Chapter 204 Aurélie #3
The conversation spun off for a bit into Lucy’s management, the insane clauses in her image agreements, the time a brand tried to put a weight-check provision in her contract and her lawyer nearly set their office on fire.
It was furious and funny and deeply unfair, and by the end of it I wanted to strangle at least three executives I’d never met.
But beneath the jokes, there was relief. Little by little, you could see the way her shoulders sank, the way her laugh came easier, the way she edged closer to Ivy’s side like she was plugging herself into a charger.
At some point, Marco flopped onto his back again and groaned loudly. “Okay,” he declared. “No more trauma dumping. My therapist would be very proud of me for recognizing my emotional bandwidth is full.”
“You don’t have a therapist,” Ivy said.
“I have you,” he said.
“That doesn’t count,” she and I said in unison.
He pointed at us with both hands. “Soulmates,” he said. “Disgustingly adorable.”
The tide crept closer, lazy and unbothered.
A wave reached just far enough to kiss the edge of Kimi’s towel and made him swear under his breath in Finnish.
The moon climbed higher. Someone refilled our glasses again.
The playlist shifted into something quieter, a piano line threading through the murmur of the ocean.
“Scale check,” Callum murmured against my ear.
I let my eyes fall closed for a second, breathing in salt and wine and him. “Nine,” I said. “Nine and a half when I think about you nearly ignoring the door.”
His laugh puffed warm over my cheek. “Regrets?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Ask me again when Marco is snoring in surround sound.”
“I do not snore,” Marco denied.
“Liar,” Ivy said.
“You snore,” he shot back. “Like a gerbil in a blender.”
“And you like to be the little spoon when you’re drunk,” she snapped.
“I’m very concerned about Marco’s balls being les twisty-est by Ivy Sinclar,” Callum taunted, and I giggled. “You hangin’ in there, mate?”
Marco glared at Callum. “When did your accent become so thick?”
“Ask her,” Callum said, nodding at me. “She’s the one who keeps begging for the Scottish to come out.”
I rolled my eyes, heat licking up my neck. “Tell the goddamn truth, Fraser.”
He huffed a laugh. “Fine. Since my fiancée agreed to marry me on a beach in Greece,” he said. “Apparently the ring came with a free dialect upgrade.”
I went smug on instinct, tilting my chin up a little. “For the record,” I drawled, “I beg for a lot more than that, but I do not think you guys want to know what I was really begging for.”
Marco slapped a hand over his heart. “I did not come to Greece to get bullied by your sex life,” he said. “I am a delicate flower. Have some respect.”
“Rule five,” Callum pointed out. “Unhealthy amount of affection, comments kept to a minimum. You were warned.”
“This is abuse.”
“It is not abuse,” I chided. “It’s a sexcational hazard.”
Kimi choked on his wine. “That’s not a thing.”
“Well I, for one, did not sign up for live-action porn,” Ivy chimed in, swallowing the last of her wine.
“You’re in the splash zone,” I told her with a saccharine smile. “Front row sexpérience.”
“Please never say that again.”
Lucy choked on a giggle. “I love you people,” she said weakly. “You’re insane.”
“Bienvenue au club,” I said. “You’re stuck with us now.”
She smiled at me across the circle, a little crooked, like it didn’t quite fit yet but she was trying it on. “Good,” she said. “I think I need you.”
The words hit me somewhere low and unexpected. Maybe because I’d been there. New. Overwhelmed. Pulled into someone else’s orbit and not sure if I was allowed to stay.
Callum’s fingers traced the band of my ring, slow and reverent. “We’ll keep the bubble up,” he said quietly, just for me. “For you. For them. For us. As long as it takes.”
I tilted my head back and looked up at him, silhouetted against the stars, curls haloed by torchlight. “You can’t keep the world out forever,” I murmured.
“No,” he agreed. “But I can make damn sure it knocks before it comes in.”
I turned that over in my mind while the others argued about who got the nicer guest room and whether Lucy’s fans would riot if they knew who she was with.
Wait a damn minute.
I pushed out of Callum’s hold and sat up, blood rushing from my head at the sudden movement. “You.” I pointed at Lucy, narrowing my eyes at her.
She shrank back, eyes flying wide.
Onstage, she was all hips and hunger and honeyed power—swaying under lights with that slow, sinful kind of choreography that made you feel like you were watching something private, her voice a velvet knife.
Desire wrapped in innocence. Teasing without touching.
The marketing team’s fantasy of a girl who understood sex but hadn’t had it yet.
The girl in front of me looked like her own undercover decoy. Bare-faced, messy ponytail, oversized hoodie, knees knocked together in the sand. Less altar and more altar ego.
“If you usually have bodyguards and an entire team planning your bathroom breaks,” I said slowly, “how did you convince them to let you leave the country without supervision? Especially when your whole brand is… très innocente?”
Lucy immediately started panicking. “Oh God,” she blurted. “I knew this part was going to come up. I had a whole speech planned and I forgot all of it. Please don’t kick me off your sex island. I need this.” She pressed her palms together in a praying gesture.
“Whoa, slow down,” I said, holding both hands up. “I’m not mad. I’m just trying to understand how the hell you pulled this off.”
She blew out a shaky breath, then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“My assistant is sightseeing,” she confessed.
“She stayed in the city where my last show was and is posting on my socials from there, taking pictures like I’m with her.
I told the rest of the team I was staying put at her Airbnb for a few days to recover.
Technically…” She winced. “Technically, everyone thinks I’m curled up on a sofa with face masks and chamomile tea, not on a Greek island on a private beach with a disgruntled PR princess and the F1 paddock’s resident revolutionaries. ”
“You’re a vigilante popstar,” I said slowly. “You’re actually… MIA.”
Lucy nodded miserably. “Runaway popstar,” she corrected under her breath.
“My head of security would die if he knew I got on a plane without him. Especially with a man. Oh my God. I’d never see the light of day again.
” She stared down at her hands. “As it is, my dad has power of attorney and final say on my travel and medical and financial decisions until I’m thirty.
I was barely eighteen when I signed the paperwork.
They called it ‘protection’ so I wouldn’t get taken advantage of. ”
The circle went very still.
“Is that even legal?” Marco blurted.
“Legal-adjacent,” she said with a small, crooked smile.
“I was having panic attacks and they pushed a stack of contracts at me and told me they’d cancel my first tour if I didn’t sign.
So… yeah. Coerced is a good word.” She shrugged one shoulder.
“I turned my location off for everyone but my assistant and said I needed ‘solo time to creatively recharge.’ They bought it because I never ask for anything.” She swallowed.
“If this leaks, I am so unbelievably dead.”
Even Kimi looked taken aback. His brows lifted, the surprise subtle but obvious if you knew him. “You didn’t tell your team where you really were?” he asked.
She shook her head, ponytail swishing. “You said no one would bother me here,” she said quietly. “I wanted to see what that felt like without a manager lurking in the doorway or a security detail pretending not to listen. Just…” Her gaze swept the circle. “People. Who don’t need anything from me.”
Something in my chest twisted and then settled.
I looked around our little circle and saw it everywhere.
Me, fresh from a lifetime of complicated family dynamics and a sport that had taught me I wasn’t enough.
Callum, who’d spent a decade letting the car and the calendar own him, finally trying to choose himself—and me—over the noise.
Marco, golden boy Bianchi, free for once from family expectations and camera angles, allowed to be loud and ridiculous without it being a performance.
Ivy, who only ever worked for people—cleaning up their messes, being their armor, their mama bear—finally somewhere she didn’t have to be the adult in the room to be allowed to stay.
Lucy with her coerced signatures and bodyguard barricades, tasting anonymity for the first time.
And Kimi… Kimi who helped save me when everything went to hell, who still slipped away the second the engines cut, whose life outside of F1 was more rumor than fact, and somehow that made him feel like an extra cloak of privacy we didn’t have to earn.
Maybe the bubble wasn’t about hiding. Maybe it was about choosing. Who got let in. Who got handed a towel and a glass of wine and a front row seat to our lives. Who we trusted to sit with us in the dark and the salt and the aftermath and not flinch.
When I looked around the circle—at Marco’s wild hands and Ivy’s exasperated fondness, at Kimi’s quiet steadiness, at Lucy’s hopeful nerves, at Callum’s thumb skimming my ring like a prayer—it didn’t feel like running away.
It felt like finally, finally, building something worth staying for.