Page 63 of Red Flagged
And now I was floundering, drenched in the clarity of reality and voices.
Out under the covered circle drive, the rain sliced sideways in sheets, carried by the wind. I could hear it pelting the pavement relentlessly. It was the kind of storm that made everything smell like wet asphalt and tension.
Aurélie stepped toward the valet without hesitation, chin high, movements smooth and practiced. Every part of her screamed elegance, power, composure. It reminded me of last night.
Of what I gave her. Of what shegave me.
When she dropped to her knees and looked up at me like I was everything. When she offered herself—not just her body, but her trust, her will, her submission. When she begged me to take control. And I did. Fully, completely, unapologetically.
I’d held her in my hands and wrecked her so completely, that it rewired something inside me. In that moment—on that bed, with her wrists bound and her voice shaking and her heartso fucking open—she didn’t just give me control. She gave meher. The last threads she’d been holding on to, the ones that had yet to be discovered, just as mine had been.
I’d shown her a version of myself I didn’t even know existed. Dark. Grounded. Hopelessly devoted. A man who wasn’t just in love with her. A man who wouldneverlet her fall.
Exploration. Together.Alwaystogether, even now, when she was furious at me and I battled my own darkest compulsions—those voices that whispered I wasn’t enough, that I would always ruin the things I loved.
The memory cut through the turmoil in my chest like a clean breath. It didn’t fix anything, but it brought clarity. This woman wasmine. This was just another mountain to climb, another challenge to overcome, another storm to weather, soaked and shivering, but still holding her hand at the end of it.
All relationships took work. My parents’ marriage surviving what it had was proof of that. So the one Aurélie and I had been building this year—brick by brick, against impossible odds—was wortheverything. And I wouldneverstop fighting for it.
I looked at the sway in her hips as she walked ahead of me, the curve of her spine beneath that tight black dress, the gracein her movements, even now. She looked like a goddamn queen. Like she ruled every inch of the ground she walked on.
And still, I followed. Not because I was weak, or defeated, or unsure, but because she was the one I’dchosento follow.
I believed a king was only as powerful as his queen. A man with true strength didn’t need to dominate the world around him. He needed to earn the loyalty of the one woman who saw through the armor. Behind every so-called great man was a woman who could have burned the kingdom down and chose instead to build it with him. Not out of duty, but out ofpower. Strategy. Restraint. For she knew vengeance, and she knew how to play the long game.
And loving her was the longest game of all. Not ego, not conquest. Just devotion.
So no, I wasn’t going to let this break us.
I’d seen her at her most vulnerable, and she’d seen me at my most fucking primal. We were two sides of the same coin. Chaos and clarity, fire and ash. We didn’t just collide; we combusted. And still, something sacred remained.
Because that’s what twin flames do. They burn until the smoke clears, and then they choose each other again.
It was the kind of darkness I used to bury, the kind I thought would scare someone like her away. But she hadn’t flinched. She’dwelcomedit. Begged for it. Beggedme.To take control, lead, break her down and carry her through it. And I had, not with cruelty, but with adoration.
I’d praised her with every strike of the crop. I’d whispered devotion between every filthy command. She took it—God, she took all of it—because she knew I would never take her farther than she could go.
I knew her better than anyone.
We weremadefor each other.
Not in the way people write about in love songs. In the way galaxies collide, the way wild things recognize one another. Soulmates, yes, but not gentle ones. Forged in fire, shaped by scars and tears and brutal lessons. They weren’t soft. They weresavage. They didn’t complete you. They exposed you, and demanded you rise anyway. Because at the end of the day, it was deciding you’d still show up through the wreckage.
This love wasn't meant to be easy. We were meant to be worth it, to go to war for it. Every bruise, every bared truth, every night we broke apart and crawled back toward each other in the dark—this was love in its rawest form. And love that didn't flinch from adversity. Lovegrewinside the ache.
Because that was the thing about us. We didn’t fall in love by accident. Wechoseit. Every. Single. Day. Even when it hurt.Especiallywhen it hurt. That was the inevitability of it—we kept choosing anyway.
Love wasn’t a soft place to land the way movies painted it out to be. It’s both the storm and the anchor. And Aurélie and I… we smoldered until we caught on fire, but we kept walking through the smoke. Hand in hand, again and again.
It was always her, and it was always me. And it was always going to beus.
She wasn’t my destiny. She was both my rival and my reckoning. A mirror held to my flaws, my fears, my hunger to control, and the one person who made me want to be better anyway. She didn’t make me whole. She made meaware. Of what I was, what I wanted, and what I refused to lose.
I didn’t need to beg anymore. We were past roses and promises—not that those would ever stop being important—but what we had now was raw and real andearned. All I had to do was remind her that I would choose her every time.
So when the valet pulled around and my blacked-out McLaren rolled to the curb like a predator in the dark, I didn’thesitate. I snagged her by the waist, one arm tight around her middle, and hauled her toward the passenger door, rounding the hood so we were mostly hidden from the hotel entrance, just shadowed enough under the circle drive to disappear into the storm.
Our friends stayed awkwardly by the valet stand, pretending not to watch. They just stood there, frozen in confusion, unsure if this was a lovers’ quarrel or a full-blown detonation. The valet ducked his head when I backed Aurélie against the car.
