Chapter 15 Aurelie #2
She swallowed, her lashes damp. “Nice thing number three,” she managed, and my eyes welled with tears, “is that I love you. I didn’t expect you.
Barcelona was impulsive and you were a disaster without direction, but you are exactly who I needed.
You make me braver. You let me be soft and rabid in the same breath.
I see you, Frenchie. All of you. And I’m so proud of how far we’ve come from almost crashing into each other in a paddock to…
this.” She let out a fragile laugh. “You’re a fucking inspiration.
Everything you fight for, who you are, what you’ve endured.
When I met you, I was nervous, because what if you’d turned out to be a total bitch and didn’t give me the time of day? ”
I tipped my head back and laughed.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong. You have a fire in your soul that I refuse to let be extinguished, and you use it to be better.
You gave me a chance when you knew nothing about me.
You’ve changed my life, encouraged me to chase my own dreams, but most of all, Frenchie…
you made a home out of chaos and set a place for me at the table, then made sure I ate.
” She sniffled, dabbing carefully at her eyes.
“My best friend is about to marry her forever, and that’s my favorite headline I’ve ever written. ”
Colette’s voice rose from the terrace. “Positions, s’il vous pla?t.”
Ivy squeezed my fingers. “You ready?”
“More than I ever thought possible.”
And that was true. I thought back to February, when I walked into the paddock for the first time as a Formula 1 driver, feeling as ready as I could be to prove my worth.
I didn’t know that within minutes, I’d meet my idol and months later become his wife.
We’d entered each other’s orbit, no warning, no mercy, unable to resist the pull. We didn’t fall in love; we collapsed into it, together and tangled. Maybe it was always going to happen that way. Not softly, not slowly, but all at once.
“Atta girl.” Ivy took my bouquet. “I’ll hold onto these. Go get your man, Frenchie.”
It felt right to save our first look for the bridal processional. But I wanted him—needed him—before our small ceremony in front of just our handcrafted family.
So we decided to meet on the L-shaped terrace off the main building, where the stone balustrade turned a corner and framed the same stretch of sea from two angles.
The Aegean glittered in tropical shades of orange and blue, and the air was thick with lavender perfume, crushed thyme, and the sweet fresh bite of olive branches.
One final moment together before we changed our lives forever. Right now, nothing was signed, nothing was permanent, but soon, it would be.
Callum gave me a love that made me feel seen, and he did it loudly, after a lifetime of being silenced in my own family. He never once flinched at my fury or my fire. He kissed the scars I tried to hide and loved me more for them.
And in return, I gave him a love that let him rest. A place to land when the race was over, a knowing that didn’t require words. My heart yearned to give him the kind of softness he never thought he deserved, but always did.
With a final, deep exhale, I grinned at Ivy and lifted my skirt.
She followed me through the tasting room and out the back door, padding barefoot across the warm flagstone—olive tradition already in full effect.
A camera lens shuttered somewhere behind me.
I’d grown so accustomed to it being for the public eye, but for once, it was for us. For our memory. For our forever.
So I wore my heart on my metaphorical sleeve while my veil fluttered in the breeze, until I reached my wall. Ivy hung back, giving me some space to breathe.
Colette said this spot was the spiritual energy of the land, because the stone stayed cool no matter how the sun behaved. She described it like a sanctuary. A pause, a promise. Something old that kept its word.
My heart pounded so hard with excitement that I thought it might bruise my ribs. I leaned my back against it, grounding myself in the chill of limestone. My palm followed, splayed against the surface just around the corner. It was smooth beneath my fingertips, textured in places.
I could feel the history in it. Could feel the stillness of something that waited, steady and unwavering. The place where we both reached, but didn’t look. Where love could exist in anticipation.
Around the corner, I felt him arrive the way you feel the weather change. Pressure shifted, the air turned sweeter, the sound of his footsteps changed the cadence of the earth itself. I didn’t turn the corner. Neither did he.
But then his hand slipped over mine, and my eyes fell closed in relief. Our fingers laced, palm to palm, warmth to warmth, like two arteries finding the same heart.
So here we were, right before everything changed, standing together unseen and untouched by the rest of the world.
We stayed like that, backs to different walls, fingers laced. The building held our breath and the faint noise of our friends and the hush of late afternoon, punctuated only by the soft click of Eleni’s camera as she captured a moment that felt eternal.
Today, we chose to marry in whispers instead of headlines. And I’d never been happier.
“Color?” he murmured, voice low, Scottish sanded down to silk.
“Green,” I said. It came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Good,” he breathed.
“Et toi, mon amour?” And you?
“Vert,” he answered in French.
A wave of emotions crashed into me. I looked at the water in the distance, and it looked like everything I’d ever been afraid to want—vast, inevitable, too beautiful to believe in.
And yet here he was. Mine. Certain. Constant.
A man who chose me over and over again, even when I couldn’t understand why.
“I used to think I was hard to love. But you made me impossible to forget.”
My laugh cracked into a small, helpless sound, and merde, I think I fell even more in love with him. “You’re going to ruin my makeup.”
“I’ll kiss it back on.”
We didn’t rush. We never did when it mattered. His thumb moved slowly over the inside of my wrist, tracing the faint vein there, the way he always did when he wanted to soothe me without words. Like he knew my pulse better than I did.
I pressed my spine to the wall until the stone learned the shape of me.
On the other side, I imagined his shoulder blades, wide and certain, doing the same.
I didn’t know what he was wearing. What any of the boys were wearing.
We’d left all that a mystery on purpose.
We needed some element of surprise in this elopement.
I tried to picture it anyway. I imagined black linen, a sharp collar, the cuff of his sleeve rolled to his elbows. He would look so unfairly good, veiny forearms on full display and blue eyes glowing brighter than the sea behind him. And I was the one who’d get to unravel him later.
The first time as his wife.
My chest burned with the thought of leaving this island with him as my husband. Of going back to the French countryside where we’d just planted our roots, two hellfire souls learning how to soften without losing their edge. We’d return as covenant. Stronger. Married. Home.
“I can’t see you,” he said softly, “but I can feel you smiling.”
“I am,” I admitted. “I’m thinking about our kitchen in France and how you always burn the first pancake because you refuse to wait for the pan to heat.”
“Strategic sacrifice,” he said, mock offended and gloriously Scottish. “Besides, you love the second one.”
“I love you.”
Silence stretched, sacred and soft. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath. It was the comfortable kind of silence only meant for soulmates.
“Say it again,” he murmured, voice lower now, rougher, like gravel warmed in the sun. Like a promise that would get broken down and rewritten in the dark later tonight.
“Je t’aime, mon c?ur,” I whispered, smiling so hard my cheeks ached. I wanted him so badly I could barely keep still, wanted to kiss him breathless and pin him to the nearest wall and thank him with every inch of my body. “I love you, Cal. I’m ready. I’m not scared.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “Auri, I’m so fucking happy I don’t know what to do with myself.” His thumb kept tracing the vein at my wrist. “I love you with every piece of me. Now, later, always.”
Auri.
The way he said it cracked something open inside me. That name belonged to him now. Only him.
Aurélie was mine. Dubois was my legacy. But Auri? That was his. That was love.
And he’d started using it more in front of the others, even Colette. Like he wasn’t afraid to show where the softness lived inside him when it came to me. Like he’d built a home out of my name and was finally ready to let the world see it.
“Now, later, always,” I echoed. My eyes burned in the good way. “After we say yes, I want to go home. Not the house. Home. You. Us.”
“I’m bringing you there in about,” he paused, “seven minutes.”
Ivy’s voice piped up from Callum’s side of the terrace. “Five.”
Callm and I laughed.
“I have to know,” he murmured, practical to the end. “Are you wearing white?”
My free hand smoothed over my dress, and for a moment, I contemplated denying him. Teasing him, keeping the mystery until the very last second. But he gave me this. Gave me today. Gave me his whole life and heart and future without asking for anything in return.
It would be my last act of obedience before we were wed, and I wanted to be his in every way that mattered. Not diminished, not owned. Just his. His partner. His equal. His always.
Because submission, for me, was never about weakness. It wasn’t a power imbalance. It was trust. Worship. A choice made again and again. And loving him this way was the freest I had ever felt.
“I’m wearing white,” I told him. “Like I always said I would.” I paused, letting the moment breathe, then added, “I’m barefoot. There’s a veil. A borrowed hairpiece with olive leaves tucked into the comb.”
“Well, I have the handfasting ribbon under the cuff,” he murmured, voice rough with awe. “Colette insisted on putting an olive sprig in the boutonnière. And, of course, your ring in my pocket.” He hesitated. “My hands are steady because I know it’s you.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, my chest aching. This is what it meant to love someone so hard it hurt. “Check your pocket again,” I teased, just to lighten the moment.
He laughed that boyish, hearty laugh that melted my panties right off, and I pictured his dimple appearing. “Checked thrice, love.”
“Well, I have yours tied to my bouquet, right by my vows,” I whispered.
A pause stretched sweet between us.
“You’re a hopeless romantic, Dubois.”
Another pause, a beat suspended in forever.
“I just realized,” he added, voice thick with emotion, his accent heavier than normal. “That’s the last time I’ll call you that.”
Dubois.
I was trading last names. Leaving my family name behind to start something new. But it’s how we began—Fraser versus Dubois. The champion against the rookie. A real life rivals-to-lovers story. The one that changed both of our lives.
And I loved it for that.
Somewhere beyond the terrace, a guitar tested a few tender chords. Lucy. The melody floated on the breeze like a benediction.
And suddenly, my lungs emptied.
My fingers squeezed his harder as panic broke through my ribs. “Cal—baby—”
He tugged my hand gently, but with purpose, pulling me until the side of my arm and shoulder brushed the corner of the wall.
That brief contact did something, reoriented me.
His body was right there. His voice was closer than before.
His scent wrapped around me, lush bergamot, fresh linen, and that citrus-sage body wash I huffed like an addict. It helped. Some.
“Behave,” he murmured, teasing and tender. “And don’t even think about peeking.”
I exhaled a shaky laugh. “No promises.”
But I was spiraling. I needed air. I needed him. And thankfully, he didn’t let go.
“Callum—”
His fingers tightened. “Breathe. What’s wrong, baby?”
My heart clawed at my ribs. “We never talked about a prenup.”
There it was. Out in the open now, all breathless and trembling. And just like that, the holy quiet cracked.
I’d been so busy dreaming of vows and veils, I forgot what waited on the other side—
My family. His freedom. Our fortunes.
And the one question I should’ve asked before we ever said yes.