Page 74 of Red Flagged
I ripped my mouth from hers, breathing hard, gripping her wrists as I held her away just enough toseeher. To make sure she saw me, too.
“You’re not the only one with scars, Aurélie,” I murmured. “You’re not the only one who’s been left, or broken, or made to feel like they’re hard to love.”
She went still. My lungs couldn’t draw in enough air.
“I didn’t fall for you because you were easy. I fell because you werereal. Because you don’t let anyone touch you unless they earn it. And somehow—somehow—you still let me in.”
My hands dropped from her wrists, then ran through my hair as I stepped back, my voice lowering into something raw.
“And I fucked it up,” I said quietly. “Iknowthat. I didn’t tell you something I should’ve said weeks ago.”
She folded her arms across her chest and dipped her chin, indicating I should continue.
“I was scared,” I admitted. “Of retiring. Of losing this sport. But most of all, I was scared of losing you.”
She flinched. Her breath hitched audibly, and she turned away from me, one arm still crossed over her chest, the other dragging through her hair as she began to pace. Toward the car. Then back toward me. Then toward the edge of the overlook again, like she couldn’t figure out which direction hurt less.
But that was the truth. The whole fucking truth.
“Aurélie,” I called out to her until she turned to look at me. “This? What we have?” I gestured between us, my voice rough. “It’s more than I ever thought I’d get. I’m fuckingterrifiedthat one day you’ll finally see that I’m not good enough for you. And I keep waiting for the moment when you realize you deserve better.”
She paused mid-step. Backlit by the headlights, with rain running in rivulets over her delicate French features—her defined cheekbones, pouty pillow-soft mouth, the gentle slope of her nose. My war goddess caught between mercy and obliteration, blazing with rage and heartbreak.
Her voice, when it came, was low and shaky. “Never,” she said. “That would mean you’re beneath me. And you’re not. You’re mine.” My knees nearly gave out. The wind whipped her hair again, flinging it across her face. She glared at me through the strands like she saw every version of me—the broken boy, the reckless driver, the man clawing for redemption—and didn’t look away.
It fucking destroyed me.
“I don’t want easy either, Aurélie. I wantus.All of it. The fights, the hard parts, the push and pull, the fucking wildfire of it. Because you are the only person who has ever made me feel like a man worthbecoming.”
Silence settled. She stood still for a beat, mist swirling in the beams behind her, and I held my breath. Waiting. Praying.
Then she lunged.
Her arms snaked around my neck, and her mouth crashed into mine with a violence that felt sacred. I caught her waist and lifted her off the ground, just to feel her closer, tighter, like I could fuse her to me and never let her go. Her tongue was unforgiving. Her lips tasted like rain and lipgloss.
It was a kiss built from fury and grief and every emotion we’d buried between races and fights and foreplay. A kiss that said,I love you for all that you are, I hate you for driving me crazy, you’re not allowed to leave me.
The whole world blurred out of existence.
It was just her—my orbit, my ruin, my religion. Magnetic and merciless and mine, the pull I could never resist. And me—falling right back into her gravity.
Lightning cracked above us, a jagged white scream across the dark sky, and we broke apart. Barely. Her arms braced on my shoulders, breath hot against my mouth, and I hel her off the ground by the waist
Aurélie looked at me like she wanted to tear me apart. I wanted her to. Wanted her nails in my skin. Her spit in my mouth. Her voice in my ear sayingdon’t you dare let go.
The rain kept coming; steadier now and cold against my skin, but blistering everywhere else.
She stared at me, eyes narrowed, chest heaving, and I could see the battle behind her lashes. There was calculation in her hesitation.
“Et maintenant?” she asked.What now?“You still want to marry me after all this? Because I don’t do halfway, Callum.”
My vision tunneled. My sanity snapped.God,I’d never wanted anything more.
“I want all of it,” I confessed. “The rage, the ruin, the ring on your finger. I want to tattoo vows into your skin until you forget your own name and only remember mine. I want you,” I lowered her slowly, guiding her feet back to the gravel, and backed us toward the car, “if marriage means I get to fight for you like this, fuck you like this,worshipyou even when everything is burning down around us? Then sign me the fuck up, baby.”
She blinked at me, chest rising and falling fast, like she felt the quake of it too.
“D’accord. It’s all or nothing.”
