I exhaled. "This thing is an actual deathtrap."
She snorted, like I hadn’t just pointed out that we were willingly driving a relic with no modern safety features through the winding roads of the French countryside at speeds as ungodly as the things we’d done in bed this morning.
But then she casually blurted, "I rebuilt it."
I turned my head so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. "You what?"
My wife glanced at me, eyes twinkling, fully amused by my reaction. "I rebuilt it. Stripped it down to the frame, learned everything from scratch. Took a few years, but she’s my baby."
I just stared at her.
Because there were a lot of things about Aurélie Dubois—AurélieFraser—that amazed me.
Her sense of humor. Her sharp wit. Her brilliant mind. Her skill behind the wheel, her goddamn tenacity. The way she loved with her entire being.
But this?
This was something else.
"You learned how to rebuild an entire car from scratch?"
"Well, yeah." She grinned. "I wanted to drive it. Figured I should know how to take care of it."
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I leaned back in my seat, shaking my head in awe. "You are the most impressive fucking person I’ve ever met."
She beamed. And fuck, if I wasn’t already married to her, I would’ve proposed right then and there. I melted, my shoulders dropping. She built this from the ground up, much as she’d done to herself. And that meant I could trust it.
“Ah, there he is,” she purred, facing forward again and sliding her hand across the console to grip my thigh.
I tensed, breath catching. Her palm was warm, firm, and grounding in a way that made my stomach flip and my chest ache all at once. My foot twitched slightly on the pedal. Not from lust—though there was always some of that with her—but from the weight of beingseen.
"What?" I asked, voice rough, trying to remember what we were talking about.
“I was waiting to see my Cal come out,” she said softly.
I blinked at her, brow furrowing. "What are you on about?"
“You’re in your head,” she continued, eyes still on the road ahead. “I knew you’d start spiraling the closer we got, so I figured if I got you talking, you’d resurface. You always look for a distraction when you’re trying not to drown. I thought driving would help, too. You feel most in control behind the wheel.”
I looked at her, then back at the road. Then at her again, and back.
Like a fucking idiot.
Because I had no words for what that did to me.
She knew. Sheknew.
She saw the transition I didn’t know how to name, the subtle shift when my mind slipped sideways. When anxiety or guilt or nerves or whatever the hell it was started chewing at me. And she met it not with a lecture, or a fix, or a demand.
But withthis. Laughter. Gentle redirection. Steady hands and car talk and an open road.
And just like that, I felt my chest ease, my hands steady, and my throat go tight. I swallowed hard, eyes misting over.
“You insisted I drive,” I muttered, “because you knew how bad it would be.”
“Partly,” she said breezily. “Also, you look hot behind the wheel.”
