Page 70 of Red Flagged
My vision blurred. Guilt sliced its way up my spine like broken glass. Fuck, I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t seenhim.
“So, yes, Aurélie,” he said, his voice tighter now. “I did think about it. Because my head is all fucked up. And I didn’t know how to say any of it. It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t a plan. It was just this storm in my brain. Like pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit together yet.”
He raked his hands down his face, then through his hair, hard, fists gripping the strands like he needed pain to stay grounded. His whole body was wound so tight I couldfeelthe unraveling just inches away. His breath came faster, ragged, almost as if he was trying not to cry.
“And that’s why I didn’t say anything yet,” he finished, voice nearly gone.
I looked at him—really looked at him—and I saw it. All of it. The hurt. The shame. The need to still be someone worth loving. It gutted me.
“Then why the fuck did you say it at all?”
His hand hit the dash with a violent crack. “Because Reinhardt gave us the leverage to finally take Morel out. And I realized it might cost me everything. And I thought…” His voice trailed off, and he inhaled a shaky breath. “I thought if it bought youfreedom, I’d pay it. No matter what it took.”
The tears came then, hot and humiliating in the near darkness filling the space between us now.
I didn’t wipe them away. I just kept driving.
“Your career is just beginning, Aurélie. You deserve a legacy that doesn’t begin in someone else’s shadow. Mine is changing directions, whether I’m ready for it or not. And I wanted to have something—anything—lined up. Some version of a future where I wasn’t washed up and useless. Because how the hell can I take care of you if I’m nothing? If I’m no one?”
My heart split open like a fault line. I couldn’t stop picturing him as a little boy, left behind, overlooked, told he was too much and never enough in the same breath. No wonder control became his currency. No wonder he clutched it like a lifeline.
Without thinking, my foot accelerated more. It was fast, maybe too fast, too reckless.
“I was the scrawny kid in the back of the class with a stutter,” Callum admitted, barely audible over the sound of the enginepurring. His accent thickened, a telltale sign that he was slipping mentally. “The one they picked last. The one they tripped in the halls. Racing was the first place I didn’t feel small. Where I could make people shut the fuck up. But even then… that fear stuck with me. That I’d lose everything the second I let go.”
The road curved, narrowing between a stretch of stone walls and overhanging trees, the rain slicking the pavement into glass. My fingers stayed steady. My foot didn’t lift. I barely blinked, even though my eyes stung as the tears blurred my view. I grieved for him. For the boy who never felt safe enough to slow down. And I hated that I still loved him like this. Or maybe I loved it. I didn’t fucking know anymore.
The tires hydroplaned slightly around the curve, and I corrected it instantly. Callum grabbed the door frame again. Internally, my stomach flipped, indicating that this was cutting it too close.
“You don’t get to control me just because the rest of your life feels like it’s slipping away. Don’t you get that? What you did in front Reinhardt—the fuckingFIA president—how you made that announcement like I was irrelevant—that was a betrayal, Callum. It wasn’t protective. It was disrespectful. And it was cowardly.”
His head dropped back against the seat. “I know. I know, and I fucking hate myself for it.”
“I hate that you had to survive like that. That you’ve carried so much for so long. But I am not your childhood. I am not your past. I am not a woman you can silence to feel like a man again. I love you, but I won’t shrink to make you feel whole.”
My pulse thundered in my ears. I hesitated for half a breath—then I pressed harder on the accelerator. The world blurred at the edges as the speedometer ticked up, 110… 120… 130. The engine screamed its protest. The car trembled with power. My knuckles were white against the leather wheel.
“Aurélie, please,” he rasped, his voice fraying at the edges. “Slow the goddamn car down. This is madness, mon cœur. Please.”
I laughed humorlessly. That’s when I said it. “See how scary it can feel to give up control,mon champion?” His nickname used like a dagger, sharp and poisoned, but I pressed on. “You ask me to trust you, so I do. But giving up control? It feels like the ground is being ripped out from under you.”
He turned toward me, face pale in the flickering light from oncoming cars. His hand hovered just above my knee, desperate but unsure if he was allowed to touch me. “I never wanted you to feel that way,” he pleaded hoarsely. “I just wanted to keep you safe. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up thinking you’ve already lost everything.”
“Then stop trying to save me from the parts of life thathurt!” I shouted, eyes flicking between him and the slick stretch of road ahead. “If we’re ateam,Callum, then you won’t shield me from pain, from fallout, from truth. You’ll face it with me.”
The rain lashed harder, streaking the windshield in silver sheets. I could barely see, but my vision tunneled anyway—because of him. Because he looked wrecked. Because some part of me wanted to reach across the console and grab his hand, to tell him I didn’t want to drive away, not really.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
I needed him to feel the fear and the surrender he asked from me every time he saidtrust me.
I didn’t want to look at him, but I had to. If I didn’t, I might convince myself I imagined all of this. That he hadn’t blown up our entire relationship with a single offhanded comment. That I wasn’t still shaking with rage from the way he’d blindsided me. That he hadn’t taken away my choice.
Callum let go of the safety handle and folded his hands in his lap, as if he was finally realizing what it meant to lose control.
I inhaled sharply through my nose, trying to slow the gallop of my pulse. It was the first step to unconditional trust. “You think I haven’t bent to your will? Let you lead? Trusted you in things that fucking terrified me?”
