Page 60 of Red Flagged
Because all I could see was her walking away from me, and my mother years ago at the kitchen table, crying into her hands while my father stared at the wall. Pretending it wasn’t my fault. Pretending I hadn’t been the start of it.
It all blurred together in one image: the three of them looking at me like I was a disappointment.
My father, who tried to live through me. Who pushed until the only thing I learned was that love was earned with speed and trophies and records that still weren’t enough. Who taught me thatbetterwas the only acceptable apology. That if I could just be faster, smoother, perfect, maybe he’d look at me like a son instead of a second chance at his own failed career.
My mother, who smothered me with safety—hands on my face, telling me to breathe, to be careful, to slow down—and then left anyway, over and over again. Packed a bag every time she couldn’t handle her little boy climbing into a car built to kill him. I can still hear the door closing. It sounded exactly like this one.
She’s the one who taught me how to love like that—fiercely, desperately, like protection could save someone. Like holding them tighter would keep them safe. She showed me what devotion looked like, but not how to stop it from turning into panic. And every time she walked away, I learned that loving something that much just meant giving it another reason to leave.
And Aurélie. God,Aurélie. All I’ve ever tried to do is be the man she deserves. The one who doesn’t fuck it up. The one who fights for her, runs to her, chooses her every single time. ButI can’t seem to stop breaking things, even when I love them.Especiallywhen I love them.
She gave me her trust, her body, her heart—and I still managed to make her flinch. Still managed to make her look at me like that.
Maybe I wasn’t lovable. Maybe I just wore people down until they broke. Maybe their lives always got cleaner once I was gone.
Once the mirage faded and I wasn’t just the wealthy, flashy race car driver, but the man beneath it all, people realized there wasn’t much worth staying for. That underneath the noise and the shine, I was just a mess of bad wiring and worse intentions, a collection of almosts pretending to be a person.
And now I was doing it again—to her. To the one person who saw me, who loved me anyway.
The realization pressed down like a hand on my chest, heavy and merciless. I wanted to claw it out. Take back every word. Erase it before it hardened into truth.
But I couldn’t.
And the silence she left in her wake was proof enough.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Marco laugh. A low, short sound, like maybe he’d told a joke he didn’t really mean.
I blinked. The lights in the room were suddenly too bright, and my fingertips ached where my nails had dug crescent moons into my palms. Sound bled back in, one layer at a time. Ivy asking something. Kimi answered with a word I couldn’t catch.
And just like that, the world kept moving.
Aurélie had walked away, and I was still standing here like a fucking idiot, trying to remember how to exist in a space she wasn’t touching me in.
My feet carried me out of the room, my system on autopilot. The rest of the group was already heading out of the suite. I watched Aurélie. She smiled for our friends, then she brushed her hair over her shoulder like she hadn’t just shattered in thatbathroom. She nodded along and played her part so effortlessly I almost believed she was okay.
But she didn’t look at me a single time. My throat burned. My chest felt like it was collapsing inward, inch by inch, second by second.
She shut me out.
Fuck. I made her shut me out.
I’d meant everything I said. Every word about doing the right thing, about making space, about building a better future. It wasn’t about ego or strategy. It was abouther.About making sure this sport became worthy of her.
But I hadn’t thought about how it would sound. Not really. Not toher. I still didn’t know the extent that this bothered her. Was it because of what I said? Was it something else altogether?
I saw the flicker in her eyes the second I said it. TheWhat?that alerted me to my fuck up. The way her smile disappeared like a switch had flipped inside her.
And now she wouldn’t so much as glance at me. I followed her into the lift, stood beside her like a stranger, staring at her reflection in the polished steel doors while she focused on the numbers ticking.
I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t even know if I could, because she’dneveracted this way toward me. Not even at the beginning of the season when she’d been professionally cordial with me. There had always beensomething.
Since then, she’d given me everything, and I’d taken it with both hands, promising I’d never let her fall. Now I feared that maybe I already had. What if she never let me close again?
The lift ride was maybe sixty seconds long.
Longest minute of my life.
“Okay but real talk,” Ivy said, voice breezy, “is it normal for my cuticles to be shaking?”
