Pregnancy rumor?
Marco winced. “In my defense, I only told one person where you were,” he said. “I did not realize that it was going to make it back to Henric or anyone at Luminis.”
Kimi sighed as he poured a cup of coffee before returning to his spot of leaning against the counter. “You talk too much,” he said. “I’ve warned you about this before. That your big fucking mouth was going to bite us all in the ass someday. And now look.” He gestured flippantly at the group. “Both Luminis and Vanguard drivers, under one roof and an incognito international sensation. That’s at least five headlines waiting to happen and a ruined holiday for the soon-to-be newlyweds. I hope you feel like the dickhead you are, mate.”
Marco’s face fell, guilt and remorse flooding his features, and part of me sympathized with him. It was an honest mistake, but itdidimpact a lot of people… us more than anyone else.
Especially my fiancée, who’d gone pale and wide-eyed at this revelation, but hadn’t said anything. I rounded the island, grabbed Aurélie’s shoulders, and hauled her to her feet. She fell into my arms like her knees had decided to clock out, and I steered us toward the counter, one hand firm at her back. I grabbed a clean mug, filled it with coffee, and wrapped her fingers around the ceramic, rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades while the steam curled up around us.
“Wait. You both knew Luminis was sending people?” Lucy asked slowly, looking from face to face. “Like… official people?”
Ivy nodded, pushing the blanket back from her hair with one hand. Crisis mode settled over her features like a familiar mask. “Yes,” she said. “They’re flying in today. Henric wants a full workup. There are rumors you’re pregnant, Frenchie. Someone leaked something about your behavior after Silverstone, the public started picking you apart, and you know how fast this shit spreads. I tried to get in front of it, shut it down, but it kept snowballing.
“Which is how Dom got looped in,” she continued. “He had to start preparing for potential blowback onyou, Scottie, in case the narrative turned into ‘Fraser knocked up his rival and derailed her season’ on top of everything else. Especially because he still doesn’t know about your retirement talk.” Her mouth flattened. “The Luminis board apparently has ‘concerns’ about liability if Frenchie gets back in the car after break without—” she made air quotes that looked like they physically hurt “—‘clarity.’ So they want to confirm before they sign off on you racing again.”
Lucy’s eyes went huge. “That’s not legal,” she breathed.
“Welcome to motorsport,” I grumbled.
“No. Welcome to motorsport as awoman,” Ivy sneered.
Aurélie stared at the marble for a second, jaw clenched, hands white-knuckled around her mug. Then she set it down very carefully and straightened her spine.
“Okay,” she said. “Alors. Here’s what we have already.” She ticked points off on her fingers. “One: Marco leaked our location.” He made a wounded noise. She ignored it. “Two: Luminis is sending a doctor under the guise of caring about my health, but really because they want control over my uterus. Three: everyone on the internet has decided they are entitled to speculate about my body like it’s a public stock.” Her brow furrowed. “And four…”
She glanced at me.
For a second, it was just her and me in that kitchen. France. The countryside. The bathroom. The blood. The way she’d collapsed against me and sobbed about the pain, and then the way the world had gone red.
I nodded once.
“Well, to clear things up,” she said quietly, looking back at the others, “therewasa pregnancy. There isn’t anymore. I—we—lost it.”
Ivy’s handflew to her mouth. Marco went very, very still. Lucy’s eyes filled so fast it was like someone had turned on a tap. Kimi tugged his hands through his hair and looked at the floor, jaw working.
“It’s okay,” Aurélie said quickly, hands coming up in a calming gesture. “You don’t have to… react a certain way. I’m not telling you so we can all cry together. I’m telling you because I don’t want you guys to hear it from someone that isn’t us. Because you’re our family.”
Technically, they shouldn’t have been able to. Her medical records were supposed to be private. But “supposed to be” didn’t mean much when you’d signed an FIA super licence and a Luminis contract that bundled your body into “performance assets.” On race weekends, every trip to a circuit doctor, every hospital visit got piped to the team’s medical liaison in the name of “duty of care.” And now here we were.
I slid my palm against the small of her back and rubbed once, slow.
“When?” Ivy asked hoarsely, pushing the blanket down so it rested around her shoulders. Her hair stuck up in every which way. “Aurélie, is this what I thought it was at Silverstone? The sore boobs, the nausea. You said it was nerves and you’d take a test after the race.”
“Ouais. I did,” Aurélie explained. “I tried to tell myself it was an endo flare and a bad period. But… I knew the pain was something else. It was early, and it was messy, and Cal—” she tipped her head toward me, “—took care of me and kept everyone out.”
The kitchen went very quiet.
No hiss from the machine, no clink of mugs. Just the low roll of the sea through the slightly open doors and the tiny, uneven sounds of people trying to remember how to breathe. Under my hand, at the small of her back, every muscle was tight as wire. She’d cracked herself open for them and was waiting to see if the pieces stayed put.
Ivy’s eyes were already glassy from the hangover; now they shone for a different reason. “You should’ve told me,” she croaked, voice rough but not accusing. “I kept texting you to take a test. Then you went quiet and vanished into the French countryside and Fraser freaked the fuck out that he hadn’t heard from you. Once he said he was with you, I told myself it was a horror-movie period and you didn’t want an audience.”
Aurélie’s mouth wobbled once before she caught it. “I could barely stand up,” she said, gentle but firm. “And Callum was there.” Her fingers slid down until they found my wrist and hooked in, like she was pinning herself there. I grabbed her hip and pulled her back into me. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think, I could barelybreathe. All I could see was his face and the ceiling. I didn’t have room in my head or my heart for anyone else yet.”
Something hot and ugly twisted deep in my chest at the thought of some team doctor or Henric himself reading that chart before the people standing in front of her now. Before the ones who loved her. I forced it down for later. She didn’t need my anger right now. She needed me steady.
Ivy let out a breath that sounded scraped raw. “I understand,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you had him.” A beat. Her shoulders squared, blanket sliding further down her arms. “But you don’t have to do the next parts without us.”
Lucy sniffed, wiping under her eyes with the sleeves of her hoodie. “I know we just met,” she said, voice wobbling, “and I’m the weird runaway, but if you ever want to scream into a pillow about all of this, I’m very good at harmonizing with other people’s trauma.”
