Chapter 201 Aurélie
aurélie
What was a sexcation without a spreader bar and a little scandal? As long as she was still getting off, I could live with the rest of it. –Callum
We were still half on the rug when the world tried to claw its way back in.
The back doors were open, letting in the sound of the sea and that lazy, late-afternoon breeze.
My back was pressed to the plush, furry rug, Callum’s thighs warm against mine as he sat back on his heels, my heartbeat finally slowing from the way he’d just decided to make good on the phrase legally binding with his mouth.
And disrupting our peace was Marco and Ivy, currently calling us. My hand closed around my phone just as Callum grabbed his.
If either of them were calling in an emergency, then they thought it was worthy of interrupting our… whatever this was. Honeymoon. Sexcapades. Emotional recovery program with benefits.
Callum and I shared one last look—braced, reluctant, still a little stupid with sun and sex—and then I hit accept.
“What did I say about ignoring my emergencies?” Ivy snapped, not even bothering with hello. “Don’t answer that, I don’t have time. Are you in a place where you can talk?”
I glanced around the suite. Open doors. Empty room. Callum straddling me, already speaking to Marco in a hushed tone and watching me carefully.
“Bonjour to you too, Brit. I’m in our living room with an emotionally compromised Callum and limited clothing,” I said. “So yes. Very secure. And you better have a good reason for interrupting a magical weenie moment.”
“Good enough,” she said, clipped—contained, not angry. Then she exhaled, but I could hear the amusement in that sound. That was how she sounded when she was trying not to panic. “There have been rumors.”
I sat up a little, my stomach dipping. “Rumors about what?”
Callum scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, mate, start again,” he said into his phone, exasperation soft. “From the top. What did you do?”
In the background of his call, I heard Marco’s dramatic wail. Callum winced and pulled the phone away from his ear to switch to speakerphone. “It was an accident, Fraser, I swear on my Nonna’s grave—”
“Okay, listen. Don’t freak out,” Ivy said, snapping my attention back to her. I put her on speaker as well.
“Perfect way to guarantee I will,” I muttered.
“Right,” she huffed. “Rumors about you, babe. And about Scottie. About where you are, why you two disappeared. I’ve been working on it, trust me. I didn’t want to bother you while you were on holiday, but—”
“But I’m the fucking problem,” Marco’s voice cut in from Callum’s speaker, way too loud. “Apparently.”
“Oh, so we can all hear each other,” Ivy said. “Perfect. Saves me the trouble of repeating myself when I strangle him.”
Callum dragged his hand down his face. “What did you do, Marco?”
We both shifted at the same time, like muscle memory.
Callum tipped sideways onto his hip and stretched out on the rug, and I mirrored him, propping myself up on my elbows so we were facing each other.
He set his phone in the narrow strip of space between us, I dropped mine beside it, the two screens almost touching.
Our forearms brushed, knees bumping, the four-way call suddenly feeling weirdly domestic, like we’d just laid our problems in the middle of the rug with our phones and decided to deal with them together.
“Okay,” Marco said, and I could hear him gearing up, the way he always did before a corner he wasn’t sure about. “Okay, so, in my defense, I didn’t think twice when Dom asked me where you guys went for your sexcation—”
There was a beat where my brain just… stopped.
“Our what?” Callum and I said simultaneously.
“Your sexcation,” Marco repeated, as if we were the idiots. “You know. Vacation, but with more—”
“If you finish that sentence, I will end you,” Ivy said.
Callum stared at the phone like it had personally offended him. “Why is there a word for that.”
“Because humans are beautiful and efficient,” Marco said. “Anyway. He asked if I knew where you’d gone. I figured, you know, you tell your team principal when you’re fucking off to another country for two weeks—”
“We did not,” I said.
“—so I said Milos,” Marco plowed on. “Didn’t realize Ivy had already denied disclosing your location.”
My thumb twisted my engagement ring around my finger anxiously. I realized this was the first time since we got engaged a week ago that I’d felt uneasy. Pressure from the outside world. I’d completely checked out of everything.
“Wait. Back up. There are rumors about us, and Marco confirmed our location to Dom,” I said slowly.
Callum met my eyes, looking skeptical. Yeah, that couldn’t be good.
“In a casual, offhand way,” he said, like that helped. “It wasn’t like I dropped a grenade.”
“There are other words for what you did,” Ivy said sweetly. “It starts with snitch and ends with ing liability.”
“I thought he already knew!” Marco protested. “I thought you guys had, like, a grown-up, responsible calendar you share with management.”
“Have you met Henric?” I quipped. “I would never give him a look at my personal life like that.”
“Wait, who’s they?” Callum cut in, voice low. “You keep saying they are talking, they are asking questions.”
“Bored idiots with too much time and Wi-Fi,” Ivy said flippantly, brushing the question off. “We’ll discuss the nitty gritty later. I am not giving the rumor mill more oxygen than it already has, not over speakerphone. It’s complicated, and it’s best if we talk more privately.”
That word hooked under my ribs. “More privately than this?”
“Yes,” she said. “Preferably when I can see your face and slap you if necessary.”
“That’s comforting,” I said dryly. “But what kind of rumors, Ivy?”
There was a pause on her end, just long enough to tell me she’d picked her words five different times already.
“The kind that don’t die quietly once they start,” she said. “And we both know how this sport loves a narrative. Which is why—”
“Which is why you didn’t tell them where you were,” Marco cut in, clearly repeating something she’d just yelled at him about. “Because plausible deniability, blah blah, privacy while your guard is down, I didn’t listen, I’m the worst, et cetera.”
His voice echoed weirdly. Once from Callum’s phone, a half-second later from mine. I blinked, my gaze flicking between the two screens.
“Why can I hear you in stereo?” I asked slowly. “Marco, why are you coming through both phones?”
There was a scramble on Ivy’s end, fabric rustling, a muted curse.
“Because he’s an invasive species,” she said sharply.
“Because we’re in the same place,” Marco blurted at the same time, and then Callum’s call ended, leaving us just on a call with Ivy’s phone.
I pushed up a little higher on my elbows, staring at the phones like they might produce CCTV footage. “In the same place how? Why are you together? Who else is with you?”
“Marco, you were supposed to be in Monaco,” Callum added. “And Ivy, you were in London this morning, since you did a whole Instagram story on your favorite place to get tea near you—”
“Airports exist, Scottie,” Ivy interrupted coolly. “Don’t get distracted. But side note, since none of these other bitches in our friend group drink tea, did you at least see the one I did last week in Edinburgh? That little hole-in-the-wall with the jasmine pearls and the rose Earl Grey?”
Callum actually brightened, the corner of his mouth kicking up.
“Yes! They’re one of my favorites to visit when I go home.
Next time you’re there, get the Assam they keep in the big blue tin behind the counter.
Best proper black tea in the country; it’ll sort your whole life out, I swear to fuck.
Tastes like being punched in the face by caffeine. ”
“You two, shut up,” I snapped. “Ivy, you hate being around Marco alone. You said it yourself in Silverstone. So forgive me for asking why I’m suddenly getting surround sound Bianchi.”
“Oh, fuck off, bitch,” Ivy scoffed, no real heat under it. “This is not the point.”
“It is absolutely the point,” Callum cut in. “What airport, what gate, and what the hell is happening that we’re not being told?”
Another muffled scuffle. Someone—definitely Ivy—hissed, “If you say one word about the gate number, I will cut your balls off,” away from the mic.
“So that’s not shady at all,” I muttered. “Where are you?”
“Not important,” she said. “What is important is that this just got bigger than a couple of conspiracy theories and viral fan edits, and we’re not doing the rest of this over speaker.”
“Right,” Callum said, bringing them back on track with that deceptively calm tone that always meant he was two seconds from violence.
Internally, of course, because the man’s control was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
Well, it was until I came into his life on a wrecking ball and taught him what it meant to unravel for someone on purpose.
“Marco, what exactly did you tell Dom? Word for word.”
A rustle. A sigh.
“Dom goes, ‘How are the golden children? Any idea where they’ve run off to?’” Marco said, slipping into imitation.
“‘PR says they’re off the grid.’ And I laughed and said, ‘They’re not off the grid, they’re on a sexcation in Milos.
’” He paused and groaned. “It sounds worse than it was. But that’s it. That’s all I said.”
I covered my face with my hand. “Oh my God.”
“I didn’t mention the villa, I didn’t mention exact dates, I didn’t mention anything about… any of the other stuff,” he rushed. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Debatable,” Ivy muttered.
“Hey,” he said. “I might be a manwhore, but I’m not a traitor.”
“Charming. Since you’re so loyal, did you tell our friends that your parents are about to put you on the market for an arranged marriage? Or was I supposed to quietly manage that little PR nightmare forever, since I’m your so-called ‘PR Princess’?”
The line went dead silent for a beat. I actually heard three separate gasps—mine, Callum’s, and Marco’s.