Page 55 of Red Flagged
He hadn’t told me this. Not once. Not in whispers after midnight or passing jokes when the pressure was too much. Not in any of the quiet moments we’d shared where the future was soft and glowing and built between us.
And now he wanted to leave the one place we’d found each other?
He wanted to retire…now?
Selfishly, I hated it. I hated the idea of the world losing him, ofmelosing him in that way. The roar of the paddock, the shimmer of the grid, the look on his face when he took pole under pressure and laughed like the stars belonged to him. How we touched helmets and frantically grabbed each other’s race suits in dark corners, like the world might end if we didn’t press closer.
But worse, I hated that I wasn’t part of the decision.
That I didn’t know this was where his mind had gone. That while I’d been planning strategy and fighting for our right to existtogetherin this sport, he’d been planning a possible exit.
It felt a lot like… betrayal. It twisted hot and sharp through me, slicing like a knife. Disappointment filled me, because he didn’t tell me first. Because he waited until four other people were in the goddamn room and files were on the counter and political alliances were being drawn to drop this grenade andpretend like it hadn’t been ticking for days. Maybe weeks. Maybe longer.
He told everyone at once. As though I was just another stakeholder in his future.
Ithurt.
Not because I didn’t want him to be happy. God, I did. I’d support him barefoot and bleeding if it meant he felt whole. But I wanted toknow. I wanted to be there, in that thought process part of the conversation, not just the collateral.
It felt a lot like betrayal. Not because he owed me his loyalty—I would never cage him—but because he hadn’t even warned me before he lit the match and threw it.
And he did ithere. In front of all of them.
An audience.
I could feel their eyes on me, waiting for my reaction. The girl he touched like she was sacred. The girl who’d designed her outfit tonight because of the bruises he’d left behind. The girl who saidyes, please, moreandje suis à toi, and gave him every part of her last night.
And he stood there with his broad shoulders, slow voice and his soft, tragic eyes, and dropped this like it wasnothing. Like it was theoretical.
Like it wasn’t my entire world.
Shame burned through me. Not at him, but at myself. Because I had submitted to him completely. I’d knelt for him and opened myself to the kind of ruin most people never survived. I let him in, past every wall I’d spent a lifetime fortifying, let him see every fracture and soft edge, and I did it willingly.
I gave him my body, my pain, my trust,my future.
And apparently, he couldn’t even give me a conversation.
We talked about marriage. About infertility and reproductive health and children. About what the next five years looked like if we stayed together, if we were careful, if we weren’t.
We mapped strategy, built plans for how to take on the FIA, how to bury Morel, how to change the world… but notthis?
My brain couldn’t comprehend the weight of it. How could the man who’d walked to the edges of the earth to make sure I felt seen—who’d kissed every broken part of me like it was holy—be the same man standing there now, stripping away our future with a shrug?
He was supposed to be the one who stayed, who loved me despite all of life’s obstacles, who knew what I needed before I even knew it myself.
Callum’s hands braced against the edge of the bar. “If I can’t protect the people I love from the inside of a cockpit,” he said, quieter now, “maybe I can protect them somewhere else.”
Ivy’s expression softened, her earlier shock giving way to something quieter. “You mean that.”
“I do,” he said. “But I’m not there yet. I’m just… thinking. Out loud, I suppose.”
We were all thinking.
And they were all watching me not react.
I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Instead, I did what I always did, what I was trained to do. I put on a face for the rest of the world while shutting everything else down.
Because the pain this caused? It was worse than anything I’d ever endured. Worse than a bruised body from a sabotaged car, or a flare-up that left me half-paralyzed in the hotel bed. Not even the Vicodin could touch this kind of pain.
