Sweet Romance14 min read
I Woke Up in Her Story — I Lied, I Loved, I Stayed
ButterPicks14 views
I woke up when someone shoved me against a wall and snarled a single word that sounded like it belonged in somebody else's life.
"Get out," the tall boy said. "You hear me?"
I tasted plaster and something bitter. My head was fuzzy; for a long beat I thought I was still dreaming. Two boys stared down at me — one tall and fierce, one softer, small as if the world had been kinder to him. The taller one had water on his sleeve like someone had just been splashed. For some reason my brain lit on a name.
"Chloe?" the taller one spat. "What's wrong with you? Stay away from Zack. Stay away or it'll be worse than a wall bruise."
"Chloe?" I mouthed, though that wasn't right. The name in my chest was a stitched thing. "My name's—"
"You trying to be funny?" he said. "Don't 'my name is' me."
I blinked. My pulse did a funny little skip. I should have known my life was broken, because a line from a book I'd read until midnight last week slid into place: I wasn't me anymore. I was the mean girl. The villain. The one everyone loved to hate.
I swallowed. "I'm not... I'm not the person you think."
The boys left, and I spent the next hour replaying the scene like a terrible movie.
The book I had been devouring — a messy, delicious novel of brotherhood and quiet, stubborn affection — had an awful villainess called Zhou Qiqi who tormented two brothers, Finnian and Zack. The villainess's end was as ugly as her actions; the book had made me cheer when fate finally delivered her fall. Now my fingers flexed in a life that belonged to a woman I had only just started to despise in print.
"No," I told the empty hallway. "Not today."
I decided on a plan as clunky as it was simple: make Finnian and Zack like me enough to keep me safe. If I could be kind — really kind, not the stage-acting kindness I'd practiced in theatre class — maybe they'd stop the people who'd throw me into walls. At the very worst, I could survive this character's fate by changing it.
Two hours later I stood at a door labeled with a number and knocked.
"Who?" a voice asked from inside.
I swallowed and used every soft string of voice I knew. "Um. It's Chloe. Can I... can I talk?"
Footsteps. The door opened on Finnian's shadow first; then he crouched and looked at me like I was an insect.
He was taller than I'd imagined. Up-close his jaw was stark; his eyes were the color of storm water. He didn't smile much. He frowned.
"Zhou Qiqi, what now?" he said, annoyance like armor.
"Finnian—" Zack's voice came from behind him. "What's wrong?"
"Get away from her." Finnian's voice was dangerous in the way a quiet thing can be.
"Please," I begged, and I fell to my knees and grabbed Finnian's leg. "Please forgive me. I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I'm stupid. Please."
Zack's face went slack. Finnian's eyes softened just a shade.
"You're pretending," Finnian said.
"I am not," I cried. "I'll do whatever. I'll—I'll mop the floor. I'll leave you breakfast. Please, just this once—finish listening."
He looked between his brother and me. Then, with the single, small motion that made him dangerous, he said, "I forgive you."
"Thank you, Finnian." I leaped up and, like the amateur actor I once was, I offered a towel I'd brought. The towel in my hand had been a prop in my plan, but inside it rustled something genuine I hadn't expected: relief.
This, I thought, was the first small, ridiculous victory. If I could make them trust me, maybe I could rewrite the parts of a book that had already been printed.
Days blurred after that. I learned the rhythm of their household: Zack always early, yawning and shy in the mornings; Finnian mostly silent, a winter-shelf of a person until something he wanted melted the ice. I left small things: a bowl of millet porridge, a sandwich, a bandage. I sat with them, letting the sound of their presence linger like a lullaby. My lines were less acting now and more practice at being kinder than the woman in the book had ever been.
"Zack, come eat," I'd call cheerfully.
"Thanks," Zack would say, and he would eat like someone filling a hole.
Finnian watched me. Sometimes his glance was a chisel scraping at whatever statue he'd built to keep feelings out. He would stand near the doorway and watch me feed his brother as if private things were being unpacked in public. Once, simple as breath, Finnian stole a bite from a sandwich I gave to Zack, lifting the plastic-wrapped piece to his lips. His fingers brushed mine. I felt heat like a match struck.
"Try it," I said, smaller than I'd meant to be.
He did. "It's good."
It startled me how my chest clenched. This was—dangerous. I told myself I was only making friends. I told myself I was only changing destiny.
But fate, like a petulant child, has a sense of irony. When you go looking to soften a story's edges, the world sometimes hurls worse edges at you.
He followed me out of nowhere — the man with yellowing teeth and a name that smelled of bad decisions. He was underdressed and loud and sure the world owed him something. He touched me like entitlement; he called me pet names that were mercifully unrepeatable. "You're mine, Qiqi," he said once.
He became my first real terror. He called when I left the house. He stepped out of alleys. I told myself to stay calm. I brought my phone and a gumption that felt thin as tissue paper.
One afternoon he grabbed me into a side alley. "You owe me," he snarled.
"You've got the wrong woman," I said.
He laughed and shoved me. A beam of sunlight cut away as if embarrassed. When I tried to scramble free, he grabbed my collar and pulled me back. I couldn't breathe. The world narrowed to the smell of damp brick and the revulsion in his eyes.
I thought about Finnian. I thought about Zack. I thought about the book and the final chapters that would make my bones ache if I let them.
And then the world burst open with Finnian's voice.
"Let her go."
The man turned, and the face that looked at him was the kindest thing I'd never expected to see again. Finnian moved like a machine capable of simple violence. He grabbed the man's arm, used his weight, and the man crumpled. When he swung and missed, Finnian's other hand caught a swing and redirected it until the man lay still and ugly on the ground. Finnian had a way of being precise that read as cruelty until you noticed the steadiness in how he put people in their place.
"Move," Finnian said, standing with one foot on the aggressor's chest. "This is your one chance."
"You're going to tell the cops?" the man gasped.
Finnian's voice was a flat surface. "No," he said. "I'm going to tell you to disappear."
The man stammered and fled.
Finnian turned to me. "Are you okay?"
I nodded like a child. "Thank you."
He crouched and wrapped me in the same big, awkward hug he'd used once when I had tripped in public — the one that said he could and would and had. "Don't go anywhere alone," he said.
"I won't," I whispered.
After that, a thread became a rope. Finnian's guarding was not just fists and sharp words. It was in the way he slowed when he walked near me, how he longed to be the shield I didn't deserve. It was in the small things: a wrapped sandwich in his bag for me, the surgical band-aid he always had, the way he offered his jacket when a bus wind threatened my hair.
And then — absurdly, violently — he kissed me.
It happened in a moment I had been practicing not to want. Our faces were close and the world was a hush and then lips pressed against mine with an urgency that could not be staged. He kissed like someone trying to anchor himself to land. For a beat I was frozen, then my hands curled up against his shirt without really knowing why.
"Answer me," he said against my mouth when he pulled back. "Are you my sister? Or are you the play actor who always knows what to say?"
"Neither," I breathed. "I'm me. I swear. I—"
He didn't let me finish. "I don't want you to be 'me' or 'a role'," he said softly. "I want you."
Something in my chest unclipped.
But life, merciless and busy, kept moving. I had thought surviving the book's early stations would be the hard part. The book had more chapters than either of us expected.
I was not only living with Finnian and Zack; I was living under the shadow of my past mistake — the joke that Qiqi once had a boyfriend who did things like call and threaten. That "boyfriend" was not done with me. Worse, my own history outside this borrowed life tugged at me.
In the "real" life I'd left — the life of Chloe Carter, the drama student who'd nodded off reading novels at three a.m. — I'd been in a hospital bed, hit by a car. I woke twice: first, as Zhou Qiqi inside a novel; later, as Chloe in a hospital room with my real mother crying and the room smelling of disinfectant. The memories had braided into one long collage. I kept thinking of Finnian's hands and the way his voice had steadied me under a wet sky. I kept thinking of how life divides and stitches itself.
Time slid. Years flowed by compressed in daily living. I helped Finnian at the company when my "uncle" — the man who'd raised me in this reality — passed away. Grief came with paperwork and cold hands. Predators smelled weakness. Relatives who had only ever searched pockets circled the vacant land like vultures. Men with suits and hollow smiles offered me "help" and "management." They wanted my father's desk and signature and power.
They were what you call opportunists — vultures posing as distant family. They knocked on our door. Finnian's jaw became a thing I wanted to break for his sake. I wanted to set a bomb under their schemes: to show the world they were ugly.
I asked Finnian to stand beside me at a company meeting organized for "family shareholders." He looked at me, the line of his mouth set.
"Chloe," he said quietly, "you sure you want to stand up there?"
"Yes," I said. "This is the right place for them to fall."
We arranged the meeting. The boardroom smelled of polished wood and nervous cologne. The relatives filed in, jewel-bright and false. Cameras picked up shiny smiles; the small crowd of employees circled like a jury. I took the stage like a woman walking into winter.
"Why are you up?" a cousin hissed as I sat down.
"Because I'm done being quiet," I said simply.
I had a file in my hands. Finnian had put everything together: bank statements, messages, signed orders that were double-signed, a paper trail so neat it would shame a calligrapher. The room hummed with small conspiracies.
"Folks," I said, and the room fell. "You've been very generous with your interest in my father's company. You've offered to 'help' so often it looked sincere. But I think it's important to look at the paper trail."
I watched their faces. Some were carefully blank. Others tightened like fists.
"You moved funds," I said, and opened the file. "You arranged shell accounts and wrote invoices for work never done. You suggested 'restructuring' because you could get more. You called it help. You called it stewardship. But numbers don't lie."
One of them stood. "That's libel. Who gave you these—"
"Finnian," I said, and he stood. "These numbers. We audited everything."
He placed printouts on the table. They were small. They were clean. The exchange turned the air metallic.
"Are you going to press charges?" hissed a woman wearing too much perfume.
Finnian's voice was a blade. "Yes. And you'll be in front of your neighbors and the press when you answer for the misappropriation."
I told them all the truth bit by bit. I described the night a "business opportunity" turned into a demand to sign away dividends. I spoke of calls at two a.m. asking for signatures. I showed texts that threatened my father. I watched them take color from their cheeks. A cousin who had always been loud began to tremble.
Outside, a small crowd had gathered. Someone from our tiny local paper had been tipped off and a camera operator stood at the window, capturing the slow collapse.
"You're going to humiliate us," someone cried.
"Maybe you should have thought of that before you stole," I said.
Then the best part: people who had spoken badly of my family, who had turned away when my father needed help, those same people came forward with statements on our side. The crowd shifted. The relatives' faces turned blank as if erased.
By the time the meeting ended, humiliation had done its work. They were not arrested that day, but the rumor spread like rain. Board members who had once offered smiles cut off communication. The relatives left with their dignity in pieces and their phones ringing with lawyers. They would answer in court; they would lose face publicly: the press traced the accounts and printed the story. The village grumbled and the creditors called. They had intended to take us; instead, the world watched them fall.
It was a public takedown. It lasted days. I watched the threads of their reputations unravel. People I had once seen at the gate sent me cold, embarrassed apologies. No one applauded; people simply looked different. That was enough. The law would do the rest.
But destiny is not content with one public fall.
Weeks later, weeks that should have been quiet, I walked into a perfect storm: my intended wedding day. I had thought I'd put the novel life behind me. Instead I'd slipped into another trap — I had almost married a careful man named Gage Sokolov, a sensible man with a banker's training and a taste for neat shirts. I married because I wanted to move on, because Finnian had said he'd help my father and because I was tired of being frightened. He was the safe shore.
But safe shores can hide reefs.
On a meaningless, gray afternoon before paperwork and flowers, a friend called frantic.
"Chloe, you need to get to Hotel Meridian now," Melissa said, breathless. "He's there with a girl. I think he—"
My footsteps were quick. My heels clicked through an alley like a countdown. When I reached the hotel, I wanted to be brash, but what I felt first was tired. I had rehearsed many things: apologies, the public meeting, standing up in court if I had to. I had not rehearsed humiliation in a bridal gown.
I saw him as soon as he stepped out: Gage, arm linked with a younger woman, her face flushed, lips glossy. Small laugh; the kind that means something private happened in public. They walked like thieves.
"Stop." I don't remember who said it first. People turned. The woman with Gage flinched like a secret had been shouted.
"Chloe?" he said, as if the proper reaction to being caught with another was mild surprise.
"Are you kidding me?" Melissa hissed beside me. "This is my friend."
Gage's face turned the color of cold porcelain. He tried to explain, hands fluttering. "It was nothing. We were—"
"Your 'nothing' is exactly my problem," I said, loud enough for those waiting at the hotel cafe and those on the sidewalk to hear.
"You promised me," he stammered.
"You promised whose version?" I walked toward them. People cleared a circle, because the air around scandal is always interesting. Cameras lift themselves, phones lift. In seconds there were dozens of eyes on us.
Gage tried to come closer, pleading. The girl watched like someone who had finished a small heist and didn't know where to go now.
"Tell them," I said.
"Tell them what?" he asked, sweat like little beads on his forehead.
"Tell them you planned to be with her." I reached into my bag and produced the texts I had found — explicit, cold, casual. "Tell them you told her to meet at Meridian. Tell them how you said you'd be 'free' for me next month. Tell them how you laughed and called me 'chaste' the day you bought the ring."
His face went raw, a crumpling thing. He had not expected a public reading. He lunged for my phone. Hands grabbed him. Melissa and a small knot of strangers formed a ring.
"Stop," he begged. "Chloe, everyone, please—it's not fair—"
"Not fair?" I said. "You were never honest. You married a concept — convenience. You slept with some stranger while planning our wedding. There are people here who will remember your face now. There are friends who will speak, and there's a record."
The hotel bellman, who had been watching like a sleepy witness, took out his phone. A woman at a cafe began to record. The girl's face crumpled.
"You come here and beg," I told him. "Then the story will be: he cheated, he cried, he wanted forgiveness. But you don't get to be selfish and then have people fix your life."
Someone from the cafe shouted, "Show us the texts!"
"I'll show everything," I said, and I turned the screen so cameras could see it: timestamps, the careless euphemisms, the plans. People leaned forward like a smile. It's a cruel audience that loves confirmation of betrayal.
Gage went white, pleading now for empathy. A man in a suit moved closer. "Sir, will you come with me? Please."
He tried to argue he had claimed he was drunk, he had said it was a mistake. The woman he had been with began to sob silently, the mask of triumph slipping into a small horror.
"You're done," Melissa said. "I can't believe I vouched for you."
The crowd murmured. Someone who used to work at the firm where Gage kept his accounts shook her head. People who'd once been friendly now shifted politely away. The woman he had used sat down, shoulders shaking. She was human after the fact. Gage's voice shrank. He asked for privacy. No one offered it.
The fallout was not one of violence. It was something worse in the world we live in: social death. His job, which had advantages and power, had people who valued reputation. They called their partners. Within forty-eight hours, his board had been informed. The hotel had footage. Lawyers began to circle his accounts. Old friends wrote messages saying 'sorry for the misunderstanding' — the translation of "we withdraw support."
He began to get messages from people he didn't know politely ending their ties. His mother called and asked if it was true. He swallowed bile and texted me every kind of apology a conscience can stump out. He lost an engagement with a woman he had treated like a convenience. He was not arrested; he was not humiliated with crude violence. He was stripped of that which he cared for: credibility.
What felt like justice to me was a public thing: the truth told where people could see it. People made room for me. I did not shout for blood; I wanted consequences. The world complied with small, social punishments that would be worse than a single slap.
When the dust settled, I felt hollow and annoyingly stronger. But Finnian watched me, and when the cameras dimmed and phones put away like knives, he stepped closer like a harbor.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
I stared at him and realized — I didn't want the band-aid of a safe, convenient marriage. I wanted him. I'd been trying to trick fate into sparing me, but my own heart had begun to misfire to an alarm I hadn't expected.
That evening, Finnian sat with me at a tiny kitchen table. His fingers folded into mine. The house around us smelled like porridge and a quiet life. He said simply, "You promised me you'd stay."
"I did," I answered. "I said I would."
"So stay," he said. "Not because I told you, but because—" He searched for a word and let the silence finish it.
"Because we want to," I finished for him. My lungs could finally remember how to breathe without holding.
He leaned in and kissed me again, slower this time, as if memorizing lines.
Months became a life. We rebuilt the company into something less predatory and more honest. I watched Finnian the way a person watches dawn: with reverence and a little fear that it would end.
We had moments small and large that stitched softness into our lives. He once laughed and offered me a bite of a sandwich he'd saved, and the world made a small, joyful noise in my ribcage. He took my bruises like instructions, kept me behind him when the world was mean. Once in a hospital corridor he kissed my forehead and said, "Stay."
Those heartbeats — a hand reaching, a jacket given, a small private kiss — became my daily religion.
We married not with a public, windy wedding but under a small arch Finnian built himself. After everything we'd both been through, it felt like an agreement between survivors. People watched. Zack cried. Melissa came and clapped too loud. Francesca, who had once been someone I worried about, smiled with gentle mischief — she had her own bright life with Zack's cousin, it turned out. The world, in the end, understands some stories are salvageable.
On our last morning as single people, Finnian and I stood in the small garden behind the house. I had an old, torn piece of fabric in my pocket — part of a skirt I'd ripped in a ridiculous, terrified moment months before. He smiled when I pulled it out: "Your battle relic," he teased.
I tied it to the fence like a small flag. The peach-scented soap I'd grown used to — the memory of that smell had been the strangest comfort in all the wrong places — was left in a cup on the windowsill. The house hummed with small, ordinary sounds: the kettle, a bus rumbling, someone's radio. It was the kind of morning you could bottle.
"Promise?" he asked, voice low.
"I promise," I said, placing my hand over his. "No lies. No running. No pretending."
He pressed his forehead to mine. "Then let's start properly." He kissed me, gentle as rain.
When I think back, there are a few frames that will stay separate: the wall bruise, the first brutal rescue, the public exposure of the men who tried to own me, Finnian's first wild kiss in my bedroom, the hospital white and the smell of disinfectant when I woke back to myself. But the one thing that will pinpoint this exact life — the stamp that makes it mine — is the peach scent he once wrapped around his collar on purpose, and the tiny rag of skirt I tied on that fence. The smell and the torn fabric are both ridiculous and sacred.
We are not perfect. We have arguments and quiet reconciliations. Sometimes the past returns in a message or in the shadow of a man who thinks he can still move people by threats. Each time, Finnian stands and I remember the public places where truth was the weapon. Each time, I breathe and answer him.
"Are you ready?" he asks, since life keeps asking that question.
"Yes," I say, the word firm now, and the peach scent curls through the kitchen window, and I know I'm home.
The End
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