Sweet Romance12 min read
The Year of Two Roses
ButterPicks13 views
I count the petals one by one.
"Happy anniversary," the florist boy says when I open the door. He holds out a small bouquet, nine white roses caught in fragile paper.
"Thank you," I say, and the roses go into the vase like something borrowed.
White roses are delicate. White roses belong to my sister, not to me. Jordan loved white roses. The phone on the table buzzes with a number I had once memorized for ten years. I let it ring three times before I text back, "On my way."
"Mrs. Hoffmann?" the gate guard says, and his smile is automatic. "Have a good day."
"Thank you," I say, and I go.
At the curb a dirt-splattered Maybach idles. Felix opens the passenger door and a cloud of cigarette smoke rolls out. "Why didn't you pick up?"
"I was talking to the delivery boy," I say. "He brought white roses."
"White?" Jordan breathes out a laugh. "He bought white? He remembers I like white roses."
She flicks ash out the window. "You know," she says, looking right at me, same face, different life, "you should go back to school. Get a degree. Do some acting. You'll be famous. It's better than pouring drinks."
"I don't want the stage," I say.
"You used to laugh at my jokes." She taps the steering wheel. "Maybe you're too good at playing me."
She is my twin. Two years ago I didn't know she existed. Our mother left when we were babies, and our father fell apart like paper. Calhoun Bridges kept drinking, kept getting into trouble, but never laid a hand on me. I left school to take care of him. I worked nights at a KTV and days in a restaurant. Life was small and hard and gray until Jordan found me.
"You are small-town," she said the first night she stepped into my life, "and your life is wrong. I'll fix this."
She gave me clothes, took me to the salon, fed me strange food, taught me to walk like someone who had always belonged. She said, "This is the way our mother would have wanted." She brought me to the city, and I learned how to be someone else.
"You're my sister," she said once by the pool, when she pulled me out after I'd been pushed in. "I'm saving you."
She saved me and used me. She said she had a plan: keep the heir safe for the family business. She said she loved a man named Graydon; she said she would never marry Felix Hoffmann, no matter how his family pushed for it. But then she changed the plan—she said she couldn't risk her family or father, so she asked me to be her for a year.
"Play me," she whispered. "You will take my place for a while. He'll never know."
So I did. "Hospital memory loss" became our script. I learned how she liked her gloves; I practiced how she laughed at his jokes; I wore the name that had belonged to her since childhood. I married Felix as Jordan, and I kept the secret like a lit coal.
"You're good at it," she told me once, tapping my cheek with lipstick. "If you do it well, maybe one day you'll have what I have."
When Felix came home from a two-month trip and my phone and the roses and the anniversary combined into one sharp moment, I watched him hold Jordan—my sister—and felt something in my chest break and rebuild at once.
"Happy anniversary," he had said. He said it like a man who had waited. He said it with the same gentleness in his hands he'd always used: the hand that warmed mine, the hand that smoothed my hair. It was easy to stay in the role. It felt unbearably real.
"You two look so happy," someone at the sweets shop said the day they opened a dessert store under our name. Felix looked at me and frowned for less than a breath. "My wife—" he said, and his eyes snagged on mine.
"Come home with me," he whispered later that night. "I missed you."
I slept in his arms. I could have gotten used to being loved by mistake. I could have let the mistake become my life.
"Why do you look like you don't belong?" he asked me once in the kitchen. "You call me 'husband', but you don't seem to know how to keep coffee warm."
"Because I've been pretending," I said, and the truth felt like an avalanche.
He didn't push. "Tell me things I don't know," he asked, and the requests were both challenge and invitation.
There were small tell-tale differences: he liked his breakfast scrambled with thin egg threads; I liked my peppers out. He noticed, and something soft in his voice changed.
"Why did you stop going to school?" he asked me on our slow drive to my small hometown one night.
"He needed me," I said.
"Who?" he said.
"My father," I told him, and when we reached the hospital, Calhoun Bridges blinked at us like a guilty child and called me, "Little one." Felix held my hand in a way that claimed me but without insisting on knowing everything.
When I went back to Jordan's apartment to put things in order, her life collapsed onto me like a storm. There was Graydon—her real lover—drunk and furious, a wound in his heart that turned toward me in the worst way.
"You two switched," he snarled, thinking I was the woman he had loved. "You took her. You left me." His hands were rough; his anger was a raw animal.
"Graydon," I said softly. "You are wrong. I am not—"
"You're her!" he screamed and the room shrank and broke. He grabbed me, pinned me, and the world was small and sharp.
"Let go!" I begged. "You're drunk."
He laughed like something had cracked. "You think there's any difference? You slept with him. You slept with him."
I felt the knife of his jealousy as if it were a concrete fact. I smelled the smoke of his anger. I thought of Felix's gentleness. I thought of my father's pale hand.
"Please," I whispered into the phone when Jordan finally answered, because if anyone could stop him, it would be Jordan. But Jordan's voice was always smooth, half a mask.
"Don't be stupid," Jordan said when she arrived. "You agreed to this. He knew what he was getting into."
"It's my body," I said. "It's not yours to pawn."
"Shh," she told me, and she took my keys away and the next hour was a chaos that left glass on the floor, a bruise on my cheek, and Graydon collapsed in a sob.
I dressed my bleeding palm and called the hospital, and the old, slow kindness of strangers watched over me. I stayed by Graydon for hours until the alcohol had given him sorrow and sleep. He woke up halfway through the night, eyes wet and empty.
"I'm sorry," he said to me. "I don't remember much. I remember loving you. I thought you were her."
"I am not her," I said. "But if you can start again, do it for yourself."
He looked at me like a boy desperate for a map. "If you help me get her, I will leave you alone."
"I won't help you break someone else's heart," I said. "But I will help you be someone who can love without breaking."
The mess ended. Jordan didn't take the keys back that night. She put them in a small bag like contraband and told me to sleep at a friend's. She insisted I go away for a few days, because Jordan had a meeting and needed her identity back in place.
I left, but in the empty apartment the phone kept buzzing—the number I had held for ten years, the number that Felix had once called with his soft morning voice. "Come back soon," he had said earlier. "I have a surprise."
"Don't go out," Jordan had advised. "Stay home. Keep a low profile. If I call, pick up right away."
I tried to follow directions. But I also went to the sweets shop because my heart wanted a small comfort. I sat by the window, and there he was—Felix—smiling at the staff, leaning in to offer advice, and then his eyes found me. He looked at me like someone who had been trying to remember a face he had seen in a dream.
"May I?" he asked, and he reached for my hand. "This is mine. This shop—this is our life."
He called me 'wife' in a way that kept catching in his throat. He touched my forehead as if checking for fever. He read the book I was halfway through and later told me to sleep more.
That night he came home early. "You're not well," he said, and he kissed me until the ache inside me changed shape from shame to something like belonging.
But Jordan's web always pulled tight. She came back into the picture with an urgent plea: Graydon had woken and demanded to see her. "If he comes after us," she said, eyes glassy, "it will spiral. You must go. Go to the country. Let me fix it."
"Fix it how?" I asked.
"Let it be done," she said. "You will go home. You will keep quiet. I will send for you when it is safe."
"Jordan, that's not—"
"Please," she interrupted. "Just go."
I went. I packed my things, left Felix a note—more truth than I intended—and went back to the small hospital town with a heart that was a stone in my throat.
A week later, a video surfaced—one of those shaky, accidental recordings taken during the fight with the men who had attacked Graydon. It had captured faces, men who worked at a certain company, men who smiled kindly in public and shook hands and signed contracts at dinner tables. The video was poor and ugly, but it was evidence.
"Who gave you this?" Felix asked when I showed him the clip. He had been helping me from the start, quietly—asking questions, speaking to Ahmed Sanders, his secretary, and pulling threads until a knot loosened.
"Someone who didn't want more violence," I said.
He took my hand. "Then we don't let them get away with it."
A series of events we had dreaded began to unfold. The police picked up the thread; an independent auditor found inconsistencies; journalists smelled blood in the water. The Colton Zhang Group, a family conglomerate everyone thought untouchable, was woven through the story. Colton Zhang himself—sharp-suited, colder than marble—and his son Weston Hamza were at the center.
They had used violence to manipulate small-town workers, pushed people out of factories, ruined reputations to steal advantage. They had orchestrated the little tragedies that drove my father into despair and made my mother's absence permanent.
Felix sat with me at his long table.
"Do you want me to fight them?" he asked.
"I want justice," I said, the word like iron. "Not revenge. I want them to answer in front of everyone."
He looked like a man who could make that happen. "Good," he said.
We prepared for the reveal like surgeons marking their lines.
When the day came, it was at a shareholders' meeting that Colton Zhang had called to steady trembling investors: "Business as usual," he announced. Press were invited. I sat in the third row behind Felix, Jordan curled at my side like a loose thread.
"Mr. Zhang," Felix said into the microphone when Ahmed had introduced him briefly, "you have done a lot for commerce. But you have also done a lot behind closed doors. We have found something."
The room chilled. "What do you mean, Mr. Hoffmann?"
"Not I," said Ahmed, producing a small portable screen. "This is evidence gathered by independent investigators and corroborated by the county police, all acquired legally. Graydon Maeda gave a recording that shows men hired after improper payments. We traced payoffs, logistics, and written authorizations."
The screen flicked to life: a shaky clip, faces, license plates, a ledger. A hush fell.
"Colton Zhang, Weston Hamza," Felix said, voice steady as stone, "you commissioned violence against workers to force a company change. You arranged to intimidate unions and to bribe middle managers. Those men are identified. You are under investigation."
Colton's face did not change at first. The way he had always maintained composure, the public smile, held. Then it cracked.
"What is this?" he snapped. "You have no proof. This is—"
"This is evidence," Ahmed replied. "Here are bank transfers, recorded conversations, phone logs, and witness statements. We will hand everything to the prosecutor's office."
"Felix," Jordan whispered in my ear, eyes wide, "what are you doing?"
I watched the scene as if someone else were writing it. People in the room—investors, journalists, board members—had been waiting for a spectacle. Cameras flashed like small storms.
Colton tried to laugh the accusation away. "This is nonsense," he said, but his laugh was too high. Weston Hamza's face flushed a violent red. A man at his side stood up, leaving a coffee cup trembling on the table.
"Is this true?" a reporter demanded, moving to the front like a shark.
"Where is your proof?" Colton asserted, leaning into his remaining bravado.
Ahmed stepped up. "We have bank records," he said. "We have travel records. We have minutes of meetings where payments were authorized. And we have testimony."
"Testimony from whom?" Colton asked, his jaw working.
"From people you thought you could scare. From men you hired. From the county's recorded ledger."
Then the most dangerous thing happened—Weston lunged. He tried to grab the screen. A guard moved in. Cameras recorded everything.
"Stop!" Weston shouted. "You have no right!"
"Then step outside," Felix said. "Let the police take statements. Let the law speak."
Colton walked like a man losing his balance. He was older than the pictures. "You cannot destroy families on a whim," he hissed.
"Families?" someone in the back shouted. "You nearly destroyed lives for profit!"
Voices rose. Phones recorded. A woman in the front row—someone whose husband had lost a factory job—stood up and started to speak, then another, and the room filled with people who had been quiet until the moment someone powerful was brought to light.
"Look at them," a banker said, pointing at Colton. "How many livelihoods did you trample?"
"I did what was required for business," Colton said. "You don't understand—"
"Business?" A young worker in a union jacket—there for the live feed—cried. "You call beating people and threatening lives 'business'?"
They escorted Colton and Weston out. The press were like wolves. Cameras panned to the faces of the Zhang executives as they stumbled into the courtyard. The crowd around them grew thick with condemnation.
"Shame!" someone yelled.
"Lock them up!" another shouted.
A live television reporter narrated as the pair tried to keep their composure. "There are accusations of bribery, assault, conspiracy to force company takeovers. This is unprecedented in our city."
Colton's hands trembled. He looked incredulous at first, then angry, then very small. Weston alternated between pushing at shoulders and covering his face. They were used to power and filters; the rawness of a crowd's rage was unfamiliar.
Felix stood by me and took my hand. "This is what happens when people like them think they can act without witnesses," he said.
I watched Colton's face change. It went from pride to panic, then to pleading. He stopped and shouted, "You can't do this! We made deals, yes—but it's business—"
"Business?" the workers echoed. "That is not business. That is brutality."
People around them uploaded videos. Within minutes, social media lit like wildfire. Comments poured: "Shame on Zhang." "Good." "About time."
Weston, who had always laced his speech with charm, fell apart under cameras. He dropped a suit jacket. He begged for leeway. "I didn't know about this," he said, frantically. "I am only the son!"
"Then why did your name sign these checks?" the lead investigator asked coldly, unfolding documents.
Colton's mouth opened and closed. He had no answers suitable for the crowd. He began to cry—not graceful, not saintly, but a plea for forgiveness that sounded like nails on a board.
It was not a private downfall but a public unmasking. People recorded, people watched, and the two men—kingpins in their small empires—felt the foundations of their palaces collapse.
"Please," Colton said at one point, face wet, "I was trying to keep the business alive. You don't know what it takes."
But the camera does not care for justifications. It shows wire transfers, signed pages, and witnesses who had been let go with threats. It shows fathers who lost work. It shows me and my father and the man who broke his pride.
People in the courtyard cheered when the police put handcuffs on Colton. Someone took photos. A reporter held a microphone. "Mr. Zhang, any comments for the families affected?"
He glanced around at people he'd long considered invisible. Then he bowed, a shallow motion. "I am sorry," he said, voice small.
The crowd's reaction was relief, not triumph. They had been waiting for justice like rain. When that rain came, it felt almost holy—wet and stinging and finally real.
Colton's humiliation was complete: at first the denials and threats, then the slow realization, then the desperate bargaining, and finally the plea. The cameras recorded his panic, the whispers of the press, the sober faces of the board. Weston collapsed onto a bench and sobbed.
From that day, the Colton Zhang Group was no longer untouchable. Their stock plummeted. Board members resigned. Legal actions flooded in. Felixes' calculated exposure had not been a simple revenge—he had used evidence, law, and the city's appetite for accountability. He had given the victims a platform.
Watching them suffer, I felt a complex knot of emotions. Justice tasted like copper and ash. Empathy rose and self-protective satisfaction followed. I thought of Calhoun Bridges and the small town where men were pushed out of factories and families were hollowed. I thought of my mother, who left years ago, and of the two sisters who had shared one face and divided a life like a coin.
After the press flurry cleared, Jordan came to me, eyes empty.
"You made them fall," she whispered. "You, Kaydence."
"I didn't do it alone," I said. "We didn't do it for vengeance. We did it so they would stop ruining lives."
She did not answer. She looked like a person who had been gambling and then briskly lost the table. "Now what?" she asked.
"Now," Felix said, and leaned in, "we let the law run. We help victims. And you—do something honest."
She touched my wrist. "I don't know how."
"Then learn," I said. "Live without hiding."
Weeks became months. The city changed. The Zhang name fell and the news cycle moved on, but the people who had been hurt started getting answers. Some men were rehired; others were given settlements. The public shaming had a long shadow, but it forced reckoning.
For me, the hardest reckonings were inside. Felix and I discovered the strange alchemy of truth and intimacy. He used to say things like, "Let the more loving be me." It was a phrase he had once quoted from a book, but he made it mean something of his own. He stopped pretending to wonder and began to learn me—the woman who had kept secrets and the woman who needed safe land.
One autumn night he brought home a small trophy and a letter. "You won something," he said, grinning. "Tell me your pen name."
"Do you really want to know?" I asked.
He used a soft voice, like a secret. "Tell me."
"Zhanche," I said. "It means clear."
He repeated it, then kissed me like the first time. "Zhanche," he said. "My clear one."
When the case closed, with Colton and Weston facing trials and public disgrace, Jordan went away to the smaller town Graydon had moved to. She said she was going to learn to be honest. Graydon started a new job in a small art workshop; he had learned to be still.
Felix and I, who had started in a lie that became a life, made a different kind of promise. We kept no big announcements the way families in novels do. We kept dinners and small mornings, and I kept writing in a blank book he'd once given me—filling it with translation drafts and small poems. The notebook was a talisman, a record of the person I had become.
Months later, in the quiet of our apartment, I put a small plastic stick into a cup. Felix cried like a boy. "Two of them," he whispered.
We laughed like fools. "Zhanche," he said again, and I thought of white roses.
The white roses in the vase wilt. Life blooms in stubborn ways.
The End
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