Sweet Romance10 min read
My Nine Online Husbands, One Real Professor, and the Brother Who Started It All
ButterPicks11 views
I came back to my account because my brother returned my phone. When he handed it over, the friend list had nine new men.
"Pick one to bind CP with, Antonia," Cruz said. "There's a jungler, a top, they play well."
I typed a question mark slowly.
"All same city, too," Cruz added like it was the deciding factor.
I grilled him for an hour. He finally confessed, sheepish: he was bad at the game, wanted boosters, used my top-skin princess character to shout "CPDD," and picked voices he liked to carry him up the ladder.
When the team invite popped up later, one message came through from my old in-game crush.
"Need support, wanna queue?" read the screenshot he sent.
I clicked the link. The room had four King-tier players and me, hovering between Diamond and Star, sweaty-palmed and tiny.
"Hi," I typed.
"Pick a mage every time, what's the fun?" a voice flamed.
I sipped yogurt and chewed, answering with a curt "?" — how was I supposed to know they'd flame right at the opening?
I played my little support princess properly. I was keen, concentrating, fingers warming on the screen. Then the lane verbal knives started.
"Stay out of my way," said one.
"You wanna play or cry?" said another.
I took the bait and followed the jungler. He pinged retreat at the first camp. The enemy invaded. I died.
"Heh," came two cold texts: "heh."
I tossed my phone away. "What is the point of people like this?" I complained to Cruz later. He sent a voice note that made me stop breathing.
"You should see them together," he said with weird laughter. "They're your husbands."
I looked at the names flashing on my screen. Familiar IDs waved at me in-game.
"You're kidding," I typed.
"Nope."
"So they grouped up."
"So what," I typed back, trying to be brave. "It's just a game."
But it kept sliding into my real life.
A week later, Cruz DM'd me like he was poor and lonely. "Antonia, can you come see me? I'm out of living money."
I drove to his university. He ran up, embarrassed. "Don't park like this, people will stare," he hissed.
"How much do you need?" I asked.
"Actually—" he blinked. "We have a club tournament. You're already here. Play. I'll feed you dinner."
He promised his girlfriend would be there. Henley Boyle, sweet and a little shy, had those "starry eyes" and glued them to me all evening.
"Play mid," I said, handing off support.
I looked up. Four handsome men sat in a row on the opposite side of the court, like they had stepped out of a magazine. My stomach thudded: I recognized the online names on the big screen. Hassan Mendes, Garrison Blanc, Quinn Wallin, Blaise Martin. They were the ones who had been in my ranked games: my "husbands."
My brother's face fell. "I knew I shouldn't sit here."
"You're kidding," I teased. "Is your university F4 central?"
Someone looked over. "Hey, soft-minty? Isn't that the one who always plays Yao Yao?" someone joked.
The game started. My teammate list blinked. The chat filled with private invites. Hassan's message was chilly. The others pinged like they had met to trap me into an awkward corner.
"Don't run," said Quinn to my in-game avatar.
I did everything right and messed up. We lost spectacularly. Private messages slid into my inbox.
"Haven't you had enough?" Garrison typed.
"Come meet us," Blaise added playfully.
Cruz, dear idiot, typed: "Cooldown, bro. Wait for me."
And then my phone buzzed with a friend request. Levi Gibbs wanted to add me.
My breath hitched. Levi? The professor who supervised Cruz's lab interest? The one Cruz had been pining after? Cruz had pushed my account to him. Levi's message was calm.
"About Cruz's application: can we talk over dinner?"
I agreed, thinking—thank God, a grown-up meeting. Maybe this would smooth the mess.
The match the next day was a disaster. My screen blacked out in the fountain because the enemy's assassin hunted me. I stood and stared at the UI, mortified, while commentators awkwardly called it a "friendly match" blown apart.
Later, Levi asked to meet for "a chat about Cruz's academics." He looked like he always did: glasses low, precise calm, sleeves rolled, the kind of man who moved like a tide. At the restaurant he ate with the careful silence of a person who had thought through words before they left his mouth.
"Where are the others?" I asked, guilty.
"They left," he said. "Is one person not enough?"
He sounded...cold.
"Are we just discussing Cruz's studies?" I tried.
He tilted his head in a way that made me swallow. "And?"
I thought about the men who had tormented me in-game, the weird alignment of my online life with this dinner, and told the truth: "I think someone's using my account."
"Then act accordingly," Levi said. "And, Antonia—your in-game profile won't get you a scholarship. Tell Cruz to stop gambling with his life."
I laughed, forced. "I know. I know."
He stood, polite and distant. "I'll drop you home."
"Really?" I asked. "You shouldn't—"
"Then you drive," he said flatly.
As the weeks rolled, my life erected small, unavoidable moments with Levi. He messaged to check I got home. He gave cold, exact advice about Cruz's study plan. He watched me with a look that was difficult to read: a professor's care or something sharper?
The more time I spent near him, the more my defenses frayed. He was measured but not inattentive. Once he handed me a napkin when I choked on my soup and said, "Slow down," in a tone that felt like a touch.
My embarrassment grew the day our little scandal went viral. A student snapped photos—me in a professor's office with a milk tea, me in a bookshop bumping into Quinn, me laughing with Franklin Lefevre (the campus contact) — three images stitched into a mocking post: "She loves cups and men." Forum comments created caricatures of my life.
"Did you do all of this?" Levi asked when we sat down in a quiet cafe. He had a half-smile I couldn't read.
"I can explain," I said quickly. "Cruz—he's an idiot. He used my account for this mess."
He looked at my hands. "Undo it."
"How?"
"By choosing. Pick."
He didn't mean game picks. He meant me. The gardening of his gaze made my pulse skitter.
Days melted into an odd intimacy. One night after a drunken, humiliating party, I stepped out on a rooftop to breathe. Quinn was there, lean and quiet. He asked, "Are you okay?" I answered badly, "Sex of the wrong body." He said, "Understood. Good luck."
Levi found me and said, "Come with me."
"Where?" I asked, drunk on embarrassment.
"Home," he said simply, and he carried me when I tripped, a solid, single act. I felt my face press into his back and knew something different had begun.
He fed me, found a sweater that fit, and—blunt, startlingly adult—made me promise to sleep and not make foolish mistakes. He placed a hand on my knee. "You're rash," he observed. "But honest."
I said the stupid thing a person says when walls fall: "Do you—let's just be secret until Cruz finishes his exam."
He kissed me. "No," he said in the dark. "Not 'let's.' I'm tired of secrets."
We were reckless and we were honest, and in our tiny, private dawns we had a promise that felt dangerously like a future.
Then the crack happened: at a school awards meeting, a forum thread exploded. Someone had dug up the old "girl chasing three men" post. University administrators set a panel to "clarify campus conduct." The head of the panel asked Levi, bluntly, "Are you dating her?"
"I am her husband," Levi said.
The room ate his words like a dropped dish. They wanted explanation. He presented facts: Cruz's involvement, the screenshots, the students' testimonies, digital logs, meeting minutes. He stood like a man who had decided on a weapon and refused to falter.
"She is my wife," he announced. "We are engaged. That answers your question."
It should have been a PR move. It was a shield. The school accepted a statement: the doctorate process is fair; irrelevant rumors won't change academic outcomes. But the forum remained hungry, and the trolls dripped poison.
Then came the punishment scene for the bad actor. It had to be public; it had to be more than whispers. Cruz had made me the butt of a joke and had thrown me under a bus for convenience. I decided the response would not be private.
"Stand up," I told him, telling myself I wasn't trembling.
We arranged for a student assembly in the main hall: faculty, student leaders, the entire game club, and, yes, the old poster's originator. The room was full. The light felt transparent. I walked to the front, Levi beside me, his hand a steadying slab on the small of my back.
"Cruz," I said, and the hall quieted. "You used my account to fish for attention. That made me the spectacle. Today I want you to explain, to them."
He shuffled, face pale. "I—"
"Tell them," I insisted. "Tell them why you used my name, why you thought it would be funny, why you didn't think of consequences."
He swallowed. "I wanted to climb ranks. I wanted—" His voice shook. "I didn't think you'd get hurt."
My heart gave an ugly, raw lurch. "You didn't think I'd be humiliated? People in my city saw my face this weekend. My reputation is on their lips. People whispered you opened my account and called me—"
"Cruz," Levi cut in, voice cold. "Spell it out."
He looked smaller under Levi's look. Students murmured.
"I... used her account to contact players," Cruz admitted. "I told them to 'CPDD' to boost me. They used Antonia as bait to... amuse themselves. I thought they'd be gentle. I thought they'd play. It backfired."
"Backfired," echoed a voice. "You think embarrassment is 'backfire'?"
Cruz flinched. "No—"
"Sit down," I told him. "Tell it all to them."
He stammered through the rest. He admitted the screenshots he'd taken had gone up the chain. He admitted he had laughed about the forum comments with his friends. He admitted to lying to me about why he needed money. He admitted he had been casually cruel—an adolescent thinking the internet hides consequences.
Levi asked a faculty member to bring up the digital logs. The hall watched as timestamps traced Cruz's every decision: friend requests, message chains labeled "CPDD," private messages where he joked about me, a younger brother cackling at the chaos he caused. A slideshow rolled through lines of texts, and each text landed like a solid clap.
"Why?" a senior student asked.
"I wanted to be noticed," Cruz said, face draining. "To be part of something bigger than my grades. I didn't think about her."
"It wasn't about you," one of the club leaders said. "It was about Antonia."
The students' whispers grew into a hum. They flicked their eyes from Cruz to me and then to Levi. Some looked angry. Some looked disappointed.
"Now for consequences," Levi said. "Cruz, because your actions affected many students and compromised the university's reputation, here are the sanctions the student conduct board recommends: first, public apology in this hall—completed. Second, suspension of club privileges for the remainder of the semester. Third, a mandatory workshop you will lead on digital ethics, run by the counseling center. Fourth, a documented note in your student file about academic misconduct related to misuse of accounts and fraud. Fifth, your scholarship cover will be reviewed—conditions must be met to continue."
Cruz's face crumpled. The words landed heavy and metallic. He tried to bargain. "Please—it's just—I'll do anything."
"Anything doesn't erase the harm," Levi said evenly. "People felt mocked. A professor's involvement was questioned. Antonia's business partners and family were dragged into school gossip. There are real, measurable costs."
A few students filmed; some clapped; some stared. Cruz shifted, then burst into tears. The shift from smugness to breakage was violent. He sobbed, "I didn't mean—" and his voice hitched into nothing.
"Do you understand what you did?" I asked softly.
He nodded, muttering apologies. I didn't scream. I didn't humiliate him back with petty cruelty. I made him stay, to face the crowd. He had to feel the consequences in the open air, with people watching, with his plans—and his cowardice—exposed. Public shame is not revenge; it is accountability given a mirror.
Later, after the formal condemnation, the assembly broke into clusters. Some students came up to me. "Sorry," they said. "We didn't realize." Some posted the assembly video with supportive comments. Cruz stayed for the workshop schedule and the notices. He did every task assigned. He wrote essays and crafted case studies about how a simple prank becomes life-changing.
Levi later told me that consequences don't have to kill someone. They can teach a hard lesson if the person is willing to learn. Cruz, when he left, had his head down. He looked broken. For a long time he didn't make eye contact with me. He had to rebuild trust; that was the point.
After that, things changed. The internet cooled. Levi and I stopped hiding. He sat with me in meetings, always precise, always quietly protective. Cruz focused on his studies. Henley comforted him. The men who had been my online tormentors faded into a confusing memory made small by the real shape of my life.
"Are you okay?" Levi asked one night, as we folded laundry in his apartment.
"I am," I said. "Mostly."
"Good," he said, and kissed my temple.
We moved forward. Cruz apologized sincerely more than once. He did his community work, learned privacy boundaries, and eventually—months later—went on to pursue his doctorate like he'd always wanted, but with a different caution embedded into him.
"Who are the husbands now?" Henley asked later, over coffee. "Do you still play?"
I laughed and typed a reply in the old game. "Four avatars. One real life man." I hit send.
Cruz's punishment had been public, painful, and educational. He lost privileges and had to face people. He reacted the way people do when a safe joke turns cruel: at first denial, then excuse, then collapse, then pleading. The crowd watched and processed. Some forgave slowly. Others kept distance. He paid in embarrassment, in consequence to his record, but not in total ruin. He worked to rebuild.
Levi and I lived the messy, tender middle. He didn't romance me like in movies; he kept mornings practical and afternoons precise. He did the other things that make a life: scheduling appointments, bringing soup when I had a cold, opening the file folder for my little studio while I fretted over taxes. We fought about small things: the thermostat, whose turn to make coffee, how visible our relationship should be at conferences. We always came back to one bed, one small stubborn warmth.
At the doctorate review, Cruz stood with a steadier jaw. He'd learned to measure consequences. The panel congratulated him on his new, clean conduct record. He looked at me from the front row with something like contrition unclenching into purpose.
Life taught me: sometimes you get tripped by your own family, and sometimes the only armor is choosing honesty and letting people see you pick the pieces up. I chose honesty. I chose the man who offered his wrist to steady me. The online husbands shrank into lighter laughter, the forum posts were archived and then forgotten, and my story changed.
One winter evening Levi asked, "Pack your coat. We're going to get your family dinner."
I zipped my coat and smiled. The man who had once been my professor now held the keys to a small, funny new life. Outside, a snowflake landed on my scarf and melted. Inside, my phone buzzed with a ridiculous in-game invite from Hassan. I tossed it aside and leaned into Levi's arm.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Always," I said, and this time it wasn't a line that could go with any tale. It was ours.
The End
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