Page 11 of Red Flagged
The crowd hushed, and the drama practically wrote itself.
A ghost of a smirk tugged at my lips. I had to swallow it down before someone caught it. God, she was magnificent like this. I hated it and I loved it, and my cock gave the smallest, traitorous jump at how perfect she was.
“I can handle my body,” I growled, stepping close enough the cameras would frame it as confrontation. “What I can’t handle is watching you climb back into something that’s already tried to kill you once.”
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. “And I can’t handle watching you pretend you’re fine just to prove a point.”
The bruise on her cheekbone looked even worse under the overcast sky, mottled purple and storm-dark against her skin. Every raindrop seemed to trace it, as if the weather itself refused to let anyone forget what had been done to her.
And still she stood there, unbreakable. Her hair was woven into her two signature braids that swung when she moved, skimming just above the perfect curve of her heart-shaped ass. It was a sight that made my stomach flip with something I’d never let the cameras catch. Rage. Lust. Pride. All twisted together until it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
For a beat, neither of us moved. Just two soaked gladiators in the pit lane, caught between love and war. The world thought it was a fracture. A lovers’ spat. A feud on the edge of boiling over. But beneath it, where the cameras couldn’t see, her hand dropping down my side until our pinkie fingers brushed, the barest whisper of touch. A signal.
Agree to disagree. Stay the course.
She leaned in close enough for only me to hear, because this was reserved for just the two of us.
“Racing 101,” she whispered. “Be a good boy, and maybe I’ll make you drool from the heart.” She pulled back with that bratty little smirk that always undid me.
I swallowed hard, forcing the fight back into my eyes for the sake of the lenses. “Then may the best driver win,” I stated, stepping away before the softness in me could give away that we were, in fact, letting our personal feelings bleed into our professionalism.
Then Aurélie turned on her heel, stalking off with Ivy and Kimi flanking her like guards escorting a queen.
The crowd roared like they’d just seen a shark attack.Off The Gridhad their scene. And Aurélie and I had our cover.
And fuck me, she was mine.?1
The formation lapfelt like an eternity, the rain making every turn feel like a gamble. My tires fought for traction, not quite warm enough for the slick surface and felt like a punishment for any slight misstep. By the time we lined up for the start, my heart was pounding, the adrenaline drowning out everything else.
Aurélie and I were side by side on the fifth row of the grid, her in P10 and me in P9 after the disaster that was qualifying yesterday. Just as the first light above the track lit up, we glanced at each other simultaneously, nodded once, and faced forward once more.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
Lights out.
The start was its usual insanity, but slightly worse with the visibility reduced to nothing but spray and instinct. I gained a place into Turn 1, barely avoiding contact as two cars right beside me collided, their debris scattering across the track.Aurélie was holding her ground in P10, her car dancing through the puddles with expert precision.
Sometimes I forgot the sport still called her a rookie, because her determination and focus made her one of the best on the grid.
I wanted to focus on my own race, my own strategy, but my eyes kept finding her in my mirrors, tracking her every move. Lap after lap, the rain never lightened, the conditions growing worse as the track grew slicker.
The whole grid was on full wets today, just trying to keep it on the fucking track, but three safety cars later and five retired cars, and it was anyone’s race. Over and over, any progress a driver made reset. Back to being in the middle of the pack on each rolling restart. The order of cars didn’t even matter at this point.
Marco was holding steady with his place in P2, his pace quick despite the challenges. Kimi shadowed me, his cautious approach paying off in the slippery conditions. But Aurélie, now ahead of me in P8, was pushing harder than anyone.
Too hard, maybe. With this class four rain—a heavy storm that posed major safety risks—she was definitely riding the line of reckless and aggressive. Every time I saw her car darting into corners, her lines so tight I thought she’d spin off, I had to remind myself of my own race.
“She’s going to get herself killed,” I muttered under my breath, my grip tightening on the wheel as I pushed harder to close the gap with the car in front of me—Schrieber, I think, but the visibility was too poor to know for sure if it was him or his teammate.
“Focus, Callum,” Dom’s voice said through the radio. “Don’t get caught up in a fight. Keep it clean.”
A fight.He meant the pack ahead of me, but all I could see was her. Aurélie, defending two cars into Copse, practicallybrushing the apex. She overtook one, then another, clawing her way to P6.
And me? I wasn’t far behind.
By Lap 17,Aurélie and I were running almost nose-to-tail, each overtaking move a calculated risk in the treacherous conditions. My frustration grew with every lap, every attempt to pass her thwarted by her razor-sharp defense.
She was driving like someone with nothing to lose, and it was infuriating.
