Sweet Romance16 min read
"Get Off Me!" — How I Got a Supermarket in My Head and a Gruff Hero on My Case
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"Splash!"
I clawed at cold water and swallowed half a river.
"Hold on!" a voice shouted.
I kicked and my foot hit a rough hand. The hand grabbed my ankle. I slammed my heel into it, hard.
"Let go!" I coughed. "Let go, you—"
The hand let go. I shot up through the black water and gulped air like a dying thing.
I spat river water. A man in dirty clothes dragged me onto the bank and didn't say a word. He bent, ripped the leech off my calf with the flat of his shoe, and then walked away before I could even stand.
"Hey!" I called. "Wait! My leg—"
He kept walking.
"Wait!" I tried softer. "At least tell me your name."
He kept going.
I squealed. "You can't just leave—"
I heard him stop. Then he turned with a face that made my heart drop into my stomach.
He looked like a carved statue. Hard jaw. Cold eyes. Dirt on his cheek. He said, "Don't cry."
"I am not crying." I blinked fast anyway. "It hurts."
He removed my shoe and flicked the leech off with the sole. The leech popped and fell to the grass. Blood beaded on my leg. My skin felt warm and shamed.
"Thank you," I mumbled.
He snapped, "Get up."
"I can't." My voice trembled. "My leg—"
He grabbed my thin arm and hauled me up. He carried me on his broad back like I weighed nothing. My wet dress clung to me. His back felt like wood and heat. I held on.
"What's your name?" I asked, because that felt brave.
"Brady," he said, as if that fixed everything.
"Brady what?" I pushed.
"Stevens." He sounded annoyed.
"Brady Stevens." I repeated, like tasting a stone.
"Get off now." He set me down at the village edge and did not look at me again.
I had just woken up in a child's body in a time that smelled of coal smoke and sun-warmed clay. Five minutes ago I had been a supermarket owner in my other life—Ella Shaw, alone in a bright city. A falling shelf, white light, and then this. I had a space. A hidden room with my supermarket goods. I had food and sugar and canned milk that would not exist here for years.
That was the dream. That was the plan.
But right now I was sixteen again, wet, and in a family who called me "the village treasure." I had a new life inside an old one. And I had just been saved by Brady Stevens, the man everyone called the "river brute" and the "man who could kill a wild boar with his hands."
I could not help myself.
"You're rude," I said. "You could have at least told me your last name without sounding like a bear."
He turned his face away. "You should stay away from the water."
"I fell because a boy tried to take advantage of me," I said quickly. "He—"
"Who?"
"Lin—" I almost said the name. I swallowed it. "Someone tried to hurt me."
He shrugged and left.
I laughed shakily. "What a cold man."
A thin, fierce woman with a towel round her head pulled me home. Jacqueline Berry—my grandmother—kissed my wet hair and scolded the whole village for being careless. She called me "my little egg" and fussed as if I were a cat she could not lose. I let her fuss. I let her feed me a soft egg cake. I let the salt of the river and the shock of the fall and the odd ache under my skin settle into a quiet I had not felt in a long time.
It was almost funny. In my past life I had been a manager, cold with numbers. In this life I had the shock of women and the smell of river mud and a secret: when I stepped into the small locked space behind the old house my supermarket haunts me like a bright dream. Shelves of goods twinkled in my head—tinned tomatoes, bars of soap, bags of sugar, shiny candies. Enough goods to buy people's trust. Enough goods to change lives here.
"You're not the original," my head said once I closed my eyes. The old girl's life flashed like a bad movie. She had been loved, spoiled, and reckless. She had humiliated a man, lied, and caused trouble. She had died in a river. I had woken in her body.
I blinked and made plans.
"First," I told my bruised leg and the sky. "Apologize to the man I slapped. Second, teach that scumbag who tried to hurt me a lesson. Third, fix things that will hurt people later."
Jacqueline laughed like someone who liked big words said by little girls. "You'll eat the butter and not burn the house, let's hope."
I had my space, and I had my stubbornness. I could do it.
"You're odd," Brady said later as he sat across from me at our long, rough table. He had returned—without being asked—carrying a small hand-carved stool. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here now," I said. "And I plan to make sure my family does not go hungry."
He glanced at the stool. "You know you don't belong here."
"Neither did you when you came," I shot back. "You came from somewhere we don't ask about."
"Don't make me laugh." He fixed his jaw. "Stay out of my way."
"You worry a lot about my being in your way," I said.
He left. He had a way of leaving that made an ache in my chest I had never felt before. It was a hard, stupid thing. I was not sentimental, not really. But there was something in the way he watched me: like a slow weather, heavy and certain.
"He's a good man," Jacqueline mumbled the night she fed me, and then clucked like a hen. "He saved you twice."
"Twice?" I looked up.
"You gave him that fish in the night," she said. "And he brought the herbs. And he went to the fields even though he had a wound. He is stubborn. Don't tangle with him, child."
"Too late," I muttered.
Food and noise and duty passed in the days that followed. The village's gossip wheel spun fast. I tried to fix the past mistakes of the original girl. I cornered Lin Xiaoqing.
"Why do you lie?" I demanded. "Why make people's lives tremble?"
Indiana Dunn—Lin Xiaoqing in my mind—smiled and made a soft face.
"I didn't lie," she said with a gentle, practiced sadness that tasted like a sharpened knife. "People hear what they want."
I slapped her. Hard.
"You have to stop," I said. "You use people like toys."
She shrank like paper. "You are mean," she whispered. "You will ruin everything."
"Go on," I said. "Try to ruin yourself. I'm watching."
We fought sharp words. People watched. Brady lingered at the edge of the trees, looking like a statue. He had watched me hit her and then lean away like he had seen a fire start near his barns. He did not come to me until later.
"Don't hit women," he said, voice flat.
"She lied," I snapped. "She would have hurt someone."
He didn't answer. He left. He always left.
Later, a crowd gathered to shame me. Rumors started that I was greedy and loose and I chased men for gifts. I had a fight with a man who called his love "my brother" and I had the city "gentleman" who borrowed my money and lied to me. The village is a small bell that rings loud when someone steps on it.
"Show your paper," the gentleman—Denis McCoy—demanded. He had a soft face and a smooth voice. "Where is the proof?"
I handed him a paper I had written for myself in the space. It said he owed me money.
He snorted and pointed. "You expect me to pay because you want me to?"
"No." I didn't flinch. "You already said you would pay. Put your name."
He tried to run, and my family beat him until he couldn't stand. They carried him to the small clinic. I felt a guilt like something heavy falling from a shelf.
"Don't let me catch him again," Daddy said. "Don't be stupid."
I promised, and I could feel the village change.
Every small act of kindness I did in the days that followed changed the weight. I gave eggs secretly to Mrs. Carter—the seamstress from the next valley—so no one would know where they came from. I sneaked out rice and sugar for the midwife when she had to work a midnight birth. I took my canned milk and made soft cakes that everyone called magic.
"Who is giving us these sweets?" the neighbors demanded.
"No one," I said. "Maybe the river offers mercy."
They laughed. The tide had turned in my favor, and for once I smiled without thinking of the city.
But Brady kept his distance like a line drawn across a wet road.
"Why do you help everyone?" he asked once when we were alone by the riverbank. He sat with his back to me and whittled a piece of wood. His fingers were sure as tools.
"Because I can," I said. "Because I remember hunger."
His whittling stopped. "You keep making trouble."
"Not trouble." I nudged him. "Work. Problem solving."
He didn't laugh.
"You keep getting into fights," he said. "You cry like a child. You give food away like it's air. You steal from places that don't exist and hide it in this house." He gestured at the small space nobody else knew about.
I almost laughed. I had done the impossible, and he knew. "Yes," I said softly. "I have a secret store."
He turned to face me. "Sell things, and people will ask for payback. Give away things, and they will ask for more. How will you keep us safe?"
"I will buy time," I said. "I have a plan."
"Your plan is reckless," he said.
"Maybe," I answered. "But at least it's mine."
That night the village had a fight. A man named Raul Arnold—big, mean, who thought the village belonged to him—tried to make me a joke, and I fought back. He chased me into the dark, knife flashing. I screamed. The woman folk ran. Men shouted.
Brady came out of the night and moved like a controlled storm. He disarmed Raul in a clean motion and flung him to the ground. He put his foot on the man's chest and told him, "Get away." His voice was low and dangerous.
"Who are you?" Raul spat.
"Someone who does not like bullies," Brady said. "Go home."
Raul went home.
That night I sat with my head in my hands. My heart hammered with something that was not fear. It was a close thing, like being too near a cliff.
"I could leave," I said.
He didn't answer for a long while. "You will bring trouble," he finally said. "You will bring people who want what you have."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe they'll learn to be better when they have enough."
"Some people are greedy." He looked at me full on for the first time. "Some people will take your sugar and then spit on your name."
"Then I will slap them twice as hard." I tried to smile. My lungs felt full of something new.
He paused. "Don't make me have to save you again."
"You keep saying that," I said. "You mean it."
He did not answer.
Days wore into a rhythm. I learned to cook outside a wood stove. I hid things in my little space and only used them when I could not find a better way. I fixed family wounds with small gifts. I traded sugar for the blacksmith's help to mend our roof.
Brady watched from the edge. He tested me with short sentences, as if probing the strength of a rope.
"You move too fast," he said. "You should not show people everything."
"Maybe they're not supposed to see everything," I admitted.
He was quiet. Then he helped me split wood. We worked in companion silence, our hands steady with the rhythm of a day. Once his hand brushed mine and did not fall away. Once we both looked at the same place at the same time and smiled like fools.
One night, when the moon was only a small coin, I fell asleep on the outer steps. I woke to a hand covering my mouth.
"Don't scream," Brady whispered.
He held my hand like he had done at the river. He carried me inside and wrapped me in a blanket. The room smelled of smoke and cedar. My breath slowed.
"Why do you risk so much?" he asked, voice soft. "All this goodwill. All this noise."
I looked at him in the dim. I touched the scar on his shoulder where the wood had cut him. I could see how careful he was with his hands.
"Because," I started, and my voice was a small flame. "I had a store once. I had bright lights and doors and customers who loved the way things looked. When the shelves fell and I woke up here, I decided I would not let anyone in this place die hungry if I could help it. I would rather be hated for giving than feared for taking."
He studied me, like turning a fruit in his fingers.
"You don't ask for pity," he said.
"No." I shook my head. "I ask for a chance."
He held my gaze. The room filled with a quiet that was not empty.
"Brady," I whispered. "You don't have to leave me alone."
He lifted his hand to the space between us and rested it there. It was the smallest of promises.
"I won't watch you die," he said.
"I won't ask you to," I smiled.
A month later, I had the whole village talking in a different tone. I had made friends with the seamstress, smoothed over the mad neighbor with spare sugar, taught the schoolteacher how to make flatbread with my canned milk, and out of the corner of my pantry, I had built a trust.
The men who once cursed me now nodded. The women who had spat now asked for advice on salt and soap. I felt the strange pride of a person who had built a bridge of tin and prayers.
Brady still kept his back to me most days. I stole glances. I came to his workshop and watched him carve. He made a small wooden chest for my things one day and said nothing. He left a small carved bird on my table and walked away.
"You could have kept it," I said softly when I found it.
"I thought you'd like a guard," he said. "So it doesn't get lost."
It was the way he said it—simple and honest. I carried the little bird in my pocket like contraband.
We argued like two people who loved each other's mouths.
"You are reckless," he would say.
"You are too hard," I would reply.
"You slouch," he'd grumble.
"You frown too much," I'd counter.
We were angry the way two magnets snap together. We were calm the way two old chairs leaned on each other.
The winter came earlier than I expected. Food became thin. People came knocking at our door with empty plates. I gave away more than I had meant to and then spent nights counting tins in the light of the moon and plotting.
One night, midwinter, a union of men from the village came and told us that the town was sending a machine to cut grain—a dream like one I had in my work life.
"How will we get it?" someone asked.
"Money," I said.
"Who has money?" a farmer laughed bitterly. "You?"
I thought of the small notes tucked away in my hidden space. I thought of the time it would take to send goods. I thought of the people waiting for bread.
"Give me two months," I said. "Let me try."
They laughed, but they also feared my stubbornness.
I took out sugar one day and traded it for a crate of seed. I gave that seed away to women who would plant and not sell. I bought a pair of sheep with a bar of soap and a sack of corn. I made tiny lines of credit for poor families and told them to repay in hens, not money. I used my secret store for what money would not buy: trust.
Brady watched. He put his arms around me once when the wind bit hard and said, "Do not die for pride."
"I am not dying," I said.
"You are not immortal," he said. "And I would like you to be around."
"Then keep watching," I dared.
He did. He watched like a man who keeps a lamp close.
Spring brought promises. I had saved enough to buy a little machine, not the giant harvest machine we dreamed of, but a small threshing box from the town. It would be slow, but it would be steady. The village cheered. They remembered the little things I had done.
And then the trouble came from where I had least expected.
The city gentleman, Denis McCoy, had not left the story. He came back with a group of men who said they were from a co-op. He wanted to buy the rights to the land and the produce. He spoke smoothly and his words dripped like honey. He looked at our tiny kitchen and then at me.
"You have a good mind for trade," he said. "I can help you build something bigger. We can open a small store in town."
I felt the old itch. The old life whispered of bright lights and ledgers. I almost said yes.
"Do not trust him," Brady said quietly that evening. He sat across from me and his eyes were dark as the river.
"Why?" I asked. "He offers money."
"Money has strings," he said. "It ties you to people whose hands you cannot see."
"What do you know?" I snapped.
"I know this," he said slowly. "He speaks of building and gives little. He will take much."
I stared at his hands, the scar on his thumb. I remembered how he had saved me again and again. I felt the safety of his silence like a coat.
"No," I said. "We will do this our way."
He exhaled and smiled just enough. "Good."
Denis left angry. He said we were fools, and the men he had with him called us ignorant. Villagers who loved the idea of city money hesitated. I saw the old hunger in their eyes. I arranged a meeting in the square and spoke up.
"Listen," I said. "If we sign with him, he will own the name, not us. He will take what we make and give us nothing but promises. Two months with him will be worse than ten years without him."
"You don't even know how to count his money," someone said.
"Maybe," I admitted. "But I know this village. I know what the cold looks like. I know how hunger smells. I won't sell that for a shiny building."
We did not sign. The village voted with their feet. They chose slow work over fast silk. They trusted me because of the jars of sugar I had given, and because I had once put myself between them and a man with a knife.
Brady stood at that meeting and said nothing. Later he came to my house with two cups of boiled chicory and a small paper square.
"For your stubbornness," he said. "It will get you into trouble."
"Maybe," I smiled, taking the cup.
He did not stay for long. But he left his hand on the back of my chair for a full minute like a pledge.
"We're not the same," he said then, voice low. "You will leave this place when... when you can. Or you will try to change it. Either way, do not lose yourself in the ways of other men. Stay Ella."
"I am Ella now," I told him. "And I also have Lin in me. I will not forget either."
He looked at me like you look at a carved thing getting worn smooth by hands. "Don't let this place bend you to lies," he said. "Keep what you are."
"I will," I promised.
The harvest came. The little threshing box did its slow steady work. No city man walked away with our grain. People ate. Babies grew thicker in the face. Children laughed again.
And Brady—he began to notice small things. I painted the child's chair in the schoolhouse a bright blue using a bit of paint I had hidden. He fixed the school's broken beam with his hands and some secret knots. He sat, in the evenings, by the well and taught the slow ones how to sharpen knives for less waste.
One night, after I had baked a small cake with my barred sugar, I sat on the porch and he walked up quietly and then sat next to me.
"Do you ever think of before?" he asked.
"Often," I said. "I had a whole life of counting and lights and noise."
"What do you miss?" he asked.
"People who ask you polite questions about the weather," I said. "And a coffee that is hot and bitter and burns the tongue."
He laughed that low laugh. "I will learn to bring you that coffee. But not the kind that burns you."
I turned my face toward his. "Do you ever think you want to go back? To a place with a door and a lock and not so much water?"
"No," he said. "I have a place here. And the river is home to me. But I do like the taste of your cake."
"Is that all?" I teased.
"Mostly all." He didn't smile often. But he smiled like sunrise on a fold of water.
We grew closer in slow things. He would sometimes leave me a comb on the table. I would tie my hair in a better way. He would cut my hair blunt and then smooth the ends with his big hands. I felt his fingers and they felt careful.
One day, a rumor came: a man from the county office would travel to the town. He was looking for people who made an honest living. I took this as a chance to ask for seed money for the co-op we were building.
The man came, suit stiff and face soft. He asked questions. He looked at the pile of jars and at my small ledger I had begun to keep. I answered in short words. I told him of the threshing box and of how we planned to buy a better machine. He nodded.
"Small store in town?" he asked.
"No," I said. "We want a mill we control. We want to sell wheat for fair price."
He looked at Brady. "And you, Mr. Stevens? Will you help?"
He nodded and said, "Yes."
"Good," I said.
He gave us a small loan.
I cried when the town cheque arrived. Jacqueline pressed a rough cloth to my wet face and laughed.
"You do good," she said.
"No," I said. "We do good."
Brady watched from the doorway, hands in his pockets. When I looked at him, he nodded like men who finally make peace with a decision.
Spring became summer. We started making plans big and small. The shop in town remained a distant flicker. The real thing was the machine, the seed bank, the school supplies.
I began to dream of a chain of small stores in my mind, not for myself but for the village. I wanted each town to have a place where people could buy seeds and tools and not be cheated. It was the city dream. It helped me sleep.
One evening a young soldier, who had once been shy and then confident, arrived from his station. He called me by name and said he had a letter for Jacqueline. He came with a group who had to stay. I took them soup and a spare blanket. He spoke about the world outside, beyond the county roads, and how it was changing.
He—he was not Brady. He was not my hero.
But I realized something as I sat with Brady in the kitchen that night under a thin lamp.
I did not want to leave anymore. Not to a city. Not to a mall. I wanted this village and town and the slow change we were making. I wanted a man who would stand with me and not necessarily save me from every problem, but who would stay beside me through most of it.
"Brady," I said that night, voice small like a hidden candle. "Will you stay?"
He paused. His hand trembled as he put down the cup. He looked like a man unraveling plans built in his chest.
"I will stay," he said, slowly. "But not because you ask. Because I want what is here. Because you are here."
My chest burst open in a clever, young way. "You could have told me sooner."
"I know." He rubbed the back of his neck like a boy. "I hated the idea of needing someone. But I have learned that needing is not weakness. It is being honest."
I laughed and then I cried, and he held me like he held a rescued bird—gentle and afraid to break.
We did kiss, clumsy and warm, pressed between the stove and a stack of old boards. It felt like a small crime and also like a prayer.
People watched later. Not all of them approved. But many did, because I had built trust and because Brady had already saved a few of them twice. They saw a new pair: a woman who had ideas and a man who had hands to make them real.
We married in the old way, with a small crowd and more laughter than tears. Jacqueline cried and cried, and I gave her a jar of city candy I had kept for a year. She tasted it and closed her eyes wide.
"Good," she said. "You did it."
Brady stood steady next to me. He wore a clean shirt and a grin like a secret. He whispered, "You are mine."
"I know," I said. "Don't be cruel."
"I won't," he said. "But I will be honest. You will drive me mad."
"I plan on it," I admitted.
Years later, the chain idea became something. It was small and real. Not shiny like the city, but honest. We opened a small co-op run by the villagers. People traded produce and got fair prices. Children played in the yard. The river kept its voice.
One spring day, Jacqueline found an old wooden stool Brady had carved in secret and left on my porch. He had carved our initials in the underside, small and careful. He had used a tiny, old spoon from my space to mark them. The spoon was from the city and had a small logo.
"How did you know to make this?" I asked.
He shrugged. "You sat once on my bench and said you liked that the wood fit your legs. I thought you should have it."
We both laughed. The sound felt like bread rising.
I still had my space. I still kept one shelf of canned milk and sugar for emergencies. I kept a notebook with numbers and names. I taught the children to read. I taught the men to bargain when a buyer came. I taught the women how to stir a pot of canned milk into sticky cakes.
And at night, when the village was quiet and the only light shone from the small lamp in my kitchen, Brady would come and lay his head on my shoulder.
"Do you miss the city sometimes?" he would ask.
"Sometimes," I would say. "But I like you better. You smell like wood and honesty, and you save me from snakes."
He would say, "I do not want to be some story. I want to be your life."
"Then be it," I would smile.
We learned the slow art of love. We bored the villagers with our small, private fights. We fought about chicken feed and about whether the baby needed more blankets. We made up over tea and by the river. We built a life on a stack of small promises.
The last scene is a small, perfect thing that belongs only to us.
It was the river's edge at dusk. I had taken a jar of sugar to give to Jacqueline. The porch smelled of wood smoke. Brady had carved a new lid for my small cupboard. He came down the path and handed me a small wooden spoon.
"For the kitchen," he said.
I turned it over. I read my name carved into it—E. Shaw. And a date. And a small bird. My chest filled.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
He pointed at the sparrow that watched us from a fence post.
"I made it," he said simply. "Like everything else."
I looked at his face. The sky bled red and gold. The river sang.
"Promise me you'll keep carving," I said.
"I promise," he said, and then he sealed it with a touch to my forehead.
We lived on the slow edge of change. I still kept my small secret store locked away for emergencies, and I hid one small paper from my old life—a receipt with the name of the big market where I had once worked—beneath the wooden spoon in my drawer. I kept that sliver of my old life like a talisman.
And when old men who had once yelled and spat now walked to the co-op and nodded to Brady as he pounded the nails in our new shelves, I would pinch the wooden spoon and remember everything.
"Don't ever leave me," I told him once at midnight. "Or I will turn into the original girl's ghost and haunt you."
He smiled in the dark. "I will stay," he said.
Outside, the river hit the stones in a line that sounded like a slow, steady heartbeat. The wooden spoon lay at my hand, and I held Brady's field-worn hand in the other.
We had made a life from sugar and stubbornness and the steady hands of a gruff man who answered to the name Brady Stevens.
And I, Ella Shaw—who had tasted two centuries of living and learned the slow trade of care—felt the kind of small, long happiness that was hard to sell but easy to keep.
The End
— Thank you for reading —