Chapter 126 Callum #2
That nightmare earlier in the evening felt like a trauma response, nothing more. Now it felt like a warning, a premonition I’d been too afraid to name. I never imagined wanting a family. A wife, kids, a life. But now, the thought of losing them—losing her—gutted me more than any crash ever could.
The studio was silent. Ava’s fingers twitched on her note cards. My stomach plummeted and threatened to heave the smoothie Aurélie made for me.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Aurélie said. “He’s part of the reason I’m here now. He taught me how much of this sport was built to break girls like me. But I’m not breakable.”
That was when my tears started, silent and slow. I let them fall, not wiping them away, but letting myself be overcome by emotions I'd never allowed. For her, though, I'd re-write my DNA.
“And my current team?” she added, glancing at the audience. “You want to know what Luminis told me before I went public with anything?”
No one moved.
“The PR team said if I really cared about my long-term image, I’d wear more lipstick and have less backbone. My team principal told me right before I stepped onto the grid for pre-season testing, 'Smile big. Look pretty. Be bold. Give the media what they want, and you’ll be a star.'”
A shocked murmur swept the crowd. Ava blinked hard. “What did you say?”
Aurélie smiled. And God, I knew that smile. It was a wicked one that said she was about to cut her opponent in half, and it was sexy as fuck. “I said: ‘You didn't hire me to be a pretty face. You hired me because I can outdrive all these fucking men.’”
Thunderous applause. Ava clapped, the audience rose to their feet.
I sat back on my ankles, stunned, wrecked, ruined.
Not by guilt anymore—though that lingered—but by awe.
This wasn’t just the woman I loved. This was the woman the world wasn’t ready for.
The one that both lifted me up and brought me to my knees.
The one I didn't deserve but she came running to me anyway.
Ava grinned at the camera, tapping something on her tablet. “Alright, so I have to ask. These were taken just this weekend—”
The screen behind her lit up again. First video: me storming down the grid like a man possessed, gripping her face with both hands before kissing her like she was air and I’d been drowning for years.
Second video: Aurélie sprinting to me, tears streaming down her cheeks. A crushing kiss before we parted ways.
I swallowed hard.
Ava didn’t miss a beat. “You’re not gonna not talk about this, right?”
Aurélie blinked up at the screen with the smuggest little smirk I’d ever seen. “That’s just how the French say hello.”
The audience roared.
Even Ava laughed loudly. “You liar,” she said through a wheeze. “That was not a bonjour. That was a Callum Fraser special baiser.”
My phone lit up with new texts in the group chat.
Kimi
You said hi with your tongue mate. Respect.
Marco
Was that a kiss or a threat because even I felt that shit
…
I regret nothing
"Actually, it was more like him following through on a promise," Aurélie said, shifting in her seat. It was like she knew what the group chat was saying, and she wasn't even looking at her phone.
"A promise?"
Aurélie laughed. "That's all I'm going to say."
Back on screen, Ava was fanning herself dramatically. “Okay, but girl, he power walked down the grid to kiss you in front of the whole world. You fought tooth and nail trying to reach him. That wasn’t a cheek peck. That was marriage material.”
Aurélie tilted her head slightly, lips still curved. Her voice was steady and calculated. “He told me to be careful,” she said simply. “I told him to come back to me.” Her smile faltered just a little, almost imperceptibly. “And then I told him about the sabotage.”
The audience fell quiet again.
She looked straight ahead—not at Ava or the crowd, but at the camera. “He didn’t come back.”
Fuck. My heart splintered. Her voice sounded… haunted.
I pressed the sticky note she’d left on my nightstand to my lips. Her handwriting, her words, her scent still lingering on it all making me just a little bit closer to her. “I’m coming back,” I whispered, my voice nearly lost in the room. “I’m coming, mon c?ur. Just… give me time.”
"I thought he died, and I've been blaming myself because I tried to stop it."
I opened my phone and tapped her contact. She was still mic’d and on camera, but I couldn’t help it. My fingers moved on their own.
You look beautiful.
Red looks fucking lethal on you. Pink is still my favorite
I miss you.
I know you're punishing me (super hot btw) but I'm dying without you.
Are you wearing pink panties under all that?
I want you melting for me, love.
Even in pain I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
I'd give up my fifth title for you.
You’re doing so fucking good.
I am SO proud of you, mon amour.
Such a good girl, standing up for what you believe in.
I want to fuck you senseless for it.
You are so strong, Aurélie.
I love you so goddamn much.
I sent them one after another, every part of me yearning to be with her, burying all the physical pain with an emotional one. That was so much worse.
"So, what documentation did you bring them?"
"The most damning evidence I could!" Aurélie cried out, her composure slipping just enough for me to see below the calm exterior as she threw herself forward, hands gripping the armrests of the chair she sat in.
"I overheard some of the drivers plotting in Monaco, about how to isolate me.
How to keep me from finishing in the points again by targeting those I'm close to. And I recorded the conversation."
"Wait. You're saying they openly discussed this?"
"Yes, and it's not the first time. I've heard them talk about it before, all the way back to the first race of the season.
Callum and I actually argued about this before the Monaco race, because he heard them too.
He wanted me to go to the FIA then, but I didn't have concrete evidence, and I knew they wouldn't believe me without it. "
"Because you're a woman in a male-dominated industry."
"Precisely."
"Do you have the recording with you now?"
"Ouais. I'm happy to play it." She slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled her phone out. She didn’t flinch on screen—didn’t break—but I saw the flash in her eyes, the quick intake of breath, and her cheeks flush. And that was when I knew she’d seen the messages.
Ava reached for another card and paused. “You okay?”
Aurélie just smiled, tight-lipped and composed. "Oh, yeah. Just… got a reminder of someone I miss."
I swallowed hard. The smoothie in my hand felt too warm, the room too bright against my eyes, my chest too full and too empty all at once.
I missed the crease between her brows when she was annoyed. The lilt in her voice when she slipped between French and English without thinking. The way she looked at me when she was still catching her breath but reaching for me anyway. The warmth of her naked body against mine.
And now she was out there, in front of the world, saying it—not in a headline, not in a post. Just quietly, because it wasn’t meant for them. It was meant for me.
I dragged a hand over my mouth, closing my eyes momentarily.
Aurélie blinked and her chest rose with what appeared to be a deep breath, and then her fingers swiped across the screen. She handed her phone over to Ava, who took it and held the speaker to her microphone before hitting play.
“If we can’t figure out how to run her off the road, get Fraser next," one voice said. Schreiber, maybe?
“I don’t know how that helps anything,” another argued. That sounded like Takeda. His accent was easily discernible.
“Those two are practically inseparable. She’s attached to him. You take him out of a race or two, and it’ll fuck with her head. She’ll make mistakes. Then his lead is knocked down,” the first voice said.
“If you’re going to take out one Vanguard, you may as well take out both.
Marco is a solid number two this year,” a third person cut in.
That was definitely Morel. That fucker. “But it has to be done in a way that looks accidental, do you understand? It’s time for Fraser’s run to come to an end, and Vanguard can afford to lose the Constructor’s for once. ”
A collective gasp rippled through the audience on the stream. Ava’s lips parted in disbelief.
Aurélie kept her face neutral, but her fingers had curled slightly on the edge of her seat.
I couldn’t fucking breathe. They said that about her, about me.
And she recorded it because she had to. No one else would believe her because she knew what this sport would do to her if she didn’t bring proof.
I felt sick, and not just from the whiplash and the concussion.
From the fucking rage. She tried to warn them, and they did nothing until it nearly killed me.
I realized then that every time I doubted her instincts, every time I told her to “just be careful”, I’d been complicit.
I loved her—but I hadn’t protected her. Not the way she protected me.
On screen, the audio clip stopped. Silence filled the studio before Ava handed the phone back and slumped in her chair, visibly shaken. “Holy shit.”
Aurélie said nothing. Just stared straight ahead like she couldn’t afford to let anyone see her shake.
My grip on the smoothie bottle tightened until the plastic cracked in my hand. I glanced down at it before setting it down on my nightstand before I made a mess.
They came for her. They used me to try to get to her. And she still walked out onto that track and won.
I swiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand and opened our private messages.
I swear to God, mon c?ur. I'm going to burn them down beside you. You will never be alone again.
(Also please forgive me and I love you)