Page 90 of Red Flagged
I hadn’t let myself want that before. Now I couldn’t stop seeing it.
I saw it with Callum.
With whatever life we chose to have; kids or no kids, racing or not racing, weekends spent hiking those trails or stretched out on beach towels with sand stuck to our thighs. Maybe building a pool in the back someday, hosting dinners with string lights overhead.
Late-night talks over tea. Meals prepped in the kitchen with music playing low. Breakfasts shared on the patio, still in pajamas, hair messy, toes bare.
Sitting outside, stargazing or listening to the sea. Thunderstorms watched from the couch, curled beneath a blanket, fire crackling beside us.
Not perfect. Not performative. Just… ours.
A home. A safe place. A future.
The movers arrived notlong after I’d finished wandering through the house, their boots thudding across the porch as they began to unload the truck.
I signed where they pointed, smiled where I needed to, and kept my body moving. It was easier that way. Easier to stay in motion than to think about what was sitting in my hoodie pocket in the primary bedroom.
In and out they went, taking boxes to their respective rooms. I stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by stacked parcels and half-opened boxes, and swallowed a Vicodin dry. Not the full dose the bottle called for, but enough to dull the sharper edges of the cramps tearing through me.
I should’ve rested or unpacked the essentials, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit still. Instead, I worked.
I dragged a large, heavy box into the primary bedroom, dodging the movers, and sliced it open. Inside was my new bed frame. The instructions seemed simple enough, though the sheer number of bolts made my head spin. I knelt on the hardwood, toolkit beside me, and started piecing it together.
Each turn of the wrench was a heartbeat. Each click of metal into place, a thought I refused to have. Outside, the light shifted toward late afternoon, the sky pale gold over the cypress trees. The faint strains of classical music from my phone filled the air, something steady to hold onto while I tightened screws and forced focus through the pain in my abdomen.
I dropped a bolt and cursed under my breath. It rolled between boxes the movers had stacked in here. “Perfect,” I muttered, dragging myself to all fours to retrieve it. My body protested every movement, and as I crawled across the floor, a wave of dizziness hit me. I paused and pressed my forehead to my knees, inhaling and exhaling deeply, until it passed.
Then I kept going.
By the time the last panel clicked into place, the movers were long gone, and the room was bathed in honeyed evening light. The bed stood mostly assembled, a mattress leaning against the wall waiting to be unwrapped from its restraining plastic. I’d cracked the windows open when I started to sweat, the air smelling faintly of lavender from the planters outside.
I’d already changed myself three times, trying not to think about the thick clots or the slow, steady leak that made my body feel like it was unraveling one thread at a time.
I blew a breath through my lips, and meandered back out to the living room, rifling through the boxes to see what would be easiest to unpack. I found some candles packed with the linens and set them on the mantel, then lit them. Their flickering glow spilled across the room, shadows stretching long and soft along the walls.
It wasn’t peace, not really. Just stillness. A temporary truce between my body and my thoughts.
The sound of tires on gravel pulled me out of it. I shuffled to the kitchen and peered through the window, my sight snagging on a familiar car easing up the drive. A second car appeared behind the first.
My heart skipped a beat once before it steadied. Étienne and Emilie.
My throat tightened. “Putain,” I whispered under my breath, wiping my palms against my leggings and forcing myself toward the door.
I smoothed my hair and told myself I was ready.
The simple fact of them being here hit me harder than I’d expected. For months, they’d existed only in texts and memories, in the careful space I’d kept for myself. After Monaco, I’d exchanged a few messages with my brother, and none with my parents. I’d been so wrapped in this world and my career that I hadn’t stopped to process it all.
But now, seeing my brother step out of the driver’s seat of my Porsche 911, steady as ever, something inside me went soft and fragile. He looked older. Tired in the eyes but stronger than I remembered. On his own two feet. No casts, no braces, no slings. No crutches in sight. He’d recovered from that dreadful accident and was okay.
The crash had folded the car in on itself like paper, the cockpit crushed around him, steel wrapped tight where his ribs should’ve broken through. He’d nearly bled out on the asphalt. Multiple surgeries, collapsed lungs—more than once. Complications and months of pain. I swear half his body had broken.
And now… he was here. Standing, breathing, and whole. One of Formula 1’s most revered and missed drivers. Truly their phoenix—brilliant, broken, and still burning.
He wore a faded navy T-shirt and olive green cargo pants, a backwards baseball cap resting snug over his dark brown curls, just long enough now to peek through the opening at the back. He looked like himself, and yet not at all. Hardened, maybe, but also… humbled. His ego had been a problem once he made it to big leagues.
Emilie climbed out of her car next, dressed in a fitted oatmeal tank and high-waisted utility pants cuffed at the ankle, paired with white Veja sneakers and a crossbody canvas satchel. Practical, chic, and effortless.
The sunlight caught the copper strands in her strawberry blonde hair, making them glow. Her face was soft and flushed from the drive, but her eyes were sharp, taking everything in. She looked like calm personified, her easy posture a perfect contradiction to the storm building quietly inside me. Still so young—only twenty. Four years younger than me, but sometimes she carried herself with more wisdom than I did.
