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. “Runawaypopstar,” she corrected under her breath. “My head of security woulddieif 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.Coercedis a good word.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Iturned 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 workedforpeople—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.
The first thingI registered was weight.
Warm, heavy, familiar. Draped across my chest like she’d tried to merge with my ribcage in her sleep.
The second thing was the ache in my cheeks.
Smiling. I’d actually smiled enough last night that the muscles hurt this morning. That had to be some kind of personal record.
I cracked one eye open. The bedroom was dim, all soft grey light leaking around the edges of the curtains. The ceiling fan hummed lazily overhead. Somewhere beyond the terrace, waves rolled slow and steady against the shore, the sound threading in through the cracked patio door we’d forgotten to close.
Aurélie was sprawled half on top of me, half on the mattress, one leg flung over my hip, the hem of her black romper bunched damn near indecently high. Her hand was splayed over my sternum, fingers curled in the faint patch of hair there like she’danchored herself on purpose. Her ring glittering faintly in the low light.
Myfiancée.
Still hadn’t gotten tired of that word.
