Page 86 of Red Flagged
The drive from Silverstone to Paris should’ve felt like something out of a movie. Cross-country roads, winding motorways, the sun creeping in and out of clouds, ferryterminals and fields of green. But I didn’t feel like the main character. I didn’t feel like anything, really.
I took the ferry across the Channel Tunnel, queued behind strangers with their own lives, their own destinations, and stared blankly out at the road through the windshield as the countryside blurred by. England faded into France without ceremony.
It was a six-hour drive, give or take. More if I stopped. I used the restroom once on the ferry, under flickering fluorescent lights that buzzed like they were angry to still be alive. The floor was wet, the stall smelled like antiseptic and bleach, and I refused to look down at the mess in my pad.
Somewhere past Calais, I missed an exit I’d taken a hundred times before. Just drove past it like it wasn’t even there, then sat on the shoulder for ten minutes, trying to remember how long I’d been on the road.
When I pulled back onto the road, the soft hum of the road filled the silence. I let my playlist run quietly in the background without really listening. I didn’t call anyone or touch my phone at all. Just kept my hands steady on the wheel and tried not to think about blood, or emails, the number of social media tags that flashed across the screen, or what would happen next.
I didn’t want to think about Morel. I didn’t want to think about Callum’s maybe-future. I didn’t want to think about what it meant that Étienne was meeting me at my new house tomorrow.
So I didn’t.
I just drove.
The movers worked quietly,heavy boots echoing through the nearly empty flat. Every room had already been cleared. All that remained were a few final items in the kitchen from drawers I’d forgotten about in the chaos of packing.
I opened the second drawer beside the stove, fingers skimming past old takeout menus and mismatched rubber bands. And then I saw a small, half-burnt birthday candle—pink and cheap, the wax curled at one end. It rolled forward as I pulled the drawer out, bumping against my fingers .
I stared at it for a long time.
I remembered the day I’d put it in here. It was on my birthday a few months ago, April tenth. It felt like a lifetime ago that I’d bought myself a cupcake from the café around the corner, lit that single candle, and sat in silence while the wax dripped. Nobody had called. My family had texted in our group chat, but that was the extent of it.
Because it wasn’t really my birthday. Not to them. It wasourbirthday. And since Étienne was the favorite child… it washisbirthday. I was always the one people forgot.
Except Callum.
He hadn’t known it was my birthday. He’d simply sent me a DM that day about seeing pistachio croissants and thought of me.
That was all, and yet, it meant everything. It meant someone saw me, heard me,thoughtof me without being told to. Even now, I remembered how my heart ached reading that message, like it was learning a new rhythm.
He may never know the extent of what that small gesture did for me, and I loved him all the more for it. Even then, he found ways to show up for me.
I picked up the candle, rolling it between my fingers, thumb grazing the blackened wick.
That version of me—the one who blew out a candle alone and sang happy birthday to herself—she was still here, but now she was… loved.Healing.
But she wasn’t the one driving anymore. I dropped the candle into the open trash bag beside me. She had gotten me this far, but I didn’t need her to take me the rest of the way.
The movers’ footsteps echoed faintly from the living room. I was supposed to be doing a last sweep—checking drawers, emptying shelves—but my body ached, my head throbbed, and I just wanted to be done.
The bathroom was the last stop.
I yanked the top drawer open, grumbling under my breath as stray hair ties and half-used tubes of mascara rolled around. “Of course they didn’t check these,” I muttered under my breath. “God forbid someone touches the tampons.”
The drawer stuck halfway out, and I tugged, but it didn’t budge. I shoved my hand to the back of the drawer to helpdislodge the object preventing it from opening. My fingers closed around a cardboard box. When I pulled it out, my stomach churned.
It was a box of pregnancy tests. There was one left inside—a non-digital blue-dye test. My heart slowed, then sped up in uneven bursts. I knew exactly when I’d bought it. The last time I’d taken one, it had been positive.
I’d been with Santino at the time, and while the loss had saddened me, I was okay. Somewhere deep down, I’d understood and accepted that the universe had intervened before it could tether me to a man who thrived on control and cruelty. Who groomed and assaulted me.
But this time, it wasCallum’s. The man who kissed the ground I walked on. The man who belonged to me and I to him.
My stomach turned to ice. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t possible.
I sat down hard on the closed toilet seat, the box rattling in my hands. The tile blurred beneath me and I couldn’t catch my breath.
It had been just over a year since the last time. Just over a year since I’d stared at that faint pink line, and then watched my body betray me days later. Where I sat in a sterile hospital room receiving news about my reproductive health all alone and turned my world upside down.
