Sweet Romance12 min read
The Peach, the Kiss, and the CEO
ButterPicks12 views
"I dropped the whole bag of peaches." I say it before I even notice my cheeks are wet.
Leonardo Casey bends down without a word and picks up the bruised fruit. His hands are warm and steady. He hands me a peach and I take it like it's a lifeline.
"Don't cry," he says as if it's the simplest order in the world.
I laugh, half-crying, half-huffing. "They were for dinner."
"You can have dinner with me," he says, and that is when I learn how dangerous simple offers can be.
My name is Amelie Smith. Two months ago I was a small-time host on CloudPeak, streaming from a secondhand desk, wearing the same jeans and sneakers. I learned how to speak to a camera and how to make a product feel like a friend in five minutes. I never thought anyone famous would notice me. I never thought a kiss in a dim bar would change anything.
"Do you remember me?" I ask, and he smiles like he already knows the answer.
"You pulled me into a kiss in Lijiang, didn't you?" he says.
"I did not pull you," I protest.
"You pulled me," he corrects, with a look that is half amusement and half memory. "And you were spectacularly brave."
That was how it began—my first kiss, a drunken dare, and the face of the boy in the bar becoming a man who drives a Rolls-Royce and answers to the name Leonardo Casey.
"Call me Claude," the chauffeur had said, two evenings later, as he opened the door with the same kind of politeness people reserve for kings. "Leonardo asked me to fetch you."
"Why?" I asked.
Claude Engel smiled the way a professional smiles. "Because he would like to see you again, Miss Amelie."
I climbed into the car as if I were boarding a ship to another life.
"Where should I call you?" I asked Leonardo in the car, loudly, because being brave in a car felt easier than being brave anywhere else.
"Just call me Leo," he said. "Or Leonardo, if you're being formal."
"Amelie," I said.
"I know," he answered, like he had already watched me on CloudPeak.
The next weeks blurred into tea tastings, tiny pastries, and a hundred small moments that felt like the plot of all the romance stories I had never lived. He took me to White Swan, an old restaurant with wood panels and served tea in tiny cups. We sat in a carved booth and he watched me try a bite of a pastry as if it were the most sacred act.
"Is it good?" he asked.
"It is," I said. I was terrified the whole time that any moment would reveal he had another plan. That he had brought me only to sign me away. When he finally said, "Would you sign with Casey Pictures?" at lunch, my heart stopped for a second.
"Are you recruiting me?" I asked, my voice small.
"I'd like to," he said. "Because I think you're talented."
My smile faltered. "I already have a year with CloudPeak."
"Then I will handle the contract," Leonardo said, quick and honest. "I will make sure there is no trouble."
"Why are you doing this?" I whispered.
"Because I want to," he said. "Because I like you."
I told myself not to believe it. I told myself he was doing his job—he had influence, power, deals, and for someone like him this was a harmless business move. Then he kissed me again on a dim street and my logic left the room.
After that there were dinners where he fitted a hand to the small of my back as if we were actors in a rehearsed scene. There were nights I would sleep on the sofa in his city apartment and wake to the sound of keys on a keyboard as he left for a midnight call. There were mornings when he would press a paper bag of breakfast into my hands and say, "Eat. You need to keep your energy up."
"You're spoiling me," I told him once.
"You're not spoiled yet," he said. "This is the trial."
People noticed. Colleagues at CloudPeak started to whisper. "He did what?" they said. "She must have leverage." A woman in my apartment complex once touched my arm and said, "Good for you, girl. He looks like the sort you don't let go."
Then came the bridge. Miles Ayala, my manager at CloudPeak, called me into the office with a smile that didn't touch his eyes.
"We have a change of plan," he said. "We've decided to assign the guest star to another host."
"But—" I started.
"Company decision," Miles said, cold and quick. "We need you to be flexible."
"You gave them to someone else because—" I tried.
"Because the other host had a better relationship with the team," Miles said. "It's business."
That late afternoon I walked to the roof, the city rolled flat below me, and I thought about all the midnight rehearsals, the practiced smiles, the sales numbers. The offer I had been told would come had slipped through Miles's fingers. When I returned to the office he was waiting at the elevator.
"Take your things," he said. "You can't work here if you can't be team player."
"My contract—" I began.
"Sign, or pay the penalty," he said. "You will be responsible for your exit."
They expected me to beg. They expected me to plead. Instead I put my resignation letter on his desk.
"I'm done," I told him.
"People with a new boyfriend don't always last in media," Miles said as if he were reading a page from a manual.
"Then I'm done," I said.
I walked out with my coins, my one hundred dollars that had been poorly saved, and a heart that was beating hard against a chest I suddenly thought might be mine.
I thought about where to go until Leonardo's name slid across my screen as if it had been the only one that mattered.
"Amelie," he said when I went to Casey Pictures. "Come in."
He didn't leap up and shout, and then pull me back into some golden life. He looked at me with a kind of anger that was warm.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Shrug," I said. "Bad boss, worse timing."
He did not like it.
"Give me the day," he said. "Let me fix this."
I wanted to shake him. "You can fix anything, can you?" I demanded.
"I can try," he answered. "But I can also sign you to Casey's in a role that will let you keep your style. Will you trust me?"
"Do you want me to?" I asked.
His face softened. "I want you where I can see you," he said.
"Deal," I said. Then I added, "But I'm not your trophy."
He laughed and then kissed the top of my head. "Never," he said.
True to his word, the following week I sat at the head of a room where Casey Pictures meant real power. We moved fast. Eaton Tarasov, the director, was kind and clever. "You're quick," he said, tapping a tablet in front of me. "You have sense. We need that."
"I need a team," I said. "Teach me how to lead."
"I will," Eaton said. "And we'll make you good."
There were tests. There were late nights when I learned how to talk to actors who were famous for talking back. There were live segments where my voice shook and Leonardo squeezed my knee under the desk and told me to breathe.
"I was afraid you'd think I signed you for the perks," he confessed once, in the quiet after a long day.
"Please tell me you didn't," I said.
"I signed you because when you looked at me in Lijiang, I saw someone real," he said. "Not a mask. Not a screen."
We learned each other's edges. I learned not to run when the cameras flashed. He learned not to overwork until he missed what mattered.
There were tender fights. I accused him once of buying everything to fix things. "You throw money at every problem," I told him.
"Money doesn't buy what I want most," he muttered.
"Then what?" I asked, as if the answer could be simple.
"To see you without cameras," he said. "To have you be just Amelie with a bruise from a peach because you tripped over nothing on a summer street."
I'd laugh and then, sometimes, I'd cry. It was the honest parts that built the bridge between us.
The party where his mother, Veronique Hall, pinned a necklace around my neck felt like walking in slow motion. The press flash lit us like a stage, and people spoke as if we were characters in a serialized show. "Who is she?" they asked.
"She's mine for tonight," Leonardo said to his mother, with a look that made the rest of the room melt into small shadows.
"Leonardo," Veronique said, and she was all warmth. "We are glad you found someone who makes you smile."
"She brings me peaches," he said. "She breaks them."
Veronique's eyes softened. "We made the purchase at auction for our future daughter-in-law," she announced, unblushing. She passed me the case. Inside was a necklace—stones like light set into silver. I was overwhelmed.
"I can't accept this," I whispered.
"Then wear it for tonight," Veronique said. "Return it tomorrow if you must."
I wore it that night because the world was a stage and I wanted to learn how to stand in the center without losing myself.
There were small jealousies. One afternoon at the CloudPeak office—where I had thought I might return for a guest spot—photos surfaced of me with Leonardo, laughing and leaning close under a chandelier. I had been candid, tired, and in his arms. Rumors ran like spilled coffee. Miles used the image to justify moving my projects to another host. I had one choice left: I resigned rather than be pushed into a corner.
"You're overreacting," a coworker said. "He rescued you. You're living a dream."
"It wasn't a rescue," I told her. "I worked for what I earned."
When I walked into Casey Pictures the next day with my printed resumes, Leonardo looked at me as if he were surprised I hadn't already asked for work from him.
"You're my director now, right?" I asked.
"I already put your name in," he said. "Live operations director. You'll be in charge."
"That's insane," I said.
"You're not insane," he corrected. "I'm just confident."
I took the role because I believed in myself, and because I trusted him. The team was skeptical at first. Kaelynn Solovyov, one of the other hosts, raised her eyebrows and said, "You sure you can handle the heat?"
"You can help if you like," I told her. She didn't. She spread rumors instead. But results are stubborn things.
"Ready for the live?" Eaton asked me the morning of our first big stream.
"We are ready," I said, despite the flutter like a trapped bird in my chest.
The stream launched with two legends—Maria Benton and Ivan Fletcher—appearing as guests. The chat exploded. People bought what we recommended. For the first time in my life numbers didn't feel like numbers. They were proof.
"Look at the screen," Leonardo whispered, and I did. My name trended. Fans typed hearts and asked where I had learned to be brave. For the first time, I felt like the person I had been working toward.
Between the work and the quiet, Leonardo was there. "I read your report," he said one night, leaping to defend a decision I had made in a meeting.
"You're my partner," I said.
He kissed me, right there in the office, among stacks of storyboards and late-night coffee cups.
Workdays blurred into a new kind of normal. I learned how to delegate, how to hold people's attention, how to make a stream feel like a conversation. I found the rhythm of being both Amelie and the director. Leonardo learned when to step back. He drove me to meetings, he taught me to swim, he let me make him soup when I had nothing else.
One night, after a week of intense launches, I was tired. "Stay," I said, curling into him on the sofa. "Just tonight."
He hesitated.
"Please," I said.
He didn't hesitate the second time. He stayed. We woke up to a city that had learned our names. Lena, our stylist, joked that we were a franchise.
Around us the world made noise, but in our small apartment the sounds were quieter: the clink of a spoon against a bowl, the low laugh after a joke, the sleeping sigh that meant someone trusted you enough to let the guard down.
There were moments when power and privilege pressed on all sides. My old manager's smear had taken money from my bank and threatened my stability. I had to use the savings I'd hidden away; I had to balance pride and survival. I learned what it meant to ask for help without losing myself.
"You don't owe me anything," Leonardo said once.
"You give me so much," I argued. "You lent me a place to stay. You bought me clothes. You keep fixing everything."
He sat me down as if I were a serious person. "The things I give are not debts," he said. "They are my choice. If you accept them you accept me."
"That's a lot of responsibility," I told him.
"It's a privilege," he corrected.
We fought like everyone else. I told him I didn't like how people watched every step. He told me if we loved we had to be brave in public. The fights ended with apologies and small gestures: a poem he refused to show me, a cup of tea he made wrong but brought anyway, an extra blanket on a cold night.
"Are we moving too fast?" I asked once, voice thin as the air on the balcony.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But I don't want to miss the days with you."
"Then don't miss the work," I countered.
"And I won't," he said. "I promise."
When my mother received the package with the earrings I had bought her from my first paycheck as director, she called me and I heard her voice like a soft sheet of thunder.
"You did this yourself?" she asked.
"I did," I said, and felt grown-up.
A few months later, at a small company event, Miles tried to make peace. "We were wrong," he said, and I had to fight the urge to ask, right then and there, for an apology that would erase the months of bitterness. Instead I said, "Maybe." I was not the same frightened girl who would let a manager's behavior define me. I would check my own mirror and make my own future.
We kept living forward. Leonardo taught me to swim. I taught him to eat soup without using a fork. We argued, laughed, and kissed. Once I fell into the hotel pool. He dove without question and hauled me out, dripping and laughing.
"You alright?" he asked as he wrapped a towel around me.
"Yes," I said.
"You scared me."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"You worry me," he said. "You are mine."
"Not yours to own," I said, and he kissed me to shut me up.
At night in the small kitchen of his place, I baked a tiny strawberry cake for him because he had once said he liked strawberry. Ten attempts later I made something edible. He ate it and said, "You made this for me?"
"I did."
"Best I have ever tasted," he said, and I believed him because the look on his face was the kind that doesn't lie.
Slowly the story of us unspooled into something quiet and fierce. We learned each other's small rituals. I learned to call Claude by name and to thank him without making it awkward. He taught me the way Leonardo liked his coffee. His mother stopped buying gifts at auctions and started bringing small things like a jar of jam.
One late summer evening, I stood on the high balcony of his apartment and watched the river glow.
"You remember the peaches?" I asked.
He had learned to love that story. "You dropped them," he said. "I handed you one that wasn't broken."
"I liked that one," I said.
"Do you still like them?" he asked.
"I do."
He handed me a peach from a small paper bag. "No bruises."
I took it and bit into it. The juice dribbled down my wrist. He laughed and wiped it away with the back of his hand.
"Promise me something," I said, between two bites.
"What?"
"Promise me we won't let other people's words decide what our days will be."
He shrugged one shoulder and then the other. "I promise."
We kissed. The river below kept moving. The city burned like a soft light.
A year later, Elliott, our assistant—no, Cillian Ferguson—sent me a photo that made me laugh. It was my first live thumbnail—me in a cheap white dress with a crooked smile, dixie cups of tea stacked behind me. Leonardo saw it and put his arm around my shoulder.
"You've come far," he said.
"Not far enough," I said.
"Then keep going," he said.
I thought of the first time I had ever walked home with peaches in my hands, light as air and heavy as hope. I thought of the kiss in Lijiang and the way a single brave moment can change your whole map.
"Will you marry me?" he asked once, in a soft place on the couch, when two bowls of soup and a movie were the only plans.
"Will you let me keep my job?" I said back.
"If you'd like," he answered. "I would prefer yes."
I looked at him—the man who taught me to swim and to lead—and I nodded.
"Yes."
On the day we officially decided to start saying yes, I brought him a peach in the morning. He kissed my forehead and said, "You dropped it last time. This time, be brave."
"I always am now," I said.
"In other ways," he teased.
I climbed onto the balcony and watched the river. I pinched the peach between my fingers like a small, bright truth.
"One more thing," I said.
"What?"
"I want to remember exactly where this story began."
"And where is that?"
I held the peach up to his face, and I bit it.
The juice slid down our hands. He laughed. I laughed. We kissed until the world was a smear of light and sweetness.
"I like this ending," he said when we finally breathed apart.
"It's just the beginning," I corrected.
He kissed my palm and put it to his lips. "Then let's keep writing."
I pressed the empty peach pit into my palm like a tiny promise. The city shone below, and Leonardo put an arm around my shoulders. We stood like that for a long time—two people with small scars and brave hearts, learning how to build a life together.
When the cameras came back—because they always did—I stood in front of them and said, "Thank you," into the mic. I meant it for the audience, for the fans, for my team, for the woman my mother had always hoped I would be. I also meant it for the man who had given me peaches, and kisses, and a place at his table when the world had been quick to shut its door.
He reached for my hand under the desk, and I squeezed it. The lights were hot, the chat was loud, and I smiled the way I had practiced, but this time the smile was mine.
After the stream, Leonardo and I walked home. He stopped at the old fruit stand where I had once bought a bag of peaches.
"One for the road?" he asked.
"Always," I said.
We shared the last peach between us, each bite a small, precise moment. When the fruit was gone we had sticky hands and smiling faces and the feeling that even in a noisy world, we had made a quiet place to be ourselves.
"Promise?" I asked.
"Promise," he said.
We held each other there on the curb, with a peach pit in my hand like a promise to keep going, and the city kept turning, patient and wide.
The End
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