Page 87 of Flat Out
“I love you, too, Callum Fraser.”
That’s what did it.
Every nerve ending in me caught fire, pain and pleasure and devotion combusting into something bigger than I could hold. My hips pistoned, my fingers worked her clit and pumped inside her, and she was pulsing around me everywhere, squeezing, clutching,owningme.
When she shattered, screaming my name in that thick, sinful French, my world detonated. I slammed deep, buried to the root, and came with her, groaning like a man broken wide open. My vision blurred, my chest heaved, every ounce of me pouring into her until I had nothing left but the frantic pounding of my heart against her spine.
We convulsed together, two people obsessed, two people lost in the same abyss, sweat and tears and love binding us in a way no one could sever.
Aurélie. My Aurélie. Mine. Always.
The grandstands roared with energy.Colorful flags waved, chants echoed, engines snarled like beasts straining at their leashes. It was electric, but all I felt was the tension coiled in my chest. It was heavy enough to crush me.
Since Friday, neither me or Aurélie had dared bring up anal. The way she’d taken me so perfectly, the trust she’d given me, the way it shattered and remade me? No. I think, maybe, we were both saving it for after the checkered flag. Maybe we both knew the difference between the ache of wanting and the ache of racing pain, and right now, one had to wait.
She found me before on the grid after the warm-up, her navy and gold race suit gleaming under the Austrian sun. Her braids were tucked in neatly, her helmet under one arm, and her smile—God, that fleeting smile—was the kind of thing meant to reassure, but I knew her too well; it masked more than it revealed.
“You okay?” she asked, voice soft but threaded with steel.
I tried to force a grin, but it didn’t stick. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I don’t like you climbing in there knowing what we do about the brake bias, the packers, the dampers.” I gestured in the direction of her car, as if to emphasize that it was a death trap. “You could barely move after qualifying yesterday.” My head throbbed with the faint echo of my slowly healing concussion, cameras flashed around us, and everything else faded into static.
Her fingers flexed once at her side before she reached for me. She hooked her finger into my belt loops and tugged me closer, pressing the lightest kiss to my jaw. It felt like déja vu. Back in Shanghai, after our first little coffee date.
Which reminded me that I had never taken her on arealdate. And I needed to do that.
My mind was clearly on anything of substance today.
“Mon amour,” she whispered, trying to drag me back from the edge.
But I shook my head, nerves spiking, gut twisting into knots. “Auri…”
Then she said it. “Baby.”
The world slowed. My breath caught. And when I looked down into the glittering golden-green depths of her eyes, I reminded myself she was real. She was here. That nightmare—her in white, holding our child, Morel barreling into them—that wasn’t real. This was.
Aurélie Dubois was one of the best drivers on the grid. She’d held her own this long, she was brilliant, relentless, and most of all, she knew how to counteract a sabotaged car.
I forced myself to believe it. Even if my heart hammered like it was trying to break out of my chest.
“I’ll see you after the race. Drink some water, and stay away from as much light and noise as possible. D’accord?”
Somehow, that brought a small smile to my face, but it did nothing to ease the ache in my chest. “D’accord. But Auri, I swear to God, if you feel like that thing is falling apart,pull over. I don’t trust it, I don’t trust your team, and I sure as fuck don’t trust Morel.”
She sighed. “You know I will.”
She left me then, walking back toward her car, helmet cradled against her side. Every instinct in me screamed to go after her, to drag her back into my arms, shield her from everything that could go wrong out there. I wanted to lock her away somewhere safe, where dampers and brake bias and barriers couldn’t touch her. Where Morel couldn’t touch her. Where the sport couldn’t ask her to risk her life just so she’d keep her spot on the grid.
But she wasn’t mine to protect like that. She never had been.
Auri didn’t need saving, least of all from me. She was fire and grit and brilliance, and she’d built her place here with bloody knuckles and sheer will. The best thing I could do was stand back, let her fight, and love her enough to believe she’d come back to me in one piece.
As I turned and left the grid, the roar of the crowd swallowing me whole, I held onto that truth like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
And suddenly I understood why she was so fucking mad at me after Montreal. I promised her I would come back to her, and then I almost didn’t. And then Idisappeared? No matter how unintentional, I couldn’t imagine the pureterrorshe must’ve felt.
Now, the crippling anxiety that I’d been burying since I was a teen threatened to claw its way to the surface.
I tried to leave that version of me back in Scotland. The emotionally neglected boy who was caught in the middle of his parents’ marital issues. Who grew up with slammed doors andsilences that were more deafening than shouting. Who learned too early that love could be conditional, that his presence could tip the balance of a house already fractured. I spent my childhood convinced I was a burden.
