Chapter 183 Aurélie
aurélie
It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t clean. But fuck, if that wasn’t love. Blood, mascara, laughter, and all. –Callum
The first thing I saw was Callum’s face. He’d gone still, hand frozen mid-adjustment at the waistband of his pants, brow furrowed as though something wasn’t right.
“What?” I asked, chest heaving, still coming down from the high of whatever the fuck that was between us. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t speak. Just stepped back slightly, like he didn’t want to scare me, and looked down again.
That’s when I saw the blood. It painted the softening length of him, deep red and unmistakable, streaking down the underside of his cock, pooling at the base.
It matted the fine hairs along his thighs and darkened his happy trail in jagged lines.
Even his balls were slick with it, soaked and glistening under the brutal glare of the headlights.
“Oh–oh mon Dieu,” I stammered.
His eyes flicked to mine, then down. I followed his gaze, and I tensed when I saw the vivid streaks of crimson trailing the inside of both my thighs.
Merde, there was so much. Too much, and it looked all wrong.
Not the right texture, not the right color.
Thin, bright, almost watery, like wine spilled over porcelain.
Panic bloomed in my chest, but I forced myself to think—to check.
With shaking fingers, I started to yank my dress down over my hips, then paused and tugged it up again, desperately inspecting the mess between my legs.
I wiped at it with my hand, heart pounding as I scanned for clots.
There weren’t any, not yet. Just that runny, liquid red.
It wasn’t brown-tinged or thick. It wasn’t gushing in waves. That… eased the terror a fraction.
It could still be my period, I told myself. I’d had flares like this before. Endo cycles that started off slow and drippy and left me keeled over for days. I’d dealt with this for a decade. Maybe this was nothing new. Maybe this was just another one of those flares.
Maybe.
But deep down, I was already waiting. Waiting to see if the blood would change. Waiting for the clots I didn’t want to find.
“Auri.” His voice dropped like an anvil, guttural and frayed at the edges. “You’re—fuck, are you okay?” His hands moved, hovering near my hips, brows pinching like he couldn’t breathe. Like this was his fault. “Tell me–tell me I didn’t do this to you.”
When he started to lower himself to the ground, I caught his wrists.
“No. Don’t.” His gaze snapped to mine, wild and wide and still so full of so much fucking love.
I softened my voice, the way I knew would calm him down.
I traced my fingers over his pulse. “Détends-toi, mon amour,” I breathed. Relax. “It’s just my period.”
Callum paused. I smiled weakly, trying to joke even as my stomach twisted.
“When you said you were gonna split me open…” My voice shook as I tried to play it off, straightening my soaked clothing once more. “Didn’t know you meant literally. Bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
For a second, there was silence.
Then we both broke. Callum barked a laugh that sounded like it hurt. I doubled over, snorting, breathless, clinging to his shoulder as the rain poured harder. We were half-naked, bleeding, soaked and trembling, and completely unhinged.
We laughed until it almost sounded like crying.
His hand found the back of my neck. He pulled me in and crashed his mouth into mine, all salt and rain and too much emotion. When he broke the kiss, his forehead pressed to mine.
“Come on, love,” he murmured. “Let’s go. You’re shivering.”
“So are you,” I shot back with a feeble smile. He put himself back together, and I just stood there, trying not to focus on the crime scene between my legs.
I wanted to believe it was nothing. Just a period. A flare. Stress. Hormones. Anything but what I was afraid of. But fear is a funny thing. Sometimes it doesn’t scream. Sometimes, it just whispers: You already know.
Did it matter either way now? The blood was here.
That made it real. Whether it was a period finally arriving or the loss I’d quietly suspected all along, either way, something was ending.
And I wasn’t ready to name it out loud. We had too much to worry about, places to be, people to talk to.
Now was not the time to drop this bomb on him.
Callum hovered at my side like a shadow, silent, alert, his hand landing gently at the small of my back.
Keeping me standing tall, holding me together molecule by molecule.
As if I wasn’t already broken. He stepped back to guide me toward the passenger door and opened it carefully, his body blocking the rain.
I whirled to face him. “I am not getting back into your,” I glanced at the logo on the seat and scoffed, “quarter-million-pound McLaren with blood running down my legs!”
He blinked at me like I’d just started speaking in tongues. “You think I give a fuck about the leather right now?”
“I do!”
“Aurélie.”
“I’ll ruin it, Callum!”
“Get. In. The fucking car. We’re not doing this again.”
I hesitated, glancing at the beautiful, expensive leather and sleek interior of the car again, but my teeth were chattering and I was so, so fucking cold. But the car didn’t deserve my blood all over it.
“You either sit down nicely like the lady I know you can be, or I pick you up and throw you in there dripping, and I swear to God, if you kick me, I’ll spank your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit through the GPDA dinner.”
I giggled. He raised a brow, and I immediately shut up. That looked suspiciously like he was pulling the Dom card on me, and I knew right away that he wasn’t joking.
I glared, then promptly folded. “Fine. But I’m sitting on your jacket.” I climbed onto the seat like a soaked, bloodied, tantrum-prone heiress and tucked his jacket under me.
The second the door slammed shut, I cranked the heat, flipped down the passenger mirror, and snapped the visor light on… and gasped in horror.
“Oh no,” I muttered to myself. “Putain de merde. C’est pa possible.” This can’t be real.
My makeup was destroyed. Mascara rings under my eyes. Lipstick gone. Bruises mottled and showed through my smudged foundation. My hair? Soaked, tangled, entirely unsalvageable. My entire face was the lovechild of roadkill and raccoon.
Callum dropped into the driver’s side quietly, looking devastatingly hot soaked like this, with his dress shirt plastered to his toned chest and abs. His pants suctioned to his groin, and I contemplated murder for a moment.
Seriously, what the fuck? How was it fair for him to walk away unscathed, while I looked like a drowned sewer rat who’d narrowly escaped the clutches of a trap?
I touched my split lip and winced. “Jesus Christ.” Then louder, for his benefit, “Look what you’ve done to me.”
Callum adjusted his seat and murmured with a cocksured smirk, “You liked it.”
I didn’t respond, mostly because he was right. And partly because I was already digging through the glovebox for tissues. To dab the blood off my thighs, to blot the tears, to try—futilely—to clean up this fucking mess.
“This,” I muttered, glaring at my reflection, “is not what they meant by afterglow.”
He laughed smugly. “Speak for yourself, love. I feel great.”
“Remind me to punch you before dessert,” I grumbled. “That is, if Ivy doesn’t beat me to it.”
And right on cue, my phone buzzed in the cupholder.
“Speaking of the devil,” I muttered, swiping to answer and put it on speaker.
“And she shall appear,” Callum added.
I threw him a dirty look as he pulled back out onto the road, one hand loose on the wheel, fingers flexing over the leather, veins bulging in a way that made my stomach flutter, while the other raked through his soaked hair like a goddamn shampoo commercial come to life.
“We’re on our way,” I said by way of answering—then remembered my current state and let my head fall back against the seat with a groan. My eyes fell shut. What the fuck was I going to do? Apologize? Tell her I was going to be late? Bleeding? Emotionally feral?
“Ivy, I—”
“Forget about it,” she cut in breezily. “Apparently, about an hour and a half ago, the entire GPDA board got an email pushing the meeting until after Belgium. Don’t know if it has anything to do with the fact that you might be there just as an investigation into Morel kicks off, but they’re blaming the storm.
All flights grounded. Half the board can’t make it.
‘Unforeseen travel disruptions.’ Blah blah. ”
Relief hit me like a freight train. My spine sank deeper into the leather seat, tension bleeding out of me in slow drips.
“But… what about what Reinhardt gave us?” I asked, voice low. “What now?”
“Like he said—we leak it,” Ivy replied without hesitation. “It’s probably more powerful that way anyway. Controlled narrative. Timed release. All that shit. Let people start putting the pieces together themselves. You just keep playing it cool, Frenchie.”
A pause.
“Also, thank God this meeting is cancelled because I’ve been having a panic attack about how late you two were.
Poor Marco and Kimi have been telling me to chill the fuck out, but we all saw the argument you were having before you left the hotel valet.
Do I even want to know how you look right now? ”
Callum choked beside me.
I snorted, wiping at my face, no longer worried about further ruining it. “We’re alive.”
“Debatable,” she muttered. “Do you need us to come for backup? Do we need a smoke grenade and an exorcist?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re on thin fucking ice.”
“Me?” I protested.
But she steamrolled right over me. “Get some rest, Frenchie. We’ll strategize more once you’re settled in your new house,” she added, tone pointed enough to make my pulse stutter.
The line went dead.
I stared at the screen, letting the silence wash over me like a wave. It wasn’t until my shoulders slumped and the tension eased from my spine that I realized I’d been holding my breath.
It was over.
For now.
The meeting. The panic. The emotional wreckage of the last twenty-four hours.
“...Well, that worked out,” Callum said softly, one brow raised as he glanced at me from the driver’s seat.
I rolled my head toward him, my limbs too heavy to lift. “It somehow always does, mon amour.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just reached over, rested a hand on my thigh—sticky with drying blood—and gave it the gentlest squeeze. No questions. No recoiling.
“Let’s go shower,” he murmured. “Get some rest.”
Tomorrow, I’d drive to Paris to meet the movers. Pack up my Luminis-provided flat—a sterile box downtown that had never felt like mine. It was more like a prison made of four walls and unmet promises.
I was mostly still packed anyway. I’d never been there long enough to bother unpacking.
Then I would drive down to the Southern French countryside. To the house I’d bought on a whim, my new home. The very first home that I’d earned for myself.
The thought exhausted me. I wasn’t ready for any of it, but for now, at least, I didn’t have to be.
He drove, and for once, I didn’t let myself worry about the past, present, or the future. We were still moving forward, with the storm, despite the storm, as the storm.