Page 111 of Flat Out
No. I couldn’t fucking wait. I leaned closer, desperate. “Tell me,” I begged. We’d been so distant from each other this week, and I regretted every single second of it. I needed to talk to her, to hear it from her directly. “Please.”
Her gaze flicked past my shoulder, locking on someone else. I followed it. Henric and Rhea standing shoulder to shoulder by the monitors. Both of them were watching, pretending neutrality. Pretending they hadn’t seen the bruise on her face. Pretending like she wasn’t a driver whose car they were sabotaging.
My teeth ground together so hard my jaw ached. Rage surged up, hot and blinding, the urge to rip them apart spilling acid in my mouth.
But then she tugged my sleeve, pulling me back to her, her touch weak but insistent. “I’m fine,” she said louder, toward the team, each syllable measured and robotic. “Session will continue with Kimi.” Her voice cracked on the last word, but she didn’t let it linger. She turned her face back to me, tugging me a step aside, toward the shadows of the bay.
Her hands found my face, forcing me to look at her again. “Not here, mon amour. Please. I can’t…” Her whole body shuddered and she squeezed her eyes shut, and that was the end of the line for me.
“What did that fucker do? Aurélie, we are not going to sit here and be silent if he did something.”
Aurélie’s shoulders sagged. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her glove, the movement weary, defeated. Then she tipped her head, waving Ivy over. “Ivy,” her voice was hoarse, fragile, “you need to hear this too.”
Ivy stepped close, face pale, arms crossed tight as if she was holding herself together. Aurélie tugged at her sleeves, peeling the fabric back to expose the bruises blooming across her wrists—dark finger-shaped bands that made my blood roar in my ears.
Her voice cracked as she forced the words out, clipped and detached at first, then tumbling faster:
“He cornered me. Shoved me into the wall. Wrenched my arms behind my back until I thought he’d dislocate my shoulders—” she winced, rubbing at them subconsciously, as if she could still feel the phantom ache—“and he pressed me there so hard I couldn’t move. I could barely even breathe.”
Her eyes glossed over as her voice dipped to a whisper.
“He groped me. Squeezed me so hard I cried out, and he laughed. He… he licked me, Callum.” Her hand shot to herthroat like she was holding down bile. “Dragged his tongue up my neck like he owned me. Like I was something filthy to use.”
The words were tearing her apart. I could see it. The way her body folded in tighter, her arms curling around herself, her voice shaking like the memory itself burned on her skin.
“He said Montreal was him. That Rhea helped him. He bragged about tampering with my car, about planning to take you out. Said destroying me would destroy you. That I was your weak spot. That you’d figure it out—that I had nothing else to offer but sex—and you’d leave me too.”
Her lips trembled, tears streaking down her face. “He called me pathetic. A liability. Said when I broke, he’d be there to watch.”
I couldn’t breathe. My vision tunneled. The only thing I saw was the bruise swelling on her temple, her wrists wrapped in livid purple fingerprints, her tears streaking down her cheeks. And behind it all, Isawhim—his body pinning her, his hands where they never belonged, his tongue on her skin.
Fury detonated inside me, volcanic and violent.
“Say something,” Aurélie whispered, voice cracking, desperate. “Please. I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I stared at her, disbelief choking me. “What are you sorry for, baby? He’s the one who should be begging for forgiveness on his knees! Not you, Aurélie.Never you.”
Something in her broke open. Her face crumpled, and she buried it in her hands, shoulders shaking. “I feel so violated. So disgusting. I don’t want to lose you, Callum. I can’t?—”
“You won’t.” My arms wrapped around her, pulling her against me so tight it hurt. I pressed my mouth to her hair, squeezing my eyes shut as I whispered, “You will never lose me. He doesn’t get to take you away from me.”
The storm raged outside, but I thanked every god, every universe, every fragile thread of fate that had kept her alive forme to hold her again. Relief and rage tangled in my chest. Love for her, hatred for Morel.
Over her shoulder, I watched the countdown clock bleeding toward zero. Just minutes left.
Ivy shifted closer, her arms still crossed tight, but her voice had that clipped, lawyer-sharp edge when she was in strict business-only mode. “We’ll get him. I’ll talk to the FIA. There are cameras everywhere—hallways, stairwells, garages. If he laid a finger on you, I’ll find the footage. That’s evidence, Aurélie. That’s how we bury him.”
A plan. She was making a plan while I was seconds away from tearing the garage down with my bare hands.
“And you—” she pointed at me without even looking, “don’t do something that getsyouthrown out of this sport before I can nail him to the wall.”
I clenched my fists so tight my nails dug crescents into my palms, jaw aching from how hard I bit back the scream crawling up my throat. Squeezing Auri closer to me helped ease some of the tension coiling every nerve in me, but her soft grunt of pain piled guilt on top of all of that. I loosened my hold… and then the roar of an engine cut through the noise. Car twenty-nine rolled into the pit lane, slick with water, scarred with gravel. Morel. He stopped at his bay and climbed out, slow and smug, peeling his gloves like nothing had happened.
The red in my vision surged until I couldn’t see straight. I let Aurélie go, my fists already tightening as I stormed past Ivy, past Henric and Dom, straight toward the bastard.
“Callum!” Aurélie’s voice cracked behind me, raw with fear. “Don’t—please don’t!”
But I was already moving. One foot in front of the other, my steps picking up speed until I made it to the Orion garage.
