Chapter 64 Callum
callum
I left him in Imola, but I didn’t leave him behind. Whatever was between us, it was just on hold… for now. -Aurelie
By the time Marco and I boarded the jet for Monaco, my head was replaying the morning in fragments.
Her lips, her panic, that final kiss that had felt like a door slamming shut and still somehow left it cracked open.
The bittersweet “Peut-être à Monaco” and explanation of au revoir over text, the feel of her body molded to mine.
Marco lounged across from me, unusually quiet. I stared out the window until the clouds broke over the Riviera, my stomach coiling tighter with every mile closer to reality.
“So what’s the plan?” Marco asked eventually, voice casual.
I didn’t look at him. “It’s not about a plan. It’s about giving her what she needs.”
He scoffed. “And what’s that? Because if it’s space, you might as well cancel your season. The girl’s got walls higher than Spa’s runoff.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Fuck, did I know. I knew she was scared. She didn’t trust herself to be wanted without being used. I knew the last man made her feel small. And I knew exactly how she tasted when she forgot all of that.
The memory hit me hard—her thighs clenching around my head, her nails carving into my back, her voice breaking in my ear when I made her come for the first time with just my mouth. That whisper of “Là… juste là,” as if she didn’t even realize she’d said it aloud.
My cock stirred just remembering it. I shifted in my seat. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It wasn’t just the way she came; it was the way she looked at me after, as if she didn’t know whether to believe the things I’d said, as if it physically hurt to let someone care for her.
She’d kissed me with desperation, but her body had clung to me like it knew I wasn’t a threat and it didn’t want to let go.
And when we were tangled in the sheets afterward, I’d traced the freckles on her shoulder like they were constellations.
Maybe if I memorized enough of them, I’d understand the map to her heart.
I couldn’t stop seeing them now.
I’d spent years chasing wins and women who blurred together. But her? She wasn’t blurred. She was burned into me.
When we landed, the weight of the week ahead settled on me like ballast. Monaco was beautiful but brutal. The press was already circling like vultures, and the second we stepped off the plane, the flashes started.
“Heads up,” Marco muttered beside me, holding up his phone. “They’ve already clocked her leaving your hotel room.”
He turned the screen toward me.
FRASER AND DUBOIS: MORE THAN RIVALS?
The post had a pap shot of Aurélie in the hotel lobby. In my shirt.
A twinge of guilt shot through me. “That’s exactly what she didn’t need.”
“Could be worse,” Marco said. “They could’ve caught you in the bar. Or—”
I cut him a look, but the corner of my mouth twitched. Because yeah. It had been that good.
We ducked into the waiting car, and just as the door shut, my phone buzzed with a text.
Aurélie
Landed safe. Thanks for earlier… for everything.
No fluff, no emoji, no overthinking. Just her reaching out. I exhaled through my nose, letting the tension bleed out just enough to text back.
Callum
Anytime. See you on the track, Dubois.
I meant it.
Let the press speculate. Let the team talk. Let the whole season go up in flames around me. I’d still be right here. Fighting for her, because somewhere between that first pre-season testing session and last night, Aurélie Dubois had become the only finish line I gave a fuck about crossing.
And I wasn’t walking away.