Sweet Romance13 min read
Five Years Later, I Accidentally Slept with My Childhood Anchor
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I woke up with a headache like a bad translation of regret and the sudden, unmistakable smell of someone else's skin.
"Ugh," I said into the duvet that smelled like him. I blinked and met Zander Collins' face—calm, handsome, impossibly close. For a moment the world was only the curve of his jaw and the soft bruise of my own foolishness.
"You want breakfast?" Zander asked, voice low and a little hoarse, as if he'd been saving the words.
"Sweet and sour ribs?" I heard myself suggest, and my brain wanted to crawl out of my skull.
"Okay." He got up, pulling a shirt at random from the floor and slipping on shoes that had been flung in a drunken hurry.
I sat there, stuck between mortification and an odd kind of relief. The phone on the bedside table glowed with a barrage of messages from Fabian Ramos—long texts, voice clips—each one a small accusation and a plea. Fabian had been the reason I was a mess the night before: the night the white light of his new girlfriend, Valentina Michel, stepped into a party and turned every "we" between us into a joke.
That was why I had run into the rain. That was why I had screamed and cried and not cared that my hair clumped and my mascara made tracks. That was why I was suddenly standing in my kitchen watching Zander Collins cooking like he had always been allowed in.
He moved without ceremony, and the kitchen filled with the clatter of pans and the quiet rhythm of someone who took care of details without announcing them.
"You're… calm," I said too loudly. I could feel the absurdity prickling, like someone had put cold water on my pride.
"Because you're here," he said simply. He set a plate in front of me and sat down opposite. His face was open and steady and completely free of the performative indifference he'd always worn like armor in our school photos.
When I finally asked the question that had no business being asked at lunch, he answered with a single line that had always had the power to rearrange my chest.
"Why are you here?" I demanded, pointless anger making my fingers tremble.
"Because you were here," he said. He twined my hair behind my ear with an absent tenderness and then, as if remembering the space between us that had been five years thick, he dove into a practical list: "The washer is on the balcony, don't toss underwear in the toilet, put skirts in the laundry bag."
I nearly choked on my fork.
"You left five years ago," I snapped, the old accusation rising like bitter bile. "You left and didn't tell me. Five years! How dare you come back and—"
He laid his hand over mine in that firm, quiet way he always had when his patience matched his care. "I didn't want you to be dragged down," he said. "I left because I had to go. But I came back because I couldn't stay away."
My anger stalled. "So now you want to move in?"
"Can I?" he asked, as if the simplest answer would solve a knot inside both of us.
"Are you serious?" My voice was higher than I meant it to be.
He nodded, unruffled. "I don't want you alone. I thought—if you let me stay—"
I laughed, a sharp sound like glass. "You left. You left me."
"I know," he said, and for the first time his expression softened into something like apology. "I'm sorry. Will you let me make it right?"
I had been a woman with a broken calendar of trust. Fabian in his perfect suits, in his family dinners, had been the easy story: a lover to speak of, a safe part of a life that pretended to hold no secrets. But the party had torn that safety mask away. Fabian had introduced me once as "a friend" in front of his circle when Valentina showed up, and every mirage I'd been living in dissolved under the cold, good light of truth.
So I let Zander stay. That was how, two days after a breakup, I packed what I owned into a small bag and moved across the city with a man who had once been my childhood anchor.
"I can drive you to work," he offered on my first morning at the new place.
"You're not a chauffeur," I said, but he replied with a softer kind of insistence. "You're my person. I get to do that."
We settled into a rhythm that was stranger and more intimate than any courtship book could describe. He cooked. I did the dishes. He would look at me across the sink and say, "Do you want the light on?" like a private joke. We fell into each other's lives as if five years had been only a technicality. Kisses were practiced and gentle; arguments were short because the two of us had learned how to apologize.
And then, like a shadow refusing a door, Fabian Ramos returned to my life.
The second time he appeared one night outside my office, he was leaning against his car, a cigarette long consumed between his fingers. He had that gaze—easy, entitled, the sort of look that had been my problem.
"How's life?" he asked, the micro-sneer of a man who always thought his presence still created waves.
"We're done," I said, exhaling patience.
"Come back to me," he said, suddenly pleading as if years evaporated with the rain.
"You're joking," I told him. I couldn't hold my contempt in. "You're joking if you think I'll return after you recast me in public. You think apologies rewrite two years of being a placeholder?"
Fabian's face changed. For the first time since we had been "us," I saw desperation.
"I love you," he said in that old, practiced way.
I thinned my lips. "Love," I echoed, and crumpled the metaphor like tissue in my palm. "You're asking me for a word and expecting me to rebuild everything on it."
He moved closer. The crowd at the café shifted, taken in by the spectacle and the discomfort. "Please," he whispered. "I'll fix it. I'll—"
"Stop." I grabbed a rose from the vase, tore it, and laid the scattered petals across the table between us. They felt soft and piteous in my hands. "I'm done. Tell your new life to go ahead. Goodbye, Fabian."
He sat, stunned. Then he asked the most cowardly question of all: "Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said, and the certainty felt like a small, bright shield.
When I returned home that night, my door opened onto a scene of peace. Zander sat curled on the couch, one arm over his eyes.
"You saw him," he said when I stepped in.
"Yes."
He blinked, then cleared his throat. "Do you want to tell me everything?"
I walked straight into him and let my arms find his neck. "I don't need to," I muttered. "I'm here."
He kissed my forehead like an agreement. Then he teased, awkward and warm: "Message him 'got married' with a ring emoji."
I wanted to laugh and did, small and uncontrollable. He was ridiculous and earnest and entirely, embarrassingly beloved.
The days passed like this until one afternoon when I stepped out of a meeting and ran into the two of them—Fabian and his fiancée, Valentina—on my doorstep before I could key my new place's lock open.
"Hello," Valentina said, decency peeled to minimal. She wore a suit that would have been seamless in a magazine. Fabain's smile was strained, like a man who had chosen the wrong path and then convinced himself it would still be easy.
"Do you need something?" I asked. I felt Zander's closeness in the hallway and tried to keep my voice steady.
"We're getting married," Fabian announced, as if this explanation would seal every wound. He looked at me with an odd mixture of pride and guilt. "We wanted to be respectful and tell you."
Respectful. The word tasted rare and dishonest.
"You could have sent a text," I said. "You could have done many small things. You chose performance. Congratulations."
Valentina's face was complicated, like someone who'd been told the scripts of compromise and learned only part of the lines. "I came here because I wanted to apologize," she said, suddenly vulnerable.
"You have nothing to apologize for to me," I answered. "I was the one who was dumped in public. Go apologize to whoever you need. I'm not part of your transaction."
She pursed her lips, and I felt the old jealousy—like bitter breath behind my ribs—flare for the briefest second. Then I turned away. The last thing I wanted was their pity.
That night, we were half asleep when they returned—uninvited, unavoidable. Valentina stepped in like a bride following a script, and Fabian—expression carved into something brittle—said the words aloud anyway.
"We're getting married," he said.
I stared at them, unflinching. "Fine. Then stop making me your stage. Live your life."
Fabian's silence had the weight of someone who had expected a different reaction. Valentina looked at him, confused and suddenly small. "He was the one who told me to come," she whispered.
The room air constricted. For the first time, the pretense between them began to cup, revealed like paper peeled back.
"You two should leave," Zander said, voice low. He had risen from the couch without notice and stood like a wall between us and the pair of them. There was a new tilt to his jaw I hadn't seen before—no smile, no coyness—just steel.
Fabian's face hardened. "And who are you?"
"Zander Collins," he said simply, calm as salt. "You should go."
Fabian laughed, brittle and fast. "You are in my home now. Who do you think you are?"
That was the moment everything collapsed. Or perhaps the moment everything finally fell into place. Valentina's face drained as recognition hit her like a winter wind. "Zander?" she said, small and bewildered.
"I know you," Valentina murmured, stepping forward as if to close some gap. "You're—"
"Valentina Michel?" Zander finished for her, flat. "You were at my university. You were a student in a seminar where you asked me for guidance." He paused. "We spoke less than ten times."
Valentina's lips trembled. "I—" Her words unraveled. "Zander, I didn't know—"
Fabian's mask finally cracked. "You know her?" he barked at Zander, unmoored.
Zander looked at Fabian with a look that did not belong to someone who would have once been a boy I shared secrets with. "Yes. We met."
Valentina's eyes filled with tears that looked, to my surprise, less like whimsy and more like genuine sorrow. It hit me then in a jolt as sharp as winter—the fragile heart of Valentina's plan. She had not come to redeem a love. She had come to anchor a collapsing family business. Fabian had been useful. He had been convenient.
Valentina stumbled backward. "This—this isn't like it looks," she said to both of them. "Fabian, I didn't—"
"I'm engaged," Fabian snapped back, and there was something feral behind his act now. "We are marrying. Valentina and I—"
"No," Zander said, cold and clear. "You are marrying because you both need each other for reasons other than love. If you expected me to help smooth this over, you misread everything."
Valentina clutched at her chest, like breath had become a stranger. "Zander—please—"
Fabian's mouth went thin. He reached for her hand like a man trying to pull warmth from a stranger's scarf. "We will make this work," he whispered.
Valentina's shoulders collapsed. For an instant, the three of us watched a private play unfold in public, edges catching the light. The room around us seemed to hum with curiosity. The door was shut. The little apartment felt like a stage. Then the phone in my bag buzzed; it was a message from my father, Leonardo Ortiz, asking me to come to a family dinner at the trade center. The date: tonight.
"Go," Zander said. "Let me handle this."
I nodded. "I'll be there," I told my father.
The evening at the trade center was supposed to be a display of influence: my father's connections, a constellation of power and polished smiles. I'd been told to attend to be "introduced properly." I almost didn't go. But Fabian called and wanted to "clear things up." He wanted to stand in front of people who mattered and tidy the ruins with grace.
Instead, he and his mother arrived in a storm. Rosa Muller—Fabian's mother—was the sort of presence that planted itself on the carpet and refused to be invisible. She stepped forward and slapped me with the kind of theatrical fury I had only ever seen in movies.
"How dare you seduce my son," she screamed, the words ricocheting across the marble. The guests turned; phones were out. A hush fell, heavy and electric.
"I didn't seduce anyone," I said, the microphone already sticky warm in my palm before I'd expected to speak. "Your son—your fiancé—decided to refuse better judgment." I could feel the eyes on me, bright and hungry and oh so slow.
Rosa Muller lunged again with venom: "You had no right—"
"Let me speak," I said loudly. The hostess of the evening sagged with an expression that was half horror, half adaptive interest. A camera caught everything. The hall breathed.
I stepped up to the stage with something strange and steady in my chest. The microphone slid into my hand like a pact.
"Tonight," I said, addressing a hundred and fifty pairs of unfamiliar eyes, "I was invited here as a daughter of a partner. Instead, I have been brought on stage to be humiliated for things that are none of your business."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Fabian's face had the color of a man who had finally understood his life was not all maneuvering. "Listen to me!" he said, too late.
I looked at him. "You introduced me as 'just a friend' in that restaurant the other night. You told Valentina that we were 'only friends' in front of your people." I paused. "That would be fine—if what you wanted was 'fine.' But you offered me two years of pretense. You offered me everything but honesty."
A camera was trained on me. Someone in the crowd leaned in, caught.
"You," I said, pointing at the woman who had slapped me, "chose to stand with a son who drags other people's feelings like rags. You are hollowing out the truth to make a suite of rooms for yourself. You get to call out a woman for being 'shameless' when your son used another person's heart to make himself a more palatable story."
Fabian's mother had a new color now: not anger, but the brittle shock of being unmasked. Around us, the guests shifted: some leaned forward; some reached for their phones; someone laughed uncomfortably; one man clapped, surprised at his own applause.
"I could stand here and cry," I said. "I could spin a tale; I could beg. But what would that change? The only meaningful thing left to do is to stop allowing people like you to pretend that your power gives you the right to humiliate others."
I heard someone in the back whisper, "She's the daughter."
"Fabian," I said, and it was not a question. "You had a choice."
Fabian looked like a man trying to remember the shape of a better decision. He swallowed, and the room tilted.
Valentina, caught in the eye of a storm, began to shake. "I'm sorry," she said, voice thin. "I thought—"
"You thought what?" I pressed. "That joining an old money family would heal what your company was missing? That marrying someone you don't love could make you appear safe?"
She looked at me then, not like a woman who'd come to apologize, but like someone who had been found out for trying to fill a void with an arrangement. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
The crowd was swallowing this like a spectacle. Phones recorded. Nearby guests murmured into earpieces. Someone whispered, "This will go viral."
Rosa Muller went through stages: first denial, then outrage, then a flurry of damage control. She tried to pull Fabian away, to avert the cameras, to issue a statement. I let her claw at the cloth of her dignity. It bubbled and washed away.
"This isn't over," Rosa hissed, but even her threats sounded worn. People left their conversations to watch us. A few leaned across to call friends. Laughter and pity and new judgments braided into something sharp.
Fabian's face crumpled. That was the real punishment—the look of someone who had expected status to shield him, now unloading like a broken ship. He had been proud, and here, at the peak of his access, he was stripped down to the stubborn, small boy who had refused to take responsibility.
Valentina tried to speak. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone," she whispered.
"You didn't," I said. "You meant to survive."
That line cut better than a shout. She flinched.
Then Fabian did something I had suspected all along: he lunged to defend the contingency, to salvage the planned image. He shouted incoherently at me—a winded, staggering attempt at regaining command. Zander stepped forward, his voice calm as glass.
"Fabian," Zander said, "you built a castle on the backs of small obligations. You cannot expect the castle to stay when people tell the truth." He looked at me and then at Fabian. "You will have to live with what you have done."
Fabian's world shrank. The guests got angrier; their pity turned into scorn; someone recorded the last of his explanation, cheap and small in the face of what we all had seen. He tried to speak to the crowd, to defend his decisions, and each sentence fell flat.
He slumped into a chair like a man who'd finally offered everything he thought might be love and realized it wasn't real.
Valentina sobbed, then stepped away. She looked at Fabian like a solitary figure on a stage who has been learning someone else's lines.
Rosa Muller, with a fury more brittle than before, made a final move to incite the guests: "She's a liar! She's the one who seduced my son." She raised her voice like a gavel.
"That's not how it happens," one of the guests muttered, an accusation like a pebble. Another guest recorded, double-tapped, uploaded.
Within twenty minutes, the room's gossip split like a river. Some people whispered sympathy for Fabian as a victim of entanglement; others saw him as the architect of his own undoing. Valentina's eyes drilled into him with a hurt that no maneuvering could make whole.
The punishment was not formalized by law or vote. It was a quieter thing: a stripping away of support. Invitations would stop. Deals would be reconsidered. Comments under the video would define him as untrustworthy. People would keep their distance. For Fabian, that morning, the illusion of being loved for status disintegrated.
When we finally left the stage, my father's face looked unsurprised and sad. He slid an arm into mine with the sort of steadiness that promised sanctuary. Zander held my hand like a promise. Fabian left with his mother in a tableau of defeat, his shoulders hunched.
It wasn't a perfect punishment. People still behaved like men who'd not learned from their own missteps. But the public unraveling—one where lies could no longer be orchestrated—was its own kind of justice. I watched Fabian's face as his world changed, and I felt the hard, steady bloom of relief.
Some months later, calls came from a new quarter: businessmen who'd planned to partner with Fabian's family began to distance themselves. Valentina's presence in certain circles diminished. People who had once applauded their union now found reasons to not attend. It was as if social currency could be revoked by the simple act of seeing.
That night at the trade center, I had been the one to speak, and the crowd had listened. They took the story and multiplied it into all its consequences. The punishment had unfolded differently for each person. Some were shamed in the press. Some lost patrons. Some lost dignity.
For me, the outcome was simpler: I stepped out of my father's orbit with my head held higher. I had lost less than I'd feared. And for Zander, the man who had returned and settled like a balm, he proved that love didn't need to announce itself loudly to be fierce.
Weeks later, after the dust and the cameras and the awkward emails, Zander knelt in a small courtyard under a sky that smelled like early jasmine. He placed a small ring on my finger—the simplest thing, but mine.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, not like a prince, but like a man who had learned how to stay.
I said yes with the kind of certainty I'd only felt once before as a child when we shared a blanket and dared to be brave. He kissed me, gentle as an apology, sure as sunrise.
We married in a spring that felt like an agreement between the earth and the sun. My grandmother wheeled herself to the church. My father's face, complicated and softened, watched from the edge. People who mattered to us were present, but the crowd was not the point. The point was a quiet life we chose for each other, full of scraped knees and late dinners and the small rituals that make ordinary things sacred.
In the quiet of our life later, sometimes I would wake before Zander and reach for the rabbit plush that sat on the shelf—one I'd given him years ago, now worn and sweet. It was ridiculous, really, the idea of plush toys as proof of love. But when I looked at that scruffy rabbit, and then at the ring on my finger, I knew what had happened in the years between: the raw, messy kinds of truth had finally prevailed.
"Do you remember," Zander said one night as we leaned into each other on a couch that smelled of home, "the rain the night we met again?"
"I do," I said. "You came with a silly umbrella and two broken suitcases."
"I came back," he said. "And I stayed."
We loved the easy warmth of ordinary things. I slept with the memory of that risky smile and then, more importantly, with the knowledge that if I ever had to speak up again, I would. The world would listen.
The End
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