Chapter 190 Aurélie
aurélie
This wasn’t a mess to clean. It was a wound to tend. And I would spend my whole life learning how to love her through the ache. –Callum
When I woke, the world was hushed. I could sense that something was off.
I could feel it before I even opened my eyes.
My body was heavy. Not just tired, but bone-deep exhausted. My limbs ached, my joints were stiff, my muscles were sore in a way that made me feel like I’d been run over. A dull, throbbing pain sat low in my back, radiating outward, a warning shot from my body that things were not okay.
God, and my throat. I swallowed, wincing against the sandpaper dryness, my lips cracked from dehydration. My head felt foggy, my thoughts slow, like I was trying to swim through molasses.
For a second I thought I was dreaming, that the pills, pain, and blood had dragged me under and left me there.
Slowly, I peeled my eyes open, blinking at the light creeping through the curtains in thin white ribbons, tracing across the sheets, across a muscular arm draped heavily over my waist. The air smelled like iron, bergamot, and lemon verbena.
Wait.
Callum was here. I didn’t let him in… did I? I reached for a memory, for something that would tell me how he got here. My stomach twisted. So how did he get in? I combed through fragments of thoughts until I recalled opening the bathroom window, which meant—merde.
And suddenly I remembered. I remembered everything. I wished I didn’t.
Then I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck.
It wasn’t a dream. He was really here. His weight was real, solid and grounding, his arm curved protectively around my waist like his body had formed itself to the shape of mine in sleep. I could feel the steady thrum of his pulse against my spine, slow and sure.
I inhaled, shaky, and the scent of him filled my lungs. It made my heart palpitate.
“Callum,” I whispered, so softly I wasn’t sure if I’d said it out loud.
He stirred behind me, his arm tightening, and a low sound hummed in his throat. His hand flexed against my stomach—bare skin, I realized dimly, his palm warm against my ribs. My shirt had ridden up sometime in the night, and his skin was pressed to mine.
The contact sent a shiver through me. Not from arousal, but from something deeper. Something that reached into the hollow of grief and filled it with a kind of intimacy that couldn’t be described. I knew that he knew. But now he needed the whole truth.
For a long, fragile moment, I couldn’t move. I just lay there, letting him hold me, letting myself breathe through the quiet, even though I hurt.
Then his voice, still rough with sleep, broke the silence. “Hey, baby.” He sounded wrecked, all gentle and hoarse and so goddamn concerned that tears sprung to my eyes. “Don’t move yet, okay? Just breathe. You’re safe.”
Safe. The word splintered me.
My lips trembled. I tried to turn toward him, but he beat me to it, rolling me gently until I was facing him. His eyes were shadowed in the dim morning light, and he brushed his thumb over the corner of my mouth.
“Hey,” he murmured. “You with me?”
I nodded slowly. “Ouais.” It came out small. “Yeah, I’m with you.”
He studied me for a moment longer, as if memorizing the shape of my face, before leaning forward to press his forehead to mine. The touch was warm, steadying, achingly tender.
“You don’t have to talk about it right now,” he said quietly. “Not unless you want to.”
But I shook my head, and the tears came before the words did. A rough, broken sound slipped out of me as my chest shook, and he pulled me closer instantly, his arms folding around me, my face pressed to the solid heat of his chest.
“I need to,” I rasped. My throat ached, the last of the painkillers fogging my mind as I waded through the French in my head, trying to string together the English.
“I need you to know. I’m tired of living with all of this by myself.
I need you, Callum.” I choked on a gasp.
“I need you. I need you more than air. More than racing. More than anything. I. Need. You.”
The words cracked on the last syllable, splintering as my whole body gave in.
My chest heaved, and a sob ripped out of me so forceful it stole the breath from my lungs.
I curled into him, fingers fisting in his shirt like a lifeline.
I was shaking too hard to speak, too shattered to hold myself together, so I let him do it.
Let him carry the weight of my grief, of my fear, of everything I had buried so deep I forgot I was even allowed to let it out.
He didn’t tell me it would be okay. He didn’t shush me or rush me or try to fix it. He just held me as I fell apart, as if his only job was to be there when I did.
“You’re okay. I’m here.”
I shook my head, trembling. I didn’t feel okay. I didn’t know if I ever would again.
His hand splayed over my stomach. So gently, so reverent and careful and precious, as if I was carrying a life that would survive.
“Are you sure you want to talk about it?” he asked quietly. “We don’t have to. Not right now. Only if you want to.”
“I do,” I rasped. “I just… I need a second.” I could feel the last of the meds fading, dullness lifting like fog, leaving me exposed. My whole body felt raw. My brain struggled to get the English out, even as the French sat heavy on my tongue.
Callum just held me through it all.
“How long did you know?” he asked after a moment, once my cries had quieted.
I shifted, trying to sit up, but the second I moved, my stomach lurched. A wave of nausea hit me like a truck. I slapped a hand over my mouth, eyes wide.
Callum blinked at me. “Oh, no. No, no, no. Don’t you dare throw up in this bed. We are not that couple.”
I tried to grunt something through my fingers, but had to stop myself when bile rose in my throat.
“Okay, that’s it.” He launched out of bed like a man on a mission. “Emergency evacuation.”
The next thing I knew, I was airborne, scooped bridal style against his chest, my head lolling dramatically like a Victorian heroine with the plague. My hand was securely in place, as if that would stop my body from upchucking.
“I’m gonna hurl on you,” I managed to croak.
“I swear to fuck, Aurélie, I will vomit right back. Do not.” He reached the bathroom in record time, setting me on my feet. I barely collapsed over the toilet before I started heaving. Violently.
The toilet was mercifully tucked behind a half wall that separated it from the rest of the open ensuite, like the architect knew someone would eventually break down behind it.
Callum knelt behind me, holding my hair with one hand and bracing us both with the other like he was in the middle of some tactical extraction. “You’re doing great, baby. Just purge the trauma. That’s what this is. Emotional exorcism.”
I made a noise that might’ve been a sob.
Or a laugh. Or both. It came out half-choked and strangled between convulsions, completely unintelligible, but Callum didn’t flinch a single time.
When it finally ended, I sat back on my heels, panting.
He just stayed there, solid and steady and stupidly beautiful in the most tragic of circumstances, still holding my hair back.
“It’s not funny,” I groaned through a self-deprecating chuckle, swiping the back of my hand across my mouth.
“I didn’t say it was, mon c?ur. I’m just saying what’s on my mind.” His voice was soft, threaded with exhaustion and affection. I didn’t know I could love him any more than I did before, but somehow he managed to make me fall harder.
“Callum.” I reached blindly for the toilet paper and blew my nose with a pitiful noise, finally succumbing to the humor because I had to. If I didn’t lean into it, the grief would eat me alive.
“We should get married,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Right here. In the bathroom. I’ll call Marco to officiate.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Don’t lie. This is romantic as hell.”
“If anyone’s officiating our wedding, it has to be Kimi.”
“You’re right. Marco and Ivy will be too busy making googly eyes at each other to pay attention.” He rubbed a slow, grounding circle between my shoulder blades. “We’ll pencil them in for the honeymoon slideshow commentary instead.”
I opened my mouth to answer, and then froze, because that’s when I felt it.
The… squish.
My stomach plummeted. I looked down, piecing together what I was wearing. The bulky, white fabric was unmistakable now, cinched high on my hips beneath the oversized T-shirt. A dark stain was blooming near the seam of the leg hole, soaking through.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
I turned sharply, pressing my back to the tiled wall and burying my face in my hands with a mortified groan. “Don’t look at me.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I mumbled, barely able to speak as heat flooded my face, “I’m wearing a fucking diaper.”
There was a pause. Then he blurted, “Technically, that’s an adult incontinence brief.”
“Callum.” I dropped my hands to glare at him, pulling my legs to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. He kneeled in front of me.
“It’s very medical.”
“Callum James.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I swear to God, if you laugh, I will smother you with it.”
He bit his lip, but the smile cracked through. “My bride,” he said reverently, and somehow his eyes managed to fucking twinkle, “in Pampers. I kind of think it’s hot.”
“Please let the earth swallow me whole.”
“Not happening.” He rose to his feet, grabbing my arms on his way up and hauling me to my feet. I swayed, but he held me firmly against him. “You’re stuck with me.”
“I hate everything,” I muttered, dropping my head to his chest. “Except you.”
“Same,” he said, too brightly. I leaned back to look up at him. He reached for a towel and gently wiped my mouth like I hadn’t just projectile sob-vomited in front of him.