Sweet Romance16 min read
I Woke Up in His Shirt — Then He Called Me His
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I woke up with a man’s shirt over my shoulders and a buzz at the edge of my skull.
“Hey,” I said to the bathroom mirror. My reflection looked like a bad idea that had followed me home.
“Don’t panic,” the mirror said silently. I didn’t listen.
Last night had been a blur of neon and music. My friend Muriel had dragged me to a bar. I had laughed too loud, danced too bad, and somewhere between the second shot and the third song I kissed someone I probably shouldn't have.
I held the shirt up. It smelled like sandalwood and clean laundry and a perfume that made my stomach flip. The tag wasn’t mine.
My phone vibrated. A text popped: Are you awake? — Muriel.
I flinched. Then I remembered: Muriel’s “brother.” The one she’d been complaining about earlier, “too old, too strict,” the one she called “second brother” to make him sound younger. I blinked until the world stopped tilting.
“Muriel, what did you tell him?” I asked the mirror. The mirror did not answer.
I opened the bedroom door. The room was too tidy for a random hookup. A suit jacket folded on the chair, shoes lined like soldiers. He was at the window, backlit and impossibly still.
“Morning,” he said.
My knees forgot how to work. He turned with a small, controlled movement and leaned against the desk. He looked even better in daylight. Older, not ancient. Not like a man two generations above me, but like someone who knew exactly what he wanted in the room.
“Uh—morning.” My voice did a strange thing and came out thin.
“Did you sleep well?” He sounded like he was asking about a meeting.
Outside: traffic. Inside: hawk eyes and the faint scent of coffee.
“You're Muriel's… brother,” I tried.
He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “Muriel calls me that because it sounds younger.”
My brain did the math and failed. “You—what?”
He gave a small, helpless shrug. “Technically, I'm her uncle. But that’s not the point.” He walked over, slid a crisp card across the desk like a chess piece. “This is for you. I’ll be off.”
I stared at the card like it might explain everything. “Why—why would you…?”
He shrugged again. “You’re Muriel’s friend. Consider it a courtesy.” His eyes were sharp. “Call me Oscar.”
I choked on the name. Oscar Romano. The man who lived in the generous part of town, who always seemed to be at the right event, who was rumor and headline compressed into a person.
Muriel arrived at my dorm an hour later, talking like a fountain. “He’s not my brother,” she said. “He’s my uncle. I call him brother so he looks younger.” She grinned at the confusion on my face. “You told him you were… you know.”
I wanted to punch her and hug her at the same time.
“He left you his card?” Muriel said, peeking into my palm. “Good. That’s Oscar for you. He does that sometimes.”
I looked at the card again. It wasn’t a courtesy. It was a business card with a line of digits and a name beneath: ROMANO HOLDINGS. The kind of card that weighs something in your palm.
“The whole thing’s weird,” Muriel said lightly. “But you’re safe. He’ll be fine.”
“Safe?” I repeated. “Muriel, you don’t get it. I kissed him.”
She shrugged like it was a small thing. “He’s a grown man. Stop dramatizing.”
That night my phone blew up with contradictory messages: from Muriel, from classmates who had seen the glamorous wake-up scene through other eyes, and then a single message that made my stomach drop: Just be careful. — Unknown
I turned the phone over. Part of me wanted to call my father and tell him to come rescue me, and part of me wanted to hide forever in a hoodie.
The next morning he was outside the campus gates, leaning against a black SUV and smoking like he owned the morning. When he saw me he smirked, the way someone smiles at a private joke.
“Kendall,” he said.
My name came out wrong and I corrected it. “Kendall.”
“Hop in.” He left a space in the car between him and the door, the kind of space made for someone he expected to claim.
I pretended to be stubborn and walked away. He caught up in two strides, opened the rear door and said, “Get in.”
I sat, careful with the shirt still clinging to me. He watched me like a man cataloging rare things.
“You said he was my uncle.”
“You said he was younger.” His voice was dry. “Does it bother you?”
“I—no.” My cheeks got hot. “It’s just—why would he—”
“He’s not used to being cheap,” he said simply. “He’s not used to being polite either. He pays for what he wants.”
The car was comfortable. He looked more relaxed than he had the morning I stumbled into his world.
“Do you—are you serious?”
“About what?” His hand brushed mine for a second when he reached for the gear shift. The touch was deliberate and small and bright like a match.
“About—what happened.” My voice lowered to the same whisper only two people share.
He glanced at me, and there was a softness there I didn’t expect. “Did you regret it?”
I hated how my heart answered before my head. “No.”
He let out a small laugh. “Honesty. Good.” Then he turned back to the road. For the first time, his features relaxed like someone taking a breath after holding it too long.
We stopped at a red light and his phone lit up. He looked at it, and the smile left his face. For a flicker he looked older than thirty. Maybe he was older.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
“Do what?” I asked, but I already knew.
He slowed the car as if reining back a horse. “If you want to keep seeing me, make no mistake. People will talk. I’m not anonymous, Kendall.”
“I don’t care.” I said it too fast. I did care. I cared like a moth cares about the flame.
He watched me for a long moment. “Then we’ll define things on our terms. No games.”
That night he taught me how to use the card he’d left. He was patient and sharp and had a kind of generosity that made me suspicious. We went to shops and restaurants I’d only seen from the outside. The sales staff smiled as if we belonged to the same universe, and I felt like I’d been granted access to a place I hadn’t earned.
“You do realize,” I said at some point, “that this looks insane.”
He slid an orange shopping bag into my hands. “Let them talk.”
“What about Muriel?” I asked because the thought had been gnawing at my insides.
He looked at me. “Do you want to keep her?”
“She’s complicated,” I said.
He smiled. “So are you.”
The more time I spent with Oscar, the more his life rubbed off on mine like paint. He introduced me to routines I didn’t know I’d like: early morning runs that made the city seem like it belonged to awake people, dinners that were quiet and filled with small, affectionate details, and a habit of checking in that wasn’t possessive so much as thorough. He told me little things—how he liked his coffee, what bothered him about meetings—and I listened like a child being taught to read.
“You have to be deliberate, Kendall,” he said one night when we were alone on his couch. “If you want something, you have to ask for it.”
That was a lesson I took.
A week into the new pattern, I got an email. Internship offer. The company: Romano Holdings. I blinked until the words melted into the room. I had applied to two places: Hengyuan and Tianchang. I hadn’t expected a response, certainly not an offer with company housing.
Muriel’s reaction when I told her was not excitement. Her face folded into something dark and unreadable.
“You signed with them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She made a noise like someone squeezing a lemon. “You did? For real?”
“Muriel, what’s up?”
She sighed. “Maybe it’s nothing.” She looked at me the way old friends look at each other when they’re choosing whether to tell the truth. “Maybe you should be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated, then said, “Hengyuan? Oh no, that was the other one. Romano’s company—my family knows the family. They—well, you’ll see.”
It was only when I went to my first day at the company that I understood.
The lobby was a glass-and-steel cathedral, everything orderly and clean. My badge felt like a talisman. As I rode up the elevator, rumors about boss and girlfriend and rented apartments scrolled in my head like bad news.
When the elevator doors opened, the department greeted me. “You’re in R&D,” the manager said solemnly. “We’re so glad to have you.”
I was trying to be small, invisible, a ghost with a laptop. People here liked to be professional; they were proud.
And then the man of the rumors walked in like a rumor who had learned to wear a suit.
He moved through the office and people smiled until their chests hurt. He stopped by my desk and tilted his head. “You’re the one they hired,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. A line of heat crawled up my throat.
“That’s good.” He leaned close enough that his breath touched my ear. “I’ll be popping by.”
He kissed me in the office hallway. This was not something I could forget. He tasted like coffee and the city after rain.
“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “I want to watch you.”
For a while it was all small, secret things. He’d appear with a file and hand it to me when no one was looking. He’d text me directives and winks. Sometimes he’d show up at team dinners and find a way to sit next to me so the rest of the room felt like wind.
“You two seem close,” a colleague said once, trying to sound neutral.
“We are,” I replied because it felt true.
But the office was not a bubble. People whispered, and rumors grew teeth.
“He’s seen with someone else,” I heard one woman say at a luncheon. “I think he’s moving in with a representative, Zhao from the other firm.”
I didn’t know who Zhao was. I only knew my heart dropped.
At the next corporate party, everything lit up with the usual shine of people who liked their own reflections. I kept to the side, trying to be ordinary. Oscar stood by the stage with another woman at his arm: a glamorous representative in a silk dress and a laugh like breaking glass. The crowd noticed. The crowd loved to notice.
I felt something undoing inside myself. I wanted to stand up and claim what I had, but the truth was slippery. Oscar had come to my dorm, given me his card, kissed me on a tired night. He had made promises in soft hours, but promises spoken in shadow sometimes feel thin in public light.
I told myself to be patient. I told myself he was testing how I’d react. I told myself I should trust him.
“Are you all right?” he asked later when he found me by the terrace.
“I saw you with her,” I said.
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said, gently. It wasn’t sharp. It was real. “But I’ll give you one anyway. She’s business.”
His answer didn’t help much. It left me with questions that lived in my chest like stones.
The complications multiplied. Muriel drifted quieter. The company buzzed with gossip. I tried to work and not think about whether I was being kept like a secret drawer.
One week, when I walked into the office kitchen, I found the glamorous representative speaking loudly about an upcoming bid. Her name was Chelsea Blake. She had that practiced ease of someone who grew up with visibility.
“You belong in public,” Chelsea said with a smile that was wide enough to cut glass. “One must curate one’s presence.”
I wanted to curl into myself, but Chelsea looked at me, studied my haircut and the sweater I’d chosen, and the smile became something like a hunt.
“You’re Oscar’s new fancy thing, right?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I work here.”
She laughed then. “You work here and you live in the building. How quaint.”
Her words spread like wet paint. The office felt thinner after that. People’s eyes found me, then looked away with a little taste of amusement. I felt ridiculous. I wanted to walk away.
That same week, an invitation arrived to a charity gala. Romano Holdings was sponsoring, and Oscar was on the list of patrons. I put on a dress and walked into a room of mirrors and fine cloth, and there was Chelsea at Oscar’s side. She moved through the night like she had been painted to be noticed.
When a rumor started—someone overheard that Oscar had taken Chelsea to a dinner just a week ago—my stomach dropped and never recovered.
I should have known better than to feel surprised when a story like that attached itself to a man like Oscar. But the ache of being rumor-adjacent felt like a real bruise.
Something else happened that night. A woman who I had assumed was just part of the scenery—someone the company called a “representative”—stood up on stage to speak. She thanked Oscar personally with a smile and a look that promised greater things. She said words that were smooth: “He’s a champion of projects like ours.” The crowd applauded.
And then someone from the audience asked a pointed question: “Is it true you prefer to keep your personal life private?”
He answered with that measured smile: “Everyone deserves privacy.” But his eyes found me, then returned to their script.
I wanted to be brave, to stand up and say, “You left me in the morning with a shirt and a name,” but the words felt tiny. I remained still as the applause rolled over us.
After that night, I found myself watching him like a scientist studies a specimen: both curious and quietly terrified. He came to the office more. He was attentive. He was distant. Neither explanation felt adequate.
Then one afternoon, everything snapped.
We had a company meeting with clients. One of Romano’s long-term partners—a family that worked with the firm—was there. The room was full. Oscar arrived with Chelsea at his side, all smiles and practiced tenderness. After the meeting, during the cocktail hour, I was standing near the windows watching the city, trying to keep my face expressionless, when Muriel approached me with eyes like a small storm.
“Kendall, we need to talk,” she said. “Now.”
“Not here.”
She grabbed my sleeve and pulled. I followed, and we ended up in the hallway where the noise dimmed down to a hum. She was trembling.
“Kendall, you’re making it complicated,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not just us,” she said. “My family—they expected a different kind of relationship for Oscar. There’s pressure. There are people who are watching. Don’t step into their line of fire.”
I stared at her. Instinctively I thought of the card in my wallet, the way his lips had tasted, the evenings he came to my desk. “So I should—what? Disappear?”
“You don’t have to disappear,” she said. “Just... be careful.”
As we argued, Chelsea walked by with a tray. She paused, smiled, and said to Muriel, “It must be difficult to be friends with someone so... public.”
Then she looked at me and added, slow and deliberate, “Enjoy the perks while they last.”
Her voice was a small blade in a silk glove. People at the far end of the corridor turned their heads. Chelsea had thrown down the gauntlet in a way that made crowd-watchers lean closer.
Later, I confronted Oscar in the parking garage. I found him by the black SUV, hands in his coat pockets like a sentinel.
“Oscar,” I said. “What is going on with you and Chelsea?”
He exhaled slowly. His face was unreadable. “What do you want me to say?”
“Do you—are you with her?” My voice came out tight.
He closed his eyes. “She’s a business partner. That’s all.”
“Then why does it feel like I’m the one being hidden?”
He looked at me then, and I understood something that was both mean and true: being with him meant accepting contradictions. “Because you are not a public project,” he said. “Because I will not set you up on a stage.”
I wanted to be angry, but the truth sat like pebbles under my tongue.
“Then tell me,” I demanded. “Tell them.”
He shook his head. “You want a declaration. You want a headline. That’s not how it works here. I protect certain things.”
“Do I look like a fragile item?” I nearly laughed.
“No.” He stepped closer. “You look like a woman I want to build a life with. That doesn’t mean I’m clumsy about how I move.”
“You move in ways that make me feel small.” I said it like a verdict.
He blinked, then smiled with a sudden softness. “You’re not small. You’re stubborn. I like that.”
The truth is, his presence soothed and frayed me at once. He could be careful and careless in the same breath.
But the world is impatient. Rumors swell. Gossip grows teeth. Chelsea, who smiled like someone who had practiced betrayal in the mirror, made a misstep that would change everything.
At a public charity event, Chelsea took more than speaking turns. She arranged for a press line to photograph Oscar and herself together. She leaned close to him in a way that read like possession. The cameras flashed. The photos hit the feeds the next morning, a collage of captions and murmurs.
I could have stayed quiet. I could have swallowed. Instead, I stood at my small treatment desk in the R&D building and watched my phone flood with messages. They were not all angry; some were delighted in the drama. Some were cruel.
Then came the day of the punishment.
It began with a client meeting. Romano Holdings hosted a large presentation at the main conference hall downtown. The room was filled with reporters, clients, and the company’s inner circle. The projector hummed. The CEO was due to speak. I sat in the back row with my laptop as a shield, trying to be invisible.
Chelsea walked in minutes before the start, elegant and poised. She was escorted to the front, where she sat near Oscar. People who knew how to read the room could see the quiet choreography: Chelsea smiled; Oscar nodded.
Halfway through the presentation, an unexpected figure arrived: one of Romano’s long-time partners, a woman who had been part of many public ceremonies with Oscar. She stood up mid-presentation and called for silence. The room stilled like a held breath.
“May I have a word?” she said. Her voice was calm but carried.
The CEO paused. “Of course.”
The partner walked to the front and did something no one expected: she took the microphone and faced the whole room.
“I have a statement,” she said. “A statement about integrity.” She turned to Oscar with a steadiness I’d never seen in her public face. “Mr. Romano, we have always trusted your company. We have trusted your leadership. Today I want to speak to the facts.”
The lights felt brighter. Cameras leaned forward. Oscar straightened in his seat.
She continued. “It has come to light that certain business dealings have been influenced by personal arrangements that were never disclosed to the board. There are contracts signed under pressure and favors given under the guise of partnership that have benefited a small circle at the expense of many.”
Murmurs crossed the room like wind in a field. I felt my throat close.
Chelsea’s face lost its practiced shine. Her smile thinned. She looked small in a way I had not wanted for her. People began to whisper questions. Papers rustled.
The partner pointed at documents on a table near the stage. “We have the records.”
The CEO looked stunned. Oscar’s expression hardened into a mask. He did not move to interrupt.
“You’re accusing me of—” he began.
“Be quiet a moment.” The partner turned back to the microphone. “We invited auditors. We have receipts. We have witness statements.”
Chelsea's lips trembled. For the first time she looked like something real and not rehearsed.
“He used his position to secure contracts for companies tied to a representative who—” The name on the lips of the partner finally landed like a stone: “Chelsea Blake.”
The room fractured. People whispered. Some took out their phones. Oscar’s face was a study of controlled shock. Chelsea went pale.
She spoke then, her voice high and small. “That’s not—”
“Not what?” the partner asked. “Not true? Or not convenient?”
A hand lifted from the back: a reporter with a voice that loved headlines. “Mr. Romano, can you respond?”
He stood. The room felt close. He looked like a bone that had been picked clean. For a moment I saw a flicker of the man who had given me a shirt and a card: tired, tested, trapped.
He faced the crowd. “We will cooperate,” he said. “We will allow the audit. I will step back from immediate dealings while this is resolved.”
The room erupted. Cameras panned. The partner sat down, face composed. Chelsea began to cry, raw and loud. People leaned in like wolves.
I wanted to run. Instead, I watched as Chelsea’s mask split into shame. She went from sharp to frantic. She tried to speak, to plead. “No, you don’t understand—this was business—”
“No one pays for favors under the table and gets to keep their job,” the partner said. “No one uses relationships to bypass procurement. Not here.”
The crowd started to hum with the joy of seeing someone who had looked invincible come undone. People stood up and looked at Chelsea with a new expression—less envy, more scorn.
She began to sob, then to beg, then to deny. “This is a mistake. You’re making a mistake.” Her voice cracked. “I—Mr. Romano, I—”
Oscar looked at her once as if measuring a broken thing. Then he turned away. The room watched like it was a play with an ending no one wanted to miss.
Around us, colleagues murmured. Some whispered with satisfaction. Others looked horrified. The reporters braced for quotes.
Chelsea’s pleas switched from words to action—she tried to step forward, to call Oscar’s name and pull him into a private corner. Security, called in by the partner, blocked her.
“You will remain here until the auditors arrive,” the partner said quietly. “And we will speak to the board.”
Chelsea’s face crumpled. She dropped onto a chair and put her head in her hands. Cameras circled. People took pictures that would later be comment fodder.
When it was over, the partner left with her head set like a judge. Oscar stayed to answer a few questions, but his voice was flat, polite. He did not call for Chelsea. He did not snap in her defense.
Afterwards, in the quiet of the conference corridor, I found Muriel with eyes that were a little wet. She never expected to see Chelsea like that.
“Was this… necessary?” she asked me.
“Well,” I said. “Justice looks different depending on your vantage point.”
Later, in Oscar’s office, he closed the door gently and sat across from me. He looked older than he had the morning I found his shirt. “I wanted to protect you,” he said.
“You protected me from what?” I asked.
“From being lied to. From being used.” He paused. “But perhaps I needed to protect you from me.”
I stared at him. The public scene had changed something. Chelsea had been humiliated and exposed. She had gone from confident to undone in front of the exact people who mattered. It had been messy and satisfying and terrible.
“You could have told them the truth earlier,” I said.
He exhaled. “I could have. But some truths unravel more than threads.”
“Did you feel any regret?” I asked.
“I felt regret for the way it had to happen.” He looked at me with an honesty that scorched. “But I do not regret revealing the pattern, Kendall.”
He reached for my hand across the table. His fingers were warm and steady.
“I don’t want you to be a secret,” he said simply.
The next weeks were a different kind of reality. Chelsea was removed from certain projects; investigations were opened; contracts that had been awarded under questionable terms were paused. The office buzzed with the thrill of scandal. Some colleagues congratulated me with awkward smiles, as if I had been the secret engine behind the revelation.
Muriel came back into my life with less chatter and more caution. She apologized in fragments. “I should have told you more,” she said. “I—was afraid.”
I forgave her quickly. We had both been children in a room full of maps and traps.
As for Oscar, he changed the rules. He made public gestures that started small—a program for apprentices, new transparent procurement processes, a meeting where he spoke about ethics. People remarked on his change of tone; journalists wrote pieces about “a new Romano,” and some even used the word “redeeming.”
One evening, months after the scandal, he took me to a rooftop that overlooked the city. We were quiet. He handed me a small wrapped box. Inside was not jewelry but an old, simple pocket watch. The face was not polished to glint; it ticked in a steady, careful way.
“I kept this,” he said. “Because sometimes we need something that measures time in simple beats.”
I turned it over in my hand. It was familiar and strange, like the memory of a good night and a worse morning.
He watched me. “Kendall, I want to build with you, not above you. I want to be transparent where it matters. I want to be here.”
I thought of the shirt on my shoulders the first morning, of the card, of the way he had taught me how to pay for myself with his generosity and how he had redefined that generosity into something that could be mutual. I thought of the humiliation Chelsea had faced and how it made me uneasy to enjoy her fall. It had been satisfying in a way I hate to admit.
“Do you think you can trust me?” he asked.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that trust is built when people show up for the small things. Not just the headlines.”
He smiled like I’d said the right thing. He kissed me then, not in the shock of the first night but with the weight of someone promising to be present.
We learned to define our boundaries and rewrite them. He answered for public missteps by changing systems. I learned to ask for what I needed. Muriel learned to be honest. Chelsea kept a low profile, later returning with a quiet apology and a new job elsewhere. The punishment had been public and brutal and thorough. It changed how the company moved.
Time does not heal everything. It teaches us to live with choices. There were hard nights—moments when gossip stung, when old patterns rose like smoke. There were also weary, ordinary mornings where we made coffee and argued about nothing and felt safe because we were together.
One morning, I found a handwritten note tucked into my coat pocket. It was short.
Meet me at the bakery at eight. — O.
I smiled and wrote back: Always bring the croissant.
When the morning came, Oscar stood outside the bakery with two coffees. He looked at me and laughed. “You like croissants so much.”
“They’re a minor miracle,” I said.
He handed me one. We ate in the small crowded space, leaning into the warmth. People passed by and didn’t know our history. That was fine. We had learned how to live inside small truths and public storms.
I kept the pocket watch. I wound it sometimes, feeling the familiar tick like a heartbeat of a day we’d earned. And when the city turned and rumor shifted and the seasons changed, I remembered that first shirt and the way it started a story that was messy and sweet and real.
The End
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