Sweet Romance14 min read
"I Married Him to Prove a Point"
ButterPicks11 views
I was in the makeup chair when Daxton Burgess called.
"You're back from Shanghai?" I asked into the speaker, letting my voice be soft enough to keep the room calm.
"Uh… Ariel, I'm sorry," he said after a pause. "I may not be able to get back for a while."
Outside, Kylee Conti and Hank Acosta argued about how to tie the balloons. Kylee's laughter threaded through the studio like a ribbon. Hank's curses sounded like little fireworks.
"How long?" I asked.
"Maybe… longer than I said," Daxton answered. "Can we delay the wedding? I'll have my parents handle the guests. When I get back we'll throw an even bigger celebration."
I smiled at my reflection, the false smile of someone learning to dissemble. My fingers found the band on my left hand and rolled it until the diamond flashed like a question.
"Okay," I said. "We'll postpone."
A woman's voice answered him on the line before he could say more.
"Daxton, how long do we have to quarantine in Sanya?" The voice was honey and heat.
My smile curdled. "You're with Zhao—?" I began.
The call cut off.
I pressed my palm to my mouth, watched the mascara bead on the edge of my eye. The makeup artist, a big-hearted professional who had been hired at great cost, looked at me with an awkward sympathy that made my cheeks hot.
"Ariel," Kylee called from the door, "do you want us to go help with the venue?"
"Not yet," I said. "Wait a minute. I need to make a call."
I dialed Flynn James before Daxton's message could appear on my phone. Flynn answered unpredictable as always.
"Well, well. New bride calling?" he drawled.
"Where did you meet Freja Weber?" I asked without preamble.
"Shanghai," Flynn said, as if sharing the weather. "Why?"
I felt something sharp press into my ribs like a hidden nail.
"Did Daxton go with her?"
"What? No—" Flynn swore under his breath. "Shit—he went with her."
I could feel the room tilt for a moment. My body didn't know whether to collapse or to strike.
"Flynn," I whispered. "If Daxton doesn't come back—would you—"
He cut through me with a laugh that was half sympathy, half mischief. "If Daxton doesn't come back, I'll marry you tomorrow."
I laughed before I could stop it. It sounded small and bright.
"Deal," I said. "Then be at my wedding tomorrow."
Flynn had always been the kind of boy who said grand things for the pleasure of saying them. He had been my companion, my partner in the childhood mischief that had scabbed over into something like love. We had always taken turns saving one another from the trivial disasters of growing up. He was reckless and honest when Daxton was careful and secretive. He joked about building me a house of diamonds and then acted embarrassed when I pretended to take him seriously.
That night, while the bridal party hummed around me like a hive, I sent a short message to Daxton: "Tell your relatives the wedding is on. My side will handle it."
Then I wrote in the family chat: "Daxton Burgess and his ex are stuck in quarantine in Sanya. Unknown return date. Keep this quiet. Change the groom's name to Flynn James. The wedding proceeds tomorrow."
The reaction was instantaneous. Hank slammed into the room like a cannonball and demanded answers, but I was already in the mirror, forcing tranquility into my face.
"Why?" Hank breathed. "You're going to humiliate the Burgess family."
"Yes," I said, and the word was clean and certain. "I want to humiliate them. Let it be on record that the Burgess son stood me up on the brink of our wedding and brought his ex instead."
Kylee put a hand on my shoulder. "Ariel, are you sure about this?"
"I'm sure about making a point," I said. "I'll do it my way."
Growing up in the same regiment block and the same social web with Flynn and Daxton meant our lives overlapped. Daxton had always been tidy: good grades, clear plans, a mask of composure. Flynn was wild-eyed, athletic, always ready to go crashing into trouble. Both of them had grown up around the same adults who expected them to be proper men. Both had been competing for space in my life in different ways, though only one of them ever considered courting the title of "my fiancé" with a straight face.
I had loved Daxton in a quiet, lifelong way. I had believed in the small kindnesses that formed the invisible scaffolding of a life together — his way of taking off his jacket and warming my shoulders in winter; the way he could remember the exact way I liked my coffee. It had felt like a steady, definite love. Until it wasn't.
That night, the memory of my eighteenth birthday blazed back: him leading Freja into our family drawing-room and announcing, "This is my girlfriend, Freja Weber," while friends and elders whispered and my jaw went slack. Flynn had found me on the roof, held me while I wept, and said, "If he leaves you, consider me."
That private promise had been my secret comfort for years, something to laugh about later. It turned out promises like that were invitations.
The next day, the house thrummed. Guests arrived because Baidai orders were orders and no matter the drama families don't cancel good food and formalities. Daxton's parents arrived with faces like closed shutters. They sat like statues, offering the decorum the world expected.
My phone was in Kylee's hands. I had asked her to screen calls. When Daxton's name came through, she didn't let it ring; she blocked it and taped the phone to the dressing table. I could feel the weight of the ring on my hand and let it warm my finger as if it were an omen I could wear.
I looked at Flynn across the room. He was dryly handsome in an understated suit, an island of calm mischief. "You ready to go?" he mouthed at me.
I mouthed back, "Yes."
At the altar, when the band struck up an old song we had all known since childhood, the door at the back of the room opened. Daxton stood framed in the doorway like a confession. He had returned from Sanya, thin, tired. Behind him Freja hesitated and then came forward, all lightness as if nothing were broken.
The room inhaled. Faces turned.
"Stop," Daxton said to the silence. "Ariel—"
I walked to the front very slowly, every step measured. My dress swept the floor and whispered the sound of years. I stopped in front of him.
"Daxton," I said, and it was my voice, not a stage whisper. "Thank you for coming."
He looked as if he'd been struck. "Ariel, please, we can—"
"Please," I echoed, and then I turned to the crowd. "Everyone, I have an announcement."
The murmur rose like summer wind.
"Flynn James and I are married," I declared. "We registered yesterday."
A few gasps, a little laughter that sounded like breaking glass. Daxton's mouth opened and closed like a fish.
"She lied!" he said, voice fraying. "You can't—"
"Actually," Flynn cut in smoothly, "she didn't. We did."
"Flynn—" I warned.
"He told us last night," Kylee said, stepping forward and speaking to ears that had heard everything. "And he arrived at the registry with proof. They are married."
Daxton went white. His posture was all flinch and unknit purpose. "Ariel, you can't—"
"I did," I said. "And you brought your ex to my wedding eve, and you lied to me. That is what you can't do."
Daxton's face folded through several colors: disbelief, anger, a sudden, animal humiliation. His eyes found Freja's and there was a brief exchange that made the room lean in.
"No," Freja said quickly, "I didn't—"
"You did," Daxton choked. "I tried to explain."
"Explain what? That you couldn't be honest? That you'd rather be with her in quarantine than keep your promise?" I paced, letting every eye follow me like a string pulling taut. "We were supposed to be wed tomorrow, and you thought the proper reaction was to go with your ex. Do you know what that looks like from the outside?"
He swallowed. "I— it wasn't like that."
"Then tell them," I said. "Tell them now."
He opened his mouth. The thing that came out was pointless, a tangle of "I didn't" and "I meant." The words were small, failing.
A woman near the back began to cry, quietly, as if the sound could be smuggled under the table and not noticed. An old friend of my father's pressed her hand to her mouth; gossip had a way of sharpening in public. Flash bulbs flicked like insects.
"Daxton," Flynn said, merciless in his casualness, "did you leave Ariel for Freja? Or did you bring Freja and expect Ariel to wait?"
Daxton stumbled past anger, approaching shame, then denial. The room watched the slow fall.
"I—" he started. "I went to see her. Circumstances happened. I was trying to be responsible. Ariel, please—"
"Responsible?" I repeated. "Responsible is telling me what was happening. Responsible is not expecting me to hold a wedding in the air while you chase someone else's tail."
The elderly aunt to my right, flushed with indignation, spoke up loudly, like a gavel. "This is outrageous! The Burgess name won't be disgraced like this."
Daxton's father, who had sat with the stiffness of a carved legend, stood. He looked at his son with something stranger than anger: failed belief. "Daxton," he said, quietly and fiercely, "we raised you to be better than this."
"You left me," I said. "Here." My hand lifted, and I slapped him.
The sound cut clean through the chatter. For a second the universe held breath.
"Get out," I told him. "Get out of my sight. You took our vows and made them a wager."
He crumpled like paper, an animal that cannot find its feet. "Ariel, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
I felt the crowd's mood change, like weather. The women around me rustled. Someone made a call, fingers trembling. A man across the room took a video with an upraised phone; the little rectangle glowed and recorded the downfall with indifferent hunger.
"Shame on you," murmured an older guest.
"Look at him," whispered another. "What a cad."
Daxton's composure—what little of it remained—slid off into pleading. "Forgive me," he said, voice breaking. "Please, Ariel."
"Get out," I said again. "Go home to your mother and tell her what you did."
He staggered backward, then turned, but his father's hand on his shoulder steadied him. The father looked at me, then at his son. In that moment something decisive left the elder's face: a surrender. He guided Daxton toward the door not with protectiveness but with resignation.
Outside, a small knot of guests watched them go. Someone in the street snapped photos; someone else shook their head. The town would have a new rumor by morning. The Burgess name had been pricked on a public pinboard.
Flynn stepped forward gently and took my hand when Daxton left. "You were magnificent," he murmured, as if offering a medal.
I let my fingers curl into his palm. "You were there in less than fifteen minutes," I said. He shrugged.
"I wasn't about to let him ruin this for you," Flynn said. "Besides, it was satisfying."
He meant other things with his satisfaction, private things that dipped into my chest with heat. Flynn never lacked for grand gestures. He had come as promised, honest in his unpredictability, a man whose promises were reckless and incandescent.
After the wedding was a maelstrom. Conversations rewound and spun with new angles. Daxton sent messages that went unread. Freja, who had flown back to her life like ripple on water, posted bland photos of beaches as if the mess she'd left behind was unrelated. People took sides and then took pictures for proof.
The punishment I meted out that evening wasn't the only one. It was far from the last.
Two weeks later, at a charity gala organized by families we both knew, the gossip over lunch had turned to an ugly hunger. Daxton arrived, pale and desperate. He had tried to rebuild himself in the weeks since I had slotted his absence into my life.
"Please," he whispered to me at the loggia, where people could orbit but not touch. "Can we talk?"
"Not here," I said, and the words were cool like glass. "If you want to apologize, you can do it publicly."
He looked at me then with a face like a man peering over a cliff. "Publicly?"
"Yes." I smiled with the small cruelty of someone holding a brim full of truth. "At the dinner tonight. In front of everyone who knows what it means to keep your word."
He thought it through. "I don't—"
"Then don't come," I said. "Leave this to your pride."
He came anyway.
When the banquet convened, the room shimmered with chandeliers and the noise of pretenses. I sat with my mother, who had a quiet pride like armor. Flynn was at my side, protective but patient.
The moment was simple. Midway through the dinner, I stood, and the room stilled like a theater that had been asked to listen.
"Before we continue with the program," I said, "I have something to address."
People leaned in. Cameras were out. Daxton's face was already a portrait of struggling.
"You all know Daxton Burgess," I continued, "a man I thought I could trust. He chose to prioritize another woman over the promise he made to me. He left our wedding plans to stand with his ex while I prepared to confide my life with him. He lied to me."
Someone gasped. Daxton's advisors—men who had always smoothed his way—shifted uncomfortably. He cleared his throat.
"Ariel," he said, the formality of his name like a plea. "I was stuck. It wasn't my intention—"
"It was your intention to conceal," I interrupted. "You thought that nothing who watched would matter if you took the easier path."
"You can't—" he said.
"Everyone," I said, "a decision like this demands a response. A man who abandons his promise in private must answer in public."
I had prepared this well. My brother—my cousin—Hank stood before the room with a small stack of photos. They showed messages, receipts, and flight itineraries. They showed moments Daxton thought hidden: the selfies with Freja in Sanya, the texts to her, the minutes he had promised me and then traded for silence. The room's hum shifted into a chorus of condemnation.
Daxton's face moved through stages: first disbelief, then anger, then frantic denial. "That's not—" he whispered.
"Isn't it?" I asked.
He tried stuttering defenses, words that had been honed over years into a polished toolkit. "She was in trouble. I was helping. You have to believe me."
The murmurs tightened. A woman at the head table whispered to her husband. Someone took out a phone and began filming.
"Help?" a young guest asked. "Helping is staying in communication with the person you promised to marry."
His father, who had watched most of this with a father's wounded look, finally spoke loudly enough for the table to hear. "Daxton, you made your life choices."
"Don't," Daxton said, choking on his anger. "This isn't—"
"Isn't what?" I asked. "It isn't a betrayal? Isn't a public humiliation when you pulled us into private pain?"
The guests' faces were knives. I could see pity in a few faces, not for him but for the spectacle. Daxton's hands trembled. He looked to his mother, who had adopted the look of a woman who might faint if forced to show emotion. Her eyes begged me silently for mercy. I thought of mercy and flung it away.
"Do you have anything to say?" I asked the room, gesturing wide. "Anyone? Who thinks this is forgivable?"
No one volunteered to defend him. A chorus of thin apologies and coughs replaced the silence; no one wanted to be part of his redemption.
Daxton's attempts to reclaim dignity grew more frantic. He stood, voice cracking. "I'm sorry. I'll do anything to fix this."
"Anything?" Flynn's voice, calm as winter, cut through. "Anything, including admitting you were dishonest? Including facing the fact that you didn't think enough of Ariel to be honest from the start?"
"You don't understand," Daxton said. "I—"
"I do," I said. "You thought the easiest route was to hide. That tells me everything."
He fell apart then. It was not the slow crisis of a measured man; it was a complete collapse. Daxton's face turned wet with tears. He sank into a chair like a man who had been struck.
Around him, people whispered, leaning away as if proximity might stain them. The guests at the next table pointed at the photographs and made small sounds of disgust. Phones recorded. One of the women at the neighbor table stood and walked out in a small theatrical fit of moral outrage, followed by another.
Daxton scrambled to speak to his father, to his mother, to anyone who would look like they'd weigh well on the scales of reason, but faces closed.
"Daxton," his grandfather—an old soldier of the family—said, "you have failed the better part of yourself. There are no easy roads now."
The old man's condemnation carried more weight than the gossip would. It made the room rearrange itself. People left in small knots. A few stopped at our table to cast pitying looks in Daxton's direction. One of the servers, a boy who had grown up with us and adored Flynn, muttered, "He is a shame." The server's voice ricocheted, and others repeated similar sentiments under their breath.
Daxton's unraveling had layers: his posture, that faltering stoop; his face that had been thought handsome now looking like the carefully arranged ruin of a statue. He tried to apologize to individuals—he mouthed "I'm sorry" to my mother, he begged Flynn, he reached for me—but his gestures were met with coldness. No one wanted to be the one to be seen forgiving him; shame is contagious, and people did not want to touch it.
Freja returned eventually. She moved through the corridor like someone who had escaped a storm and felt guilty at the wet footprints she left. She spoke once, low and ashamed. "I didn't mean—" she said, and nobody let her finish.
The end result of that night was not a neat punishment like public shunning alone. It was a stripping: privileges withdrawn, invitations canceled, business offers quietly rescinded. People who had once gathered for status to the Burgess name began to avoid engagements with Daxton. A few of his professional contacts excused their ties citing "scheduling conflicts." Rumors—those great currency of social life—worked faster than any legal document, and the Burgess name acquired a bruise.
Daxton's reaction was many stages. First, there was the attempt to deny. Then, when that failed, he tried to bargain—offering humbleness, offering to fix, promising public displays of contrition. When bargaining found no audience, he attempted rage, lashing out at those who wouldn't speak for him. Next came frantic apologies in small, absurd forms—flowers left at doors, messages that arrived at dawn—then a bleak, public unraveling. He tried to cling to his father, tried to find allies. Most retreated. His mother, finally, simply looked away.
The people around him changed in the way they treated him. At first there were sympathetic glances; then they hardened into avoidance. At a luncheon hosted by mutual acquaintances, a hostess said, "We won't have him at our next charity event; it's cleaner that way." Another business partner called to cancel a collaboration because "associations are everything for our brand." Daxton watched opportunities evaporate. His phone call returns dwindled to nothing.
The punishment ended, not with a court sentence, but a public estrangement rendered in slow, painful social terms. One by one, acquaintances removed their mutual pictures with him from social pages. A mother I had once known well deleted a shared family photo where Daxton was smiling; his image faded like a moral stain.
No single moment was enough. Justice in social terms is a grindstone: the persistent refusal to allow someone back into the warmth. When he finally stood on the edge where the crowd thinned to only those bound by family obligation, even there his place was frayed. He craved forgiveness at public gatherings and was told he must earn it privately. The private spaces closed too.
I watched his pride crack into pieces. He begged once more at the hospital, after he intentionally struck his own car to make me pity him, clutching at my knees. "Ariel, I'll change," he said. "I love you."
"Then start by leaving me alone," I answered. "Then start by refusing to put yourself and me in these dramas. Then start by learning shame."
He looked at me, tears in his eyes, and something in him recognized his own inability to transform. He left, and he existed then as an example of what happens when a man chooses concealment and convenience over truth.
Time went on. Flynn and I settled into the small rituals of marriage. He built me mornings and small breakfasts, the kind of domestic poetry I'd once said I never wanted. He bought me a ring to replace the hastily chosen symbol we'd used. He would, in person or in text, remove an offending mote of worry like a child picking lint.
"Sometimes," he told me late one night as he rubbed his thumbs across the soft skin of my ankle, "I smile and remember the first time you fell off the roof because you wanted to rescue a kite."
"I remember you trying to get the kite down with a fishing rod," I said. "You almost fell, too."
We laughed together. He wasn't a perfect hero who stamped out every hurt. He was a man with failings—late returns, a touch of bravado—but he learned the language of tenderness.
Once, months after the wedding, Flynn and I were walking through an autumn fair. A vendor had a small display of an antique celadon plate, a little Song dynasty-style piece that Gleamed a careful, blue-green. "Do you remember the plate?" Flynn asked, fingers lingering on the pottery.
"I do," I said. "It belonged to my grandmother's collection."
We paused, and Flynn bent low to kiss my forehead. The world, for a moment, made sense as a place where small things—an honest ring, a hand on a small waist, a mutual laugh—mattered over big gestures gone wrong.
As for Daxton, he faded from my daily life. He tried and failed to re-enter circles. The public punishment I had engineered—exposure, the banquet, the social stripping—had worked in the slow and wicked justice of gossip. He had to watch as what he had assumed would be his life moved on without him.
Once, in a late night when city lights made cages of distant houses, I received a terse message from him: "Ariel. I'm trying to fix things. Can we talk?"
I looked down at the screen and at the wedding band on my finger. Flynn was asleep beside me, breathing steady. I switched the phone to silent.
"It's over," I whispered to the dark. The ring on my hand hummed at me like settled metal. My world had narrowed to the small brightness of what we had, not the huge emptiness of promises once broken.
The End
— Thank you for reading —