t want to. Every part of me screamed to go after her, to fix it, to fix it and take all the goddamn blame. To do something.
So I let her go, and I fucking hated myself for it.
Instead, I just slowly stepped over the threshold, following our friends.
I was a coward. I’d already taken enough from her tonight.
This GPDA meeting was her moment to make a difference.
I feared if I touched her again, I might break what was left.
My heart thumped in time with the only thought swirling in my mind. She’s better off without me. And the next thought hit even harder. I’m too selfish to ever let her be.
And somewhere beneath that shame, something colder twisted. A deep-seated terror that I couldn’t stop this pattern. If I kept loving her like this—too hard, too much—that the only thing left to protect her from was me.
Of course you did.
Her statement still echoed. She was right. Of course I did. Of course I arranged a car. Of course I made the choice. Of course I pulled the strings and dressed it up as thoughtfulness.
It wasn’t about logistics. It was about control.
It always fucking was, even when I convinced myself it was for her.
That everything I did was for her safety, her comfort, her career, her peace.
And it was, but maybe it wasn’t about her at all.
Maybe it was about me. My need to be needed.
My obsession with control. My compulsion to orchestrate every moment so nothing and no one, could fall apart.
I never gave her a choice. Not really. I wrapped it in pretty things, in kindness and love and careful gestures, warm hands and whispered assurances that she was safe with me.
But safety without freedom is just another kind of cage… and maybe I was the bars.
God, I wasn’t her shelter. I was her fucking prison.
I told myself I was helping. I told myself it was love. Maybe this whole time, I’d been calling it protection, when what it really was… ownership.
Maybe the worst part was the proof that the monster had always been there.
Not just the man who made choices for her, but the one who’d taken her last night and liked watching her bruise.
The one who’d left fingerprints around her throat and felt pride instead of guilt.
I’d told myself it was worship, that every mark was devotion, but maybe that was just another disguise.
Another way to make possession look like love.
If I could take her apart and make her want it, then I could pretend I wasn’t the one breaking her.
And now, with this? With the decisions I’d made in daylight instead of the dark, I wasn’t sure there was a difference anymore.
The words stayed in my head like a siren, looping until I couldn’t hear anything else.
My chest was burning. My throat, raw. I could feel the tremor starting in my hands, so I shoved them into my pockets.
I forced a breath in. It scraped down my throat like sandpaper.
Another. It didn’t help. The air just sat there, heavy, useless.
My eyes stung, and I blinked hard, fast, swallowing the taste of metal that always came right before the tears.
Don’t you dare. The voice in my head was mine this time, firm and vicious. You don’t get to cry. You did this. You don’t get to fall apart where everyone can see you.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop it from shaking, teeth clenched together so tight my jaw ached.
It was an old trick a therapist had taught me.
Gave me something to focus on to ground me in the moment, to help keep the maelstrom at bay.
And once I could breathe again, I straightened.
The rage came next. It was hot, electric, desperate to burn through the shame. It pulsed under my skin, demanding release. I wanted to hit something. Break something. Anything to drown out the sound of that door closing again and again in my head.
Aurélie was a few steps ahead, acting as if nothing had happened at all. Like she hadn’t just left me bleeding behind her. I followed at the back of the group, a man built out of regret, choking on the silence he’d created.
Because what else was I going to do? Stand there like a statue and unravel in front of our friends?
No. I did what I’d always done. I shoved the ache down.
Moved forward like it didn’t exist. Forced the anxiety away, brick by brick, building the wall back up just to feel nothing at all.
My expression reset, the performance sliding back into place.
But inside, I was shaking.
The rage had nowhere to go.
It burned under my skin like it used to when I was seventeen—when the weight of not being enough was too much and the only way to survive it was to make something bleed.
I used to pick fights behind garages and down side streets, fists splitting open until the noise in my head finally quieted.
The taste of iron, the shock that numbed everything else, the ache of the bruises I didn’t regret.
Back then, it was the only release I had.
Now my release had a name. It was her. It was love and sex and everything in between.
It was losing myself in her body until the static stopped.
Because she was the first person who ever saw the wreckage and called it worthy.
She made the darkness feel deliberate, like we were built from the same fire, meant to burn together instead of apart.
Back then, no one ever noticed when I unraveled—because no one gave a shit.
But now I had everything. And somehow I was still fighting ghosts. Still trying to prove I wasn’t a fuckup. Still trying to deserve a woman who’d just stepped out of an elevator and walked three paces ahead of me like I wasn’t even there.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. I focused on the sound of our shoes on the tile, the soft laugh of the concierge, the cool lobby air that didn’t touch the heat rising in my throat. Sensations that reminded me that the anxiety wasn’t tangible, but the world around me was.
Just keep moving. Don’t lose it here.
Because I could feel the monster in me clawing for the surface.
Then, finally, the logical side of me roared to the surface. She told me this morning I wasn’t a monster. And she didn’t lie to me. She meant it. She believed it.
So this? This was my trauma talking. My fear. The demon of every fight I’d ever picked with myself.
So I swallowed the fury, bit down on the ache, and kept walking.
One step behind her. Always one step behind her.