Sweet Romance13 min read
I Picked Up a "Fool" — and He Turned My Life Upside Down
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I never expected a normal late night at the office to change everything.
"It looked like you were trying to seduce me," Brooks Alvarez said, leaning too close across my desk. "Deliberately staying late, dressing like that—what are you up to, Abby?"
"Brooks, you're being ridiculous. Stop it," I answered, my voice high and shaky. "If you don't stop touching me, I'll call security."
"Oh? Call them," he sneered. "You know, Abby, I've noticed you since day one. Fresh grad, saving every penny, pretending to be proud of your little independence. Stay with me and you can skip twenty years of struggle."
I swallowed bile. The man who supervised my internship had a face that seemed permanently slick with oil. He had the kind of hunger that made me want to scrub the floor after he left the room.
"I have a boyfriend," I blurted. "We've been together four years."
"Four years?" Brooks laughed, low and cruel. "Which man would stay faithful for four years around someone like you? Stop lying."
"Then come to the company party next week," I said, clinging to the only rope I could think of. "Bring him if you don't believe me. He'll—"
Brooks let go of me. His hands slid away as if releasing a prize he had tired of looking at.
I bolted. I left my unsaved work and fled the building with a pounding heart. The fluorescent glare of the lobby felt like interrogation lights. Outside, the bus stop was empty and cold. I tapped my phone numbers, thumb hovering over Roman Kelly's name.
He used to be the man who knew the way my laugh sounded. Roman and I had been high school sweethearts. We survived four years of long distance—until last week when I found him in my sister Fatima Hoffman's bed.
"I—" I started to dial, then hung up. "He isn't my boyfriend anymore," I told myself. "He hasn't been for days."
And then Roman showed up at the bus stop, face flushed, words spilling.
"Abigail Dyer, you always stir things," he barked when he saw me. "Why are you bothering Fatima? I'm with her now. We love each other. Stop harassing her."
People nearby turned. My cheeks went hot with humiliation and anger.
"You cheated," I said, and it wasn't a question. "You and Fatima—caught. You called me names for losing my temper. You blamed me. My parents took her side because I'm not their blood. I'm done."
Roman walked away with his chest out. Fatima smiled sweetly, as if the moment were staged for a magazine. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped my bag.
The bus came, and I rode home to the dingy single-room flat I paid from my internship stipend. The alley near my building was a usual dump of discarded crates and overheated refrigerators. Tonight a crowd had gathered: a man lay on the pavement, ragged and filthy. People traded rumours about him like cards.
"Look at him, a stray. He'll contaminate our neighborhood," one woman said.
"Take him to the shelter," another suggested. "He's been here days."
They left. The man didn't move. He looked lost in the way that makes strangers hesitate. Without thinking—because I was tired and reckless—I turned back.
He looked up as I crouched, eyes watery under grime. He seemed almost childlike in the way he studied me.
"Would you come with me?" I asked.
He blinked, then smiled as if I'd offered him a miracle. "Yes," he said. "Yes, please."
"What's your name?" I added.
He hesitated, as if his tongue had rusted to the roof of his mouth, then managed, "I can speak. I can—" He stopped, bewildered by the effort. "I can speak."
His voice was a deep instrument, unexpectedly pleasant. He rose with me and we walked back to my flat. He was taller than I had thought. He smelled of dust and old rain. His hands were rough, but when he took mine to steady himself they were warm.
"Come on," I said, half to him, half to myself. "We can clean you up. You can stay for a few days. I need a favor."
"A favor?" He looked both hopeful and afraid.
"A group of colleagues—my manager—he's the worst. I need someone to be my boyfriend at a company party next week. You don't have to talk. Just sit at my side. I'll teach you what to say."
His face brightened the way a child's does at the promise of candy. "Stay with you," he repeated. "Stay."
I took him into my tiny home. He listened politely when I offered him water and a bowl of noodles. He called me "sister" once, charming and odd. He followed my instructions like a good dog, obedient and completely without guile. When I asked his name again he faltered, eyes going blank. He pointed to the mirror where his reflection looked like a stranger and murmured, "Laurent."
"Laurent?" I repeated, writing the sound in my head.
Later—when I helped him shower—I thought he'd be ashamed. Instead, when the water washed down, his features emerged clean: long lashes, deep dark eyes, an unexpected sculpted jaw. Beneath the grime was a face made for magazines. I couldn't help it. My hand wandered and touched his ribs. He had a row of defined abs. In an instant everything I had believed about the world—about myself—blinked.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
He blinked. For a second his eyes cleared, and something razor-sharp came into them. He said my name in a voice that could straighten a staircase: "You shouldn't touch people like that."
I recoiled. The man who had sat like a child minutes ago was gone. The cool of his gaze pushed me backward as if I had been the one exposed to scrutiny.
"I'm sorry!" I said, backing away to the hallway. "I only needed your help—"
He was already composed again—this new version of him that had the polish of a boardroom and the command of a stage.
"You're Abigail Dyer," he said. "You work at my company's subsidiary." His fingers drummed on his knee, cool and precise. "Don't tell anyone what you saw tonight."
His voice was steel. "Call me Laurent Karim if you must. It's easier."
I sat down hard on my sofa, my heart tripping.
"Laurent—who?" I asked to buy time.
He gave me a thin smile. "Call me whatever makes you comfortable. But keep tonight to yourself."
"I only wanted you to be my fake boyfriend for one night," I said. "I'll pay you or I—"
"I will not take money," he said quietly. "I will do this because I owe my life to you."
The next morning I went to work and found my files gone. "You didn't finish," Brooks said in the meeting room. "This is unacceptable." The room turned cold as all ten eyes in it lined up, accusing me of sloth. It was my word against the deleting hand of a manager who already thought of me as pretty and breakable.
Kataleya Rizzo, who had shared the workload, stepped up unexpectedly. "I finished extra pieces," she said gently, suppressing a satisfied smile. "Abigail can assist."
Brooks was delighted to lay the blame on me, though everyone in the room could sense something wrong. I took a breath.
"I can redo it. The meeting isn't for two hours," I said.
"Too late," said Brooks.
But when we started the presentation, the client asked a question that fell right where my missing analysis lived. Kataleya panicked, then—face paling—indicated me.
"Abigail can answer that," she said.
I did. I spoke the data I'd re-memorized overnight and handed back deeper insight than the clients expected. Suits in the room nodded. The lead client said, "That's the clarity we wanted."
Eyes that had been sharp with derision melted into looks of surprised respect. Kataleya's smile froze. Brooks, trying to maintain control, pointed to me and said I shouldn't have been allowed into the meeting in the first place. "But the result matters," the head client said. "We want to expand. We'll discuss the next stage."
After the meeting, there was the department party. I was nervous, hands damp. "Bring your boyfriend," the team demanded like a dare. I could have quit. Instead I thought of the man who had kept looking at me like I might fall apart and decided to gamble.
"You said you had a boyfriend," Mason Muller, a quiet colleague, teased. "Bring him and we'll put him through a gauntlet."
I looked down my phone. I had no photo, no number. My mind flashed to Laurent—Zane?—the name he'd given. Had he really been an accidental save on my life? I admitted out loud, "My boyfriend is having a birthday tonight," and used the excuse to escape Brooks's circling, greasy orbit.
At dinner, voices rose. A group of men in black came through the corridor—at first I thought security, but they were looking for a VIP in another room. From across the hall I caught sight of my sister and Roman seated with my parents, all smiling. The world tilted.
They saw me. My father clapped the table.
"Snow? Abigail, why are you like this?" he said, calling me by a childhood nickname I hated.
"Stop," I said. "I didn't get any call. I don't know about a dinner."
My mother tutted. "You're losing your family if you keep this attitude."
Inside, my blood burned. When Roman tried to tell me our "relationship" was always hollow I snapped. "You made a choice," I told him. "You chose her."
"Abigail—" Roman started, his face pinched.
Then a cool voice cut the room like a blade.
"We are getting married."
The voice was calm and impossible. A man stood behind me as if he'd broken out of my memory. It was Laurent—or a different name now: Zane Corbett. He had the kind of face that shocked the room into silence. He sat down, took my hand with the propriety of an owner taking possession, and said, "Strictly speaking, we're not engaged. But call me what you like for now."
My father blinked. My mother straightened. Fatima's smile waned. Roman looked small.
"You are my fiancée," Zane said, almost instructionally. "We arrived here by accident, but if anyone says anything about Abigail's honor again, they will answer to me."
He left with me on his arm. As we walked away I asked, breathless, "Why did you do that?"
"You helped me," he said. "Two times now. I return favors."
And then—like a car shifting into neutral—he pulled away to stand across the street. "I can't give you my number," he said. "We must keep this simple. Call me when you must." He ducked his head and was gone.
I tried to tell myself I had simply been rescued by a noble stranger, then returned to normal life. But fate loves coincidence. The next day I was told my trip to H City—sea-side H—had been escalated to headquarters. Someone in central had taken an interest in the project I was assigned. My inbox splashed a new name across the top: LAURENT KARIM — Head Office Liaison.
"Hello," his message read. "About your plan for the entertainment client—I'll send files."
He texted useful, pointed notes that cut through the fog. He also started taking a peculiar interest in my wardrobe. "You need to upgrade for H City," Mason told me in a conspiratorial whisper. "They'll watch every detail."
Later that day, a man appeared in the boutique like someone falling out of a magazine. He bought the dress I had tried—no hesitation. The shop's famous girl, who had humiliated me earlier, was told, "Fire her," by someone I recognized: Mason, stepping forward with a cold smile. Security escorted the rude salesperson away amid whispers. A small moment of vindication washed through me like warm rain.
Zane—or Laurent—treats me to an outfit he wants me to wear in H City. "Not that," he says once, when I model a dress that was meant to be perfect. "Replace it. It's not you."
A private, quiet moment formed between us in the suit-lined hotel corridor. He watched me with an expression that never appeared in his business face. A soft smile came and braided with something like hunger.
"You call me Laurent when you fear me," he said once. "But my name is Zane Corbett."
That was the first time he had told me anything that sounded like the truth. "Why did you say to keep tonight secret?" I asked.
He froze, the dark in his eyes sharpening. "For my safety," he said.
"I thought—" I started, then realized: he didn't belong on the sidewalk that night. He did not belong anywhere near my shabby life, and yet here he was.
The trip to H City was a blur of airports and opulent hotels. Zane's assistant, Mason, and his personal doctor, Clancy Singh, showed up like blueprints of competence. Clancy checked Zane with professional kindness, running fingers over an old scar and frowning at the irregularities.
"Trauma," Clancy said to Mason in hushed tones. "Some times his brain swings. We can stabilize, but it needs controlled exposure."
"Controlled exposure?" I echoed later. "What does that mean?"
"It means making the remembered sensory environment so ordinary it no longer shocks the other part of him," Mason explained. "You helped once by being calm. We need to recreate that."
We were asked to recreate the moment in my apartment when Zane's other self had come back. The exercise was humiliating and intimate. I had to touch him in the same way; I had to say the same ordinary words.
"Say my name," I whispered.
"Abigail," he answered, the voice like a distant bell.
The trick worked—Zane dove into a long, private silence. When he returned to his clear, unruffled ruler-of-cities persona, his eyes were colder than before.
"You mirrored what the foolish part of me needed," he said. "But you made a mistake."
"What mistake?" I asked, picking at the hem of my skirt.
"You leaned in. You hesitated. You almost pulled your hand back." He took my wrist and held it gently. "Don't ever pull back because you fear hurt. Your courage is useful to me."
And there's where it gets complicated, because he wasn't just being generous in gratitude. He began to act possessive in small, unexpected ways. He called me "mine" when a waiter seemed too interested. He frowned if I laughed at another man's joke. He paid for things without letting me protest. He asked where I had lived, what I had eaten. He fussed over me as if I were porcelain.
The H City trip—my gauntlet—was also the moment I learned what "being in public" can do to a man like Brooks Alvarez. Brooks had been the kind of predator you learn to hate quietly. He had power and a history of covering his tracks. But he had made a big mistake: he thought I was helpless. He thought I would take his threats.
When Brooks tried to corner me in the hotel service corridor—"You owe me for that meeting," he hissed—Mason was there with a plate of files. "Brooks," Mason said softly. "You look tired."
"It wasn't like that," Brooks tried. "She was—"
"Save it," Mason said, and shifted his phone so a small blue recording icon glowed.
Brooks grew flustered and tried to squeeze my arm. Zane arrived at the elevator just then—cold, sharp, fulcrum of control.
"Brooks Alvarez," Zane said, like he was stating a title. "Come to the ballroom. I want you to watch a video."
Brooks blinked. "A video?"
"Yes," Zane said. "Of what you tried to do in my company's corridor."
He pushed the button on the phone. There, on a lobby screen, was Brooks—hands on me, voice low, a face of entitlement. The room near the ballroom became full of people who would make a career from watching a scandal. Security hovered like vultures.
"Abigail—" Brooks stammered, his color gone. "This is a misunderstanding."
"Sit," Zane said. "You will speak, with witnesses. You will tell exactly how many women you've done this to. We'll publish this to every manager at subsidiary level and headquarters if you lie."
Brooks's eyes darted to my colleagues. Kataleya's face, who once played coy and pretended competence, had hardened. She realized her silence had been tacit consent to the system that had allowed Brooks to thrive.
"You": Zane pointed with a cold finger. "Explain."
Brooks's voice fell apart. "It was a mistake. I—"
"Who have you harassed?" Zane demanded.
One by one, a couple of women who had been too frightened to go to HR stood and named nights, places, words. Their faces were steady now; the invisible scale of public testimony gave them courage.
Brooks's expression moved from arrogance, to colorless shock, to raw fear, to denial.
"It wasn't like that! I didn't—" He tried to charge at me then, but security held him. Phones came out. People recorded. The buzzing that had accompanied my humiliation months ago turned into a roar of accountability.
"You're fired," the HR director said finally, voice steady. "And we won't be the only ones who know."
Brooks collapsed into a heap of wheedled excuses and protests while colleagues whispered and took videos. Some clapped quietly. Others just watched. The gallery of strangers had become witnesses. Brooks begged, pleaded, offered to resign, to apologize for the cameras. None of it fixed the moment where he had believed he could take what was mine.
It took me a long time to process what that night meant. I didn't revel in his humiliation. I watched how he shrank like something washed and broken. But I did feel relief—like the roof of a pressure cooker had lifted. It was necessary that he be shown the consequences of his choices.
We didn't stop there. Roman and Fatima were also confronted—publicly—by a friend who had found messages and photos they'd thought only the dark could hide. At a seaside café where we had all been framed together, Mason and Zane orchestrated the exposure. They had screens. They put up the messages Roman had sent to Fatima and the photographs he had thought were private. People dropped forks. Fatima's face went past denial into a flush of shame. Roman tried to defend himself—"We loved each other!"—but love doesn't erase betrayal. The crowd hissed and took pictures. He stood there small and insolvent, asking for forgiveness and getting none.
His public undoing was different from Brooks's. Brooks had lost his job and reputation; Roman lost a place at our table and the pretense of being a man of integrity. Fatima lost the trust of my parents and the assumed sympathy that had been her currency. Both punishments were public, messy, and irretrievable—exactly what the book of my last four years had demanded.
After the dust settled, Zane walked me down the hotel corridor to a balcony that looked over the sea.
"You kept your head," he said.
"I kept my dignity," I corrected. "You didn't have to do any of it."
"I did," he replied, "because I couldn't let the world strip you again. Because I'm selfish: I like seeing you safe."
There was warmth in his hand when he tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I felt myself blur at the edges where respect and something else—nervous, surprising—met.
In H City I learned to navigate mansions and small kindnesses. I learned that Zane Corbett was dangerous in other ways—his ability to fix things, his warning stare, the sudden possessiveness that landed like a glove on my shoulder. I also learned how brave I could be when someone else handed me space to be brave in.
"Will you stay?" he asked one night, when the ocean's sound was only a suggestion. "With me, while we sort this out."
"Stay where?" I asked.
"Anywhere that keeps you from getting flattened by the world. Stay with me while we figure out which part of you the world can't break."
I thought of my small room and my battered shoes. I thought of my sister and father who had turned their backs. I thought of Roman's pleading and Brooks's oily lips. I thought of the man who had been "Laurent" on the pavement and "Zane" in the boardroom. I thought of the night he'd picked me up like a lifeline.
"I'll stay," I said.
"Good," he replied, and for the first time I heard something like promise in his voice.
The story kept going after that—presentations, boardrooms, nights when he lost himself and became the frightened boy again, mornings when he returned to the throne-like calm. We worked, we fought, we repaired. There were moments of small, ordinary sweetness that lit up my chest: when he quietly put his jacket around my shoulders on a windy walk; when he smiled at a joke only I heard; when he handed me a plain cup of coffee and said, "I thought you'd like it this way."
People noticed. "He's not like that with anyone else," someone murmured. "He smiles at her like sun," Mason said once.
That was the truth: in his two states he was different—but in the center of both, he kept me a small, safe thing. And when he decided to be my shield, he was the kind of man villains don't get to have their way with anymore.
The End
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