Sweet Romance13 min read
This Is Not an Uncle — How I Almost Lost a Professor and Gained a Home
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I never thought my life would be a string of embarrassing little disasters sewn together with kisses that could fix everything. I am Hadley Cross. Six months of a relationship, a public scene in a mall, a "two-line" pregnancy test, a mother who introduces my ex as an uncle, and a professor who can make me both want to run and want to stay.
"Hadley, you're home!" my mother said in that sing-song voice that made neighbors think our apartment smelled like baking all the time.
I walked in with my hands full of the awkwardness a break-up brings. "Mom."
She looked me over and clapped. "Oh my, who's this sitting on your couch?"
I froze. On the sofa, reading something on his laptop like diners around him were background, sat Jasper Davis — the man I'd dated for six months and then fled from with an "internship" excuse. He put on his glasses, looked up, and smiled at me in a way that used to feel like theft and now felt like trespass.
"Leoni, this is—" I started.
"My sister's son's friend," my mother said casually, patting the sofa. "Call him your uncle. He came by to visit. I told him you're back. 'Shen Mo is just adorable,' he said." She winked at me as if she had conjured some family miracle.
I stared. "What? He's not—"
"Not blood," my mother said. "But close enough. He's overseas a lot. We just never met."
The man on the sofa chuckled, polished the rim of his coffee mug, and said, "I'm always welcome here. Hadley, it's good to finally see you in person."
My stomach did a small, traitorous flip. "Don't call him my uncle!" I hissed to my mom when she left the room to fetch tea.
"He is my 'uncle,' right?" Jasper asked mild and dangerous.
"Don't."
We had met six months ago at a lecture. He had marched into my life with long strides and a quiet laugh, left his pen in my notebook, and then stayed. That had been the pleasant part. The rest — his check-ins, his "Where are you? Who is he?" — had grown like moss around my weekends until I couldn't breathe without him asking "Is this a date?" He said he loved me; he also loved knowing where I was.
"You're being dramatic," he said then. "If your mother says I'm family, that's fine. Family can mean more than blood."
I opened my mouth and shut it. I had a secret plan: blackmail. Two lines on a pregnancy test could change everything. I could ask for money, be free, and never have to be pinned by someone who checked my phone history like it was a textbook.
"Hadley?" he said softly. "You look pale."
"I'm fine." I wasn't.
One month after the break, I sat in my bathroom with a cheap pregnancy test and two stubborn pink lines. I almost laughed. I almost sobbed. I almost called my mother to scream into the phone and then hang up. Instead I searched for Jasper's number with hands that trembled. I rehearsed words that felt like they belonged to someone else.
I called my mother. "Mom, I need to tell you something."
She blinked. "What?"
"I'm pregnant."
There was a beat. "Oh? That's—" Her voice didn't give the outrage I'd expected. She looked at the sofa and smiled. "Quick, call your uncle."
My throat closed. "What?"
"Call your uncle," she repeated cheerfully. "Shen Mo is here. He can help."
"No, Mom, you can't—"
The sound of Jasper's voice from the living room was calm, polite. "Hadley, everything alright?"
"Mom!" I hissed. "You're—"
"Just call him." Leoni's hand was already at my back, gently shoving me. "Fast, make it official."
He came into the kitchen with that professor poise — shoulders straight, expression reserved. He peered at me kindly and said, "You look pale. Are you all right?"
"He's my uncle!" my mother chirped.
"Hadley," Jasper said to me, eyes suddenly unblinking, "you don't have to be afraid. Tell me what happened."
Fear vibrated down my spine. Part of me wanted to scream; the other part wanted to cling to him. I told a weak lie about a stomach cramp and excused myself. When I closed the bathroom door, I put my palm on my belly like a secret. "Don't be an idiot," I said into cold tiles. "Don't you dare be a coward."
Outside the door, Jasper's voice came muffled through the wood. "Hadley, if you need anything—"
I opened the door, faced him, and the little thing I had been hiding came out: "Please, don't call me Aunt or anything. I can't—"
"Then call me 'Jasper' or 'Professor Davis' or 'You-shouldn't-be-singles-after-27' if you like," he said lightly. His fingers grazed my wrist and a small current passed between us that felt like guilt.
"You know what was the reason for the break," I said. "You are…too possessive."
He took a breath. "I told you before. I'm possessive. I was honest. I like you. I don't like the idea of losing you to anyone else."
"I told you I hated that."
He glanced away. "I won't change instantly. But I can learn, Hadley. Let me try. Let me prove I can step back."
"Prove it by letting me live my life," I whispered.
He dropped his gaze and murmured, "I will. I don't want to lose you."
"Good," I said. "Then keep your hands off me in public."
He nearly smiled. "Deal." Then, almost teasing, he slid closer and whispered, "But at home…"
"Stop." I slapped his arm. We both laughed, and the laugh washed away the worst of the sharp edges for a moment.
Leoni, ever the matchmaker, clapped her hands. "Good! Then we'll call you 'uncle' and he'll call you 'Hadley's future wife' and be done with it."
"I think you invented titles wrong," I muttered.
The mall incident came like a storm. I had seen Jasper's new "friend" Katalina — the woman my mother had called "the beauty" — online. She had saved a selfie of him, left comments like "professor crush" and "future husband" with heart emojis. I had wanted to be dramatic. I went to the mall. I waited.
When I saw them across from each other, Katalina in a dress that knew how to speak before she did, and Jasper without his glasses but very composed, my heart broke into a dozen sensible fragments. Katalina smiled like she belonged — and I left the invention of my blackmail plan to a roar that came from nowhere.
"Jasper." My step was quick, my voice louder than intended. "Fancy seeing you here."
He looked surprised, then smoothed his face into mild surprise. "Hadley."
Katalina glanced at me and her smile hardened. "Oh, you're his... niece? Hello."
"Call me whatever you want," I snapped. "Just don't call yourself his fiancée while I'm still breathing."
"You know," Katalina said sweetly, "I didn't mean to—"
"Don't talk to me," I said, louder. I don't know why I was loud. I only knew shame and a foolish desire to hurt.
Jasper rose, blocking Katalina's path with a single, effortless movement. "Hadley, let's not—"
"Let's what?" I barked. "You abandoned me, and now you parade with a new woman and expect me to smile?"
He looked as if I'd slapped him. "I didn't abandon you."
"You left," I said. "You were controlling. I needed space."
"Katalina is not—" he started.
"She's not my problem," I said, but my words rang false even to me.
Katalina leaned in, voice syrupy. "Hadley, maybe don't make scenes. He's my date."
My face flooded with shame and fury. "Date? Is that what you call stealing from a girl who still loves him?"
Jasper's hand tightened on my elbow. He brought his face close to mine, not tender now but steady. "Hadley, breathe."
I couldn't breathe. I pushed him away. He held me by the wrist and did something that made my head spin and my skin raise: he licked my wrist in a ridiculous, intimate flash. "Your reaction is adorable," he said, with that smile that used to make me melt and now felt like a string pulling knots.
"Jasper!" I shouted. "Don't!"
He smirked, voice soft. "Your phone's still signed into my Apple ID, remember? I know a lot of things."
I felt cold. "You checked my browsing history?"
He shrugged like a man apologizing for sunshine. "It's been shared for some time. We used the same account. I saw things. I wanted to see if you really wanted to leave."
"You sneaked through my things!" I hissed.
"I didn't sneak," he said coolly. "You left me with a message and then went silent. I asked to know why. That was the easiest way."
"You're unbelievable," I said.
"Stop." He sounded tired. "If you think you can pull a stunt in public and I won't come clean, you're wrong."
"I wasn't pulling a stunt!" I cried. "I—"
Katalina's eyes flashed. "You made a scene in a restaurant last week. People will see."
"Then let them," I said. "Let them see you're a liar."
Jasper's face darkened. He really did look like he could re-write a weather system with his voice. He finally said, quiet and almost desperate, "Hadley, I still care. If you want to be angry, be angry at me. Not her."
"What if I want to be angry at both of you?" I shot back.
Katalina stood then, palms open like a victim. "Hadley, you're being childish. Leave him alone."
"Childish?" I laughed then, a short, ugly sound. "You called me childish while you sit in his lap."
"You don't understand anything," she said sharp. Then, to Jasper, "You should go home with me. Don't let her ruin your night."
He didn't immediately answer. For a second the two of them looked like a story I'd once loved in a book: stylish, assured, two lines against my one. Then my body betrayed me. A heat rose between my legs and a cold pain hit me. I clamped my hands over myself. Blood leaked hot and quick, startling and absolute.
"Hadley!" Iris — my friend — was there like a guardian angel, turning the scene into chaos and kindness in one motion. "We need to go to the hospital."
Jasper changed entirely. The facade of sophisticated detachment melted. "Hold on. I'll drive."
In the car, he was all hands and anxious directions. "Hadley, stay with me. We are going—"
"You're not my uncle!" I groaned, the world tilting.
The ER smelled of disinfectant and impossible hope. Nurses rushed and his hands shook as he helped me up. They pushed me into a small room with machines and questions. Jasper hovered, voice brittle. "This might be a miscarriage," he said. "We need to act quickly."
"Call my mother," I said. "Call— anyone."
He called Leoni and said, "It's okay. She'll be fine." But his voice cracked. For the first time, he looked very human.
Tests and murmurs followed. My body clenched and relaxed like someone riding a wave. After the scans and the paper wrappings and the intrusive lights, the doctor came back with a tombstone of calm. "It's a heavy period," she said. "You're not pregnant."
I stared. Relief and humiliation tasted the same: metallic and raw.
Jasper's shoulders dropped as if someone had unslung a weight from him. "Are you okay?" he whispered, fingers still clenched on my hand.
"I am fine," I said flatly. "Thanks for bringing me."
Later, when we were home, he sat on the edge of my bed and studied me with an odd closeness. "I looked up things—how to support someone through miscarriage—or heavy bleeding," he said. "Because I was worried. Because you matter."
"You matter," I said back, meaner than I intended. "That nearly killed me."
"Never again," he breathed. "If anything ever threatens you physically—"
"You were the threat half the time," I snapped.
"Yes." He owned it. "I was. I'm sorry. Will you let me try again, properly? Let me be only the parts of me that help you, not the parts that cage you."
The weeks that followed developed like a slow, careful bloom. He kept his hands off so much more in public, but in private his touches were gentler and his words more precise. He began to learn the language of distance: giving me space, asking before showing up, waiting by messages instead of demanding constant locations. He still left little proofs of his affection — a thermos of soup in the lab fridge, a book he knew I'd like, a note that said, "350g" with a smug smudge of his ink. "350g," he'd told me once, meant the weight of a heart. He'd given me that odd bio-joke as a good-luck charm. It felt absurd and precious.
There were three moments I remember as the turning points — the ones that stuck in the soft parts of me.
"Promise me," I said once. He looked at me, serious, and replied, "I promise." It was tiny. It was not a marriage vow. It was a beginning.
He kissed the inside of my wrist the first night after the hospital scare and said, "You are safe with me." My body forgot to breathe for a second.
He stood up at a crowded lecture hall to fend off a young admirer who mistook public silence for permission. "She's mine," he said, tenderly and possessively in the same sentence, and then kissed me in front of everyone. He wasn't ashamed. He was proud and protective. The auditorium noticed. So did I.
Katalina, the thorn that had poked at our patched-up peace, returned like a bruise when I least expected it. She turned up at a celebratory dinner with her own brand, a man at her side who verified she'd been "courting" the professor. She tried to pull a scene, accusing me in public of meddling, and had the insolence to threaten to "tell my mother" about improprieties. Leoni, my mother, sat like a small, amused queen and watched as Katalina kept stabbing at us with the same dull knife of repetition.
I had had enough of being on the receiving end of other women's designs. I had had enough of being scolded for being loud. So I made a plan. It was childish. It was theatrical. It was honest.
We were at a university gala when I put it into motion. Jasper was giving a brief talk about genetic markers and stress responses. The auditorium was full. Katalina had decided to sit next to the dean, laughing like she owned every room in the building. I took the microphone from a student volunteer during the Q&A.
"Excuse me," I said, feeling everyone's eyes become small heat lamps on my neck. "I'd like to ask a question."
A few titters. Jasper's face turned toward me, pale and questioning. Katalina's smile faltered.
"Good evening," I said, and then aimed the camera phone I had in my hand at Katalina and the dean. "Katalina, you tore me down in three words last week in a public space. You said, 'You have no class.' Now, will you explain to this entire audience why you were sitting at the mall calling me childish and then messaging Professor Jasper words you only whisper to him?"
The room hummed. Katalina's face moved from confident to hunting. "What is this?" she demanded.
I tapped my phone screen and projected a message into the main feed. A screenshot, timestamped, of Katalina's private message to Jasper: "You were perfect in front of me yesterday." Another screenshot: a message from Katalina to her friend boasting that she had agreed to be paid for attention. I had a small archive; I had collected evidence, not to hurt, but to put out the small, poisonous fire.
"Katalina," I said slowly, voice steady now. "Are you paid to be with him for show? Are you courting him for status? Or did you believe your own performance and decide I was the villain?"
She went bright red, fingers fumbling the stem of her wine glass. "This is private," she said. "You cannot—"
"I can," I said. "And now everyone here knows you sent these messages. Katalina, how much do you get paid for appearances?"
A seat nearby whispered. The dean cleared his throat. Jasper, who had stood at the lectern when I began, slid down and joined me at the microphone, the same hand that had once licked my wrist now flat on my back in a way that said, I am yours.
Katalina's composure cracked in a public fury. "You liar!" she shouted. "You can't make me out to be—"
"Applause for honesty, please," said a woman in the front row. A ripple of laughter and clapping started. People lean in. Cameras in the room pinged with clicks. Someone filmed. Among the crowd, students whispered, some horrified, some delighted.
"How does it feel?" Katalina spat at me. "To be exposed?"
I felt nothing mean. "Ask yourself that later," I said. "Right now, tell them how you intended to ruin me."
Jasper stared at Katalina like a man seeing a different person for the first time. Her face moved from confident villain to shrill, then to scolding, then finally to hollow. "You can't make me say this," she said, voice trembling.
"Then I will," said Jasper, and he turned to the audience. "Katalina invited me to a charity event. She asked for a photo. She then asked, privately, for me to present her as 'special' to others. She wanted to be seen next to me. She asked if it would help her get favors." His voice was steady, iron under cotton. "I didn't respond the way I should have. It's not an excuse."
Katalina's posture folded. People near us took out phones and began to tape. The dean looked like a man watching his favorite vase crack. Students murmured. Someone shouted, "Shame!" Another said, "Too much drama."
Katalina's defenses collapsed in stages. First came denial, then protest with hands in the air. "You are making this up!" she cried, voice thin. Then she attempted to pivot and attack me personally — "You're insecure!" she accused — but the crowd had already decided to be interested.
Her next move was to pout and play the victim, but the video feed already had the time-stamped messages that proved her earlier boasts. She dropped to tears and tried to yell that I'd ruined her career.
"It wasn't me," said an older student nearby. "You did this to yourself."
Around us, responses ranged from shock to applause. A group of undergrads hissed their disapproval as Katalina stumbled out of the room. A few students stood and clapped for Jasper and for me. Some recorded the entire scene and laughed later, but most had looks of something like moral satisfaction. Katalina — once a thunderbolt — was now a soggy cloud, and the whole hall looked at her with the pity reserved for falling things.
She left in a flurry of noise. Journalists who had been present asked for comment. The dean offered a bland apology for the disturbance, and Jasper and I sat down and watched the world move on from right to wrong with odd speed.
Katalina's fall was not violent. It was a public unmasking, slow and precise, and for anyone who had ever loved a someone who wanted to be more than simple, it was a small lesson. There were people who felt sorry for her, people who judged her harshly, and people who whispered about the cruelty of exposure. Jasper's hand went to mine and squeezed.
"That was savage," he said, not unkind.
"It needed to happen," I replied. "People should know who they clap for."
In the months that followed, life smoothed out like a river finding its bed. Jasper and I moved in together in a way that felt natural — I worked as his assistant by day and practiced lab methods under his quiet instruction; at night, he learned to ask and to wait. He would still look jealous, but often he'd manage it with a small joke. He learned to let me be. I learned to let him care.
We had small rituals. He would leave a note on my bag that said "350g" sometimes, and it made me laugh. He loved calling me "my star" in private. He would sometimes do absurd things like make soup for me and then hide in the corridor to watch me eat it and smile like a successful trapper. We grew confident in each other's presence.
One afternoon, as snowfall turned the city into a muffled postcard, he took my hand and led me to the little courtyard behind the lab. He knelt down in the soft wet snow and looked up at me.
"Hadley Cross," he said, formal voice breaking, "will you marry me?"
I blinked. He stood and cried in a small, embarrassed way. "Not like that," he said. "I mean, will you spend the rest of your ridiculous, brilliant life with me?"
I laughed until I cried. I had no dramatic speech to make. I could only say, "Yes."
We married quietly with my mother dancing badly in the corner and Iris wiping tear tracks from her cheeks. Jasper's mother — who had indeed been the one who "ran away" years ago — came and hugged me as if she had been saving her breath for that very moment.
At the wedding, surrounded by close friends and students who had once called me "the professor's assistant," someone handed me a small card in Jasper's handwriting: 350g. The inside said, "My heart, measured by how many times you make me laugh in a day."
I slid my thumb over the numbers and thought of the hospital corridor, the mall stairs, the shiny restaurant, and the auditorium. My life had once been a string of small humiliations and bigger hopes. It had been mortifying and miraculous in turns.
At midnight, Jasper pulled me toward the patio. Snow had turned to a pale glaze that reflected the string lights. He took my hand, leaned close, and whispered into my ear the thing he sometimes whispered when he wanted to soothe and claim and promise all at once.
"I am yours," he said simply.
I breathed him in and out. "And I am yours," I answered.
He smiled and then did something small and ridiculous: he licked the inside of my wrist the way he had on that first terrible day. I laughed and pretended to scold him, but my fingers curled around his neck.
"Only in private," I said.
"Only in private," he agreed.
The Apple ID joke became a story we told at brunches. My mother still delighted in calling him "my son's friend" to strangers. Iris bragged about how she had been totally supportive in exactly the kind of way that made a story better. Katalina? She faded into gossip — a lesson more than a villain. When the dean asked me how I felt about all that, I shrugged and said, "It was awkward, but it was ours."
And when I finally cleared out my old phone history, I left one little entry untouched: a note that said "350g." I kept it like a small talisman — a reminder that sometimes weird science terms could mean something like love, and sometimes the awkwardest moments were the ones that stitched life into something whole.
The End
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