Chapter 157 Aurélie
aurélie
She is not the lesson they want to teach. She’s the reason they’re learning them. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t yield. And she sure as fuck never lets go. –Callum
Restless energy surrounded me in the garage when I returned, but all I could hear was the pulse in my ears.
Mechanics shouted over each other, wheeled trolleys clattered across the floor, the air reeking of rubber and petrol.
None of it touched me, because my world had narrowed to the pain pounding throughout my body.
I ducked back inside, tucking loose strands of hair behind my ears as I made a beeline for my suite. My face burned where my temple had smacked the wall, the skin raw and throbbing, and I desperately needed to cover it up before anyone asked questions.
Luck would not be on my side, though, because why would it ever be?
“Dubois.” Kimi’s sharp Finnish voice cut through the haze. I paused mid-step and looked over my shoulder at him. He frowned the second he saw me. “What happened to your face?”
I forced a laugh, that was as brittle as it sounded and touched the tender spot lightly. “Oh, nothing you need to worry about.”
Lies.
The look he gave me said he didn’t buy it. His mouth pressed thin, eyes narrowing like he wanted to push, but before he could, Ivy appeared at my side. Dressed in all black, she folded her arms in a way that screamed lawyer, not friend. But her eyes—God, her eyes were blazing.
“Bullshit,” she muttered, low enough that only I heard. I scoffed and pushed the door to my suite open, with them following but standing in the doorway, probably so I couldn’t leave. Assholes. “You look like you lost a bar fight.”
I pasted on a practiced smile that cost me more energy than I had.
“You should see the other guy.” I winced as soon as I said it, because Callum had made that joke after he made it out of his crash, and fuck, all I wanted right now was to curl up in bed next to him and let him erase the touch of Morel from me.
Neither Ivy nor Kimi moved. They just stared at me like they could peel the truth right off my skin, and suddenly my own body betrayed me. I rifled through my duffel with jerky motions and frantic hands as I yanked my gloves and balaclava out.
I had to get in the car. That would prove Morel wrong and distract me from the shitshow that was my life.
“Aurélie, talk to us,” Kimi said, sounding gentler than he ever had before. “Did someone put their hands on you?”
My shoulders bunched involuntarily, and the movement made me groan. I couldn’t even stop it anymore, and they both clocked it.
Ivy turned to Kimi, caught his arm, and said quietly, “Give us a minute.” Kimi’s frown deepened as he hesitated, then he muttered something sharp in Finnish and stalked toward the engineers with a scowl. He kept glancing back through the opening of the door, like he wasn’t done worrying.
Ivy didn’t move until he was out of earshot. Then she leaned closer, one brow arched. “Talk.”
I didn’t. Instead, I dug through my bag until my fingers brushed the plastic of a half-empty pill bottle. I shook two into my sweaty palm and swallowed them dry, the tablets scraping my throat raw.
Her hand shot out, seizing my wrist mid-motion. “Is that a good idea?”
I laughed too loud, the sound bouncing off the walls, making a few mechanics glance over.
“Is any of this a good idea?” My chest heaved with it, my grin stretching too wide.
“Because last I checked, nothing’s worked out like it should, so maybe popping a couple of painkillers isn’t the worst thing I’ve done today. ”
Her grip didn’t loosen. “Frenchie—”
“Don’t.” I yanked my arm free, shoved my gloves over aching fingers and tugged too hard at the seams just to do something.
My shoulders burned, my stomach churned, my temple pulsed with every beat of my heart.
My motions weren’t smooth anymore—they were manic and twitchy.
“They’re from an F2 crash. Old prescription. It’ll do the job. It always does.”
“Aurélie,” her voice was soft and broken, like she was trying to remind me I wasn’t alone.
But I couldn’t stop. My hair stuck to my face as I pulled my balaclava on, then I started shoving random things back into my bag, my hands frantic, movements sloppy. The zipper caught once, twice, before I yanked it shut so hard I thought it might break.
Now that would be my luck.
I tipped my head back and threw my hands into the air, laughter scraping out of me like broken glass.
The sound bounced off the walls, wild and unhinged, and for the first time since I’d known her, Ivy actually flinched.
It felt as if it had been ripped out of me instead of chosen.
Like everything else in my life except for Callum. Forced, not chosen.
Forced.
Not. Fucking. Chosen.
My choices had always been stripped from me, one by one, until there was nothing left.
“I know! Can you believe it? Fucking sabotage!” My words spilled out too fast, too sharp, almost gleeful. I broke off into a fit of French, cursing Morel and his family and his little posse of lapdogs, before snapping back into English with a manic sigh.
“Men like him deserve to be stripped bare, paraded through the streets, humiliated like they humiliate us. Every hand that’s lingered too long, every stare that roasted me like meat on display—don’t they all deserve the same?
Don’t they all deserve to be crushed under the weight they forced on us?
” My voice rose, trembling, half snarl, half laugh.
“Santino. Morel. They’re all the same. Grope you, pin you, and the world tells you to smile through it. ”
I yanked the zipper of my suit up too hard, teeth grinding, the sound tearing through the silence.
“You keep smiling, you keep driving, you keep pretending you’re fine.
” My sleeves rode up, baring bruises already forming on my wrists.
I shoved them back down, tugging too rough, my movements jerky as I tucked braids beneath my balaclava.
Ivy didn’t move. She just stared at me, face pale, her mouth parted like she wanted to speak but couldn’t find words. I had rendered her speechless, apparently.
Her arms slowly lowered from their defensive cross, her hands dangling uselessly at her sides.
Wide eyes darted over me as if she didn’t recognize who she was looking at anymore.
For a second she looked like she might scream, or run to the engineers, or throw her body across mine to keep me from climbing in that car.
“Aurélie…” her voice was strangled, clogged with something dangerously close to fear.
I barked another laugh, almost choking on it.
“And who knows? Maybe I’ll wind up in the wall and poof—all of it goes away.
” The thought should’ve scared me, but all I heard was Callum’s broken voice as he told me about the anxiety I induced in him.
That I was the cause after all these years that he, too, was losing it.
That even now, he was still trying to be strong for me, and I was too much of a fucking coward to tell him I might be pregnant, that I couldn’t give him children in the traditional sense.
He kept grounding me, but now… now there was nothing there to catch me if I fell. “Then everyone’s problems are solved.”
The words hung in the air, jagged and ugly, too close to the truth I probably shouldn’t admit right now, but fuck it. The rules apparently didn’t apply to everyone else, so why should I stick to them?
I forced my helmet over my head before she could answer, sealing myself away in fiberglass and silence.
“Don’t you dare crash on me,” Ivy pleaded with red-rimmed eyes. “I just got you in my life.”
But I was too far gone to hear her, spiraling down into a madness that no one could save me from. No one could save me but myself, and I didn’t have the strength anymore to do it.
I stormed off, my steps too fast. If I slowed, I’d break. If I broke, I wouldn’t get in that car. And if I didn’t get in that car, I wasn’t me anymore.
Ivy didn’t chase me. But I felt her eyes on my back the whole way across the garage, burning, frantic, as if she knew she’d just watched me walk off a cliff and couldn’t stop it.
I climbed into the cockpit with arms that could barely support my weight.
The world collapsed into my cold, detached focus and a rain-speckled visor. My body screamed with every motion, but the ritual of strapping in forced me to pretend I was still in control. Harness tugged tight across tender ribs, and my gloves were slippery with sweat.
“Green light,” Henric’s voice came through the radio from his spot on the pit wall. Calm. Neutral. Seemingly unaware. “Q1 is live. Two push laps, no heroics.”
No heroics. My lips twisted under the balaclava. Just survival. I was pretty certain I could manage that.
The car jolted forward, and my skull rattled like someone had taken a hammer to it. I gritted my teeth, forcing breath into a rhythm once I got through my out lap. Inhale in Copse, exhale in Maggotts. My hands trembled on the wheel, arms tight, shoulders aflame.
My neck tugged under the HANS device, already feeling raw.
The balaclava scraped over the tender welt at my temple, every brush a reminder of Morel slamming me into that wall.
My shoulders throbbed with each shift, joints howling like they’d been pulled from their sockets.
My stomach churned. My breasts ached every time the car slammed down from porpoising, pain so sharp I bit my lip bloody to stop myself from crying out.
Sector one. Henric stated, “Purple.”
Good. Let them think I wasn’t breaking. Let them think my smile wasn’t hollow.
But every bump, every rumble strip, sent a fresh shockwave through my back. By the final corners my wrists slipped, sweat loosening my grip, and I barely caught the car as it twitched. My heart shot into my throat. If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t—
“Time’s good. P15, you’re just through.” Relief flickered in Henric’s tone.