Chapter 204 Aurélie
aurélie
I’d spent years being the headline and never the home. That night on the beach—with her in my arms and our chaos in the sand around us—I finally knew the difference. –Callum
By the time we migrated down to the beach, the pasta was gone, the wine bottles were mostly empty, and my cheeks hurt from smiling.
The path from the villa to the beach was lit with little tiki torches stuck into the sand, flames bobbing in the breeze.
The sea was a darker shadow than the sky now, black and silver, moonlight streaking across the surface in a long, shimmering path.
The air was warm enough that I didn’t need a sweater, just the same black romper, now smelling faintly of garlic and steam and Callum’.
We’d grabbed a stack of beach towels from the linen closet and thrown them across the sand in a messy circle.
Ivy immediately staked her claim at one edge and flopped down with all the grace of someone whose spine had given up hours ago.
Marco dropped beside her with theatrical groaning, like he’d personally pushed the Airbus to Milos.
Kimi relaxed on his back at the edge of the circle, close enough to the water that the occasional wave could threaten his toes, staring out at the horizon like it owed him money.
Lucy hovered for a second, clearly doing the mental calculus of where she was allowed to sit, before Ivy patted the towel between them and tugged her down by the wrist.
“Come on, popstar,” she said. “You survived the rise to fame. You can survive a little sand.”
“I—I like sand,” Lucy said, which sounded like a lie but an earnest one. “My pedicurist will hate that it dries my feet out, but it’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.”
Callum and I put two towels next to each other, the edges overlapping.
He sank down first, stretching his legs out, then I backed up until my spine rested against his chest and his thighs bracketed me.
He propped himself on his hands behind us, and I let my head tip back onto his shoulder with a satisfied little noise. My warm, solid, husband-to-be.
“Comfortable?” he murmured against my hair.
I hummed. “Very.” My fingers found his bare ankle and wrapped around it. “You’re a good pillow.”
“I’m a lot of things, baby,” he said. “Pillow wasn’t the title I was going for.”
“Too late,” I retorted. “You’re stuck with it now. Mon fiancé, my pillow.”
His chest rumbled against my back makingme grin.
Someone had brought the bluetooth speaker down from the villa, and now it played quietly beside us, some chill playlist that had shifted from Greek lounge music into one of Harper Rose’s slower songs.
I waited to see if Lucy would panic at the sound of her own voice.
She only smiled faintly, picking at a loose thread on the knee of her denim shorts.
“Marco, how the fuck are you surviving in a long-sleeve and jeans?” I blurted.
He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at himself like he’d forgotten what he was wearing. Dark henley, black jeans, ankles bare, expensive watch catching the moonlight.
“It’s a habit,” he said. “I run cold.”
I snorted. “You’re Italian. You run on espresso and rash decisions.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Both require containment.”
As he shifted, his sleeve rode up just enough for the torchlight to catch on a flash of ink at his wrist—black lines disappearing under fabric.
I squinted, wondering how the fuck I’d never noticed this before. Probably from all the ogling of his teammate who I was about to marry. “Wait. Since when do you have tattoos?”
Marco froze for half a heartbeat, then tugged the sleeve back down, too casual. “Since I was seventeen and very stupid,” he said. “And then eighteen and still very stupid. And then twenty-one and very drunk in Austin.”
My jaw dropped. “You’ve been hiding them from me?”
“From everyone,” he corrected. “My Nonna would drop dead if she saw them. My mother would resurrect her just so they could tag-team the lecture. The Bianchi brand is very ‘clean-cut golden boy,’ remember? No visible ink allowed.” He gestured at his clothes.
“So. Long sleeves and strategic necklines. Mystery preserved.”
Ivy snorted. “Clean-cut golden boy, my arse. The last three years of your life have been nothing but you being a fucking party animal, you chaotic little tosser. I’m sure you’ve disappointed your Nonna plenty without the tattoos.”
Marco rolled his eyes, but there was a flicker of something softer underneath.
“Once I won my first championship, I was… content,” he said, eyes tilting back up to the sky.
“Fraser started winning, and at that point I didn’t want the first seat anymore.
Fraser’s a better driver, I’m a better defender, and while winning is always the goal, I just…
started chasing something else to give me that thrill. ”
The group went quiet for a second, the waves filling the space.
“Have you found it yet?” Kimi asked, voice low and suspiciously curious.
Marco’s gaze dropped from the moon to the circle. For the briefest moment, his eyes snagged on Ivy—sharp, fond, a little wrecked—before he looked away again.
“Don’t know,” he admitted lightly, but the grimace tugging at his mouth said otherwise. “I could be staring it in the face and still be too chickenshit to do anything about it.”
Ivy’s mouth pressed into a line. “Tragic,” she sighed. “All that talent, no follow-through.”
“You want to know real talent?” Marco said, rolling onto his side to point straight at me. “Little Miss Frenglish Fuck-Up over here. It takes some real skill to get it as wrong as she does.”
Everyone burst into laughter. I made an offended noise and scooped a handful of sand to fling in his general direction; it fell short by a good half meter, which only made them laugh harder. Callum squeezed my waist behind me, his shoulders shaking with barely contained amusement.
“Tra?tres,” I muttered. “All of you.”
“The tattoos should be the least surprising thing you’ve heard all night, Frenchie,” Ivy muttered. “Remind me to give you a full inventory of them later.”
“Get me drunk enough and I’ll give everyone a tour.”
Kimi made a low, unimpressed noise, pushing himself up and reaching for his wine glass. “Please don’t.”
Marco waggled his brows at Ivy. “What about a private one for you, tesoro? Since we will be sharing a bed.”
Lucy giggled, tucking her knees up to her chest. “This is already the weirdest vacation I’ve ever been on,” she said. “And I’ve done writing camps in the woods with thirty songwriters and one bathroom. That’s a story for another day, though.”
“How did you two even end up here?” I wondered, tipping my head toward her and Kimi. “Together, I mean. I thought you were on tour. And this guy is usually off gallivanting doing God knows what in cousin-fucking country Finland.”
Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Is Finland like our Alabama back home?”
Marco groaned. “I’ve heard scary things about you Americans.”
Lucy arched a brow at him, the picture of sweet, lethal Southern charm. “That’s rich coming from the man who almost got us kicked out of the airport lounge for yelling about double penetration at the Prosecco bar,” she said. “Pretty sure we’ve all earned our little horror stories, honey.”
Marco slapped a hand over his heart. “Et tu, Harper Rose?”
“We met in Monaco this year,” Kimi said simply, like that explained anything. “At your victory celebration, Ray. Then we ran into each other yesterday.”
Lucy rolled her eyes fondly. “Translation: he crashed my post-show drinks and very rudely asked why I wrote a song about a crash I didn’t understand the telemetry for.”
“It was inaccurate,” Kimi said.
“It was a metaphor. And co-written with that big Formula 1 movie that came out a couple months ago,” she countered, then sighed.
“We’ve messaged off and on since we met.
I was in Europe doing festival dates, my team scheduled a few days off so I wouldn’t combust, and I said I wanted an actual vacation somewhere no one would bother me. ”
Kimi lifted his glass. “I heard Milos was perfect for discretion,” he added. “From our other two very famous friends who have successfully gone off the grid for the last week. So I invited her to join us.” He tipped his chin at me and Callum. “They did the disappearing act first.”
“And you, Lucy?” Ivy asked, eyes glinting. “You’ve gotta tell us the truth. Are you really a virgin, or is that just the stage persona? Because let me tell you, you do innocent seduction very well.”
Color flooded Lucy’s cheeks so fast I could see it even in the torchlight. She stared at her toes for a beat, then lifted her chin.
“Sadly,” she said dryly, “the marketing is accurate. The label figured my desire for sex sells as long as I’m not actually allowed to have any.
‘Untouched but suggestive’ tested really well in focus groups.
” Her mouth twisted. “So I sing about things I haven’t done yet, but want to, and watch everyone else have fun from behind the bodyguard barricade.
But hey, it worked, right? I became a billionaire. Yay me.”
Something in my chest pinched.
Lucy nodded, smiling crookedly. “So here we are,” she said. “Virginal popstar crashing a sex island. Thank you all for such a warm fucking welcome.” She sounded bitter.
God, I felt that better than anyone.
“So,” Marco cut in, grabbing a nearly-full bottle of wine and topping off everyone’s glasses that were within reach, “just to recap. We have: one sexcation that is actually a secret elopement, at least three scandals brewing, one virgin popstar, one overworked social media manager on the edge of a nervous breakdown—”
“Director of Communications and Crisis Management,” Ivy cut in sharply. “Not your personal TikTok intern.”
“—one emotionally stable driver—”
“That’s debatable,” Kimi interjected mildly.