Sweet Romance12 min read
Left on the Highway, Saved by Yuri — And the White Camellia
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I remember the rain first. Cold drops hammered my face like small, sharp nails and the road was a roaring blur. I remember clutching my belly because the pain felt as if someone was twisting my insides with a rough hand.
"Bennett—" I tried.
He kept one hand on the wheel, the other on his phone. His voice sounded far away when he said, "Karlee, get out. I have to go pick someone up. Wait here. I'll have someone take you."
"On the highway?" I said. "My phone's dead. It hurts. Please—"
He didn't look at me. He slid the car into the emergency lane and opened the door. Rain licked the gap.
"Don't make a scene," Bennett said. "Just go."
I held him for a second. "You're going to pick Gianna, aren't you?"
He answered without warmth. "Yes."
He kissed my forehead like a joke and shut the door. The wind pushed me and took him away.
I sat there for a long time with my hand over the part of me that twisted. Cars were blurred silver fish. I thought, How could someone who kissed me every night leave me like a wet rag? Then the rain turned into a small ocean in my hair.
A truck flew by and the sound drowned out any thought. I crouched by the guardrail and the concrete chilled my knees. Ten minutes. Twenty. The sky went dim.
"Bennett—" I said to the road, not to him. I had nothing left to ask.
A black SUV braked beside me. Someone held an umbrella over me, big and dark. "Hey," a voice said. "Are you okay? What are you doing on the highway?"
"I'm fine," I lied. I was not fine.
"Get in. Now." The man was quick and rough in a careful way. He carried me as if I were lighter than I felt. The umbrella was warm over my head; the car smelled of leather and a faint scent of something—pine, maybe.
"Thank you," I mumbled when I could breathe again.
"Hospital?" he asked.
"No." I swallowed. "Can you put me somewhere dry? My friend's apartment. I have a key."
He cocked an eyebrow, a small motion, and drove. He handed me a pill bag he'd bought without asking. "You sneezed. Stay warm."
"Why are you doing this?" I asked before I could stop myself.
He glanced at me like I had said something normal. "Because you looked like you needed help."
His name was Yuri. He lived in the building next to the empty apartment I'd been using. He surprised me by being normal and solid. He didn't ask me to explain my life. He put a hot towel on my forehead and didn't hover; he just stayed close.
"You live here?" I asked as we rode the elevator together the night I first agreed to climb across his balcony.
"Yes," he said. "And you shouldn't be climbing between fifteenth-floor balconies."
"You did it," I muttered when he simply hopped across as if it were stairs. "That's not fair."
"You're silly," Yuri said, grinning. "Come in."
I learned later that Yuri was once in special forces before he taught others. It showed in small things: the way he opened the door, the way he measured distance, the way he made coffee like it was a plan and not a habit.
"You should let me buy you dinner," he said once when he gave me a sandwich I'd made and a small, embarrassed smile.
"Okay," I said. "But don't make it sound like you feel sorry for me."
He just laughed.
At first, I thought what happened to me with Bennett was a fever dream. He had been kind sometimes. He had touched those parts of me that made me soft. But kindness is not the same as fidelity.
"You're going to pick Gianna again?" I had asked once in the kitchen when he was quiet. He stopped and touched my shoulder like he would when I burned myself.
"She's only a friend," he said with a breath that seemed to try to convince both of us.
"Friends leave you on highways?" I asked.
He didn't answer. The silence said more than words. I swallowed the pride and gave him a smile and a bandage for his face. I told myself: Let it be okay.
We lasted two years because I wanted to believe. Then he left me at the side of the road.
Weeks later, when the rain had dried into cold memory and I had stopped expecting his messages, I met Yuri for real. We laughed about small things. He brought some slow, careful light into the places Bennett had smashed.
"Do you like white camellias?" I found myself asking once when he returned from the flower shop after bailing on some unimportant errand.
"Yes," he said. "Why?"
"They're my favorite," I said. "My mother gave me a book about them once."
He bought me a small sprig of white camellia for no reason at all. "They don't like flash," he said. "They open on their own time."
That felt like him, too.
One night while we were dating, after months of his steady presence, Yuri took me into a jewelry store and stopped at the case where plain, clean rings sat like quiet promises.
"Are you thinking of…?" I whispered.
"No." He smiled. "Pick one if you want. It's not for a proposal. It's just to say you belong to me in a small way."
I laughed and told him he was ridiculous. He shrugged and put a pair of matched plain bands in a small box.
"People read too much into rings," he said. "This is for us."
I placed the ring on my finger and it fit like a tiny home.
Then, in a place I had never wanted to stand again—the mall street under yellow lamps—Bennett found me.
"What is that?" he said, his voice low, dangerous.
"It's mine," I said. "It means I'm with someone else."
"You—" He reached for me. His hand landed on my chest in a frantic, terrible way. "You really are going to leave me?"
"You left me first," I said.
He looked at the ring, then at Yuri. I had expected him to be cold, proud, the man who could toss me onto a curb. But his face went small and raw.
"Bennett," I said softly. "We talked about this. You chose her years ago. You kissed my head and walked away in the storm."
He tried to speak and found his voice thinner than it had any right to be. "Gianna—" he started.
"She was always there," I said. "But you were here and you chose to leave. I can't be with someone who practices leaving."
That should have been the end. He left like someone losing an argument with himself.
But a week later, he came to my office building.
"Karlee?" His voice hummed under fluorescent lights.
"Do not come in," I said into the intercom. "Do not make it worse."
He wouldn't let it go. He rifled through my messages and past history like a man trying to find an instruction manual that makes leaving her easier.
He started showing up in places he thought would corner me: outside the café I liked, at the crosswalk I always used. People saw him and frowned and asked. I didn't respond. I had moved on. I had Yuri and his small, steady life and the white camellia kept blooming in a pot on the windowsill.
The public that Bennett so desperately needed to impress came for him one afternoon at the company gala.
"I don't want to make a scene," he had said when he learned I'd be there. "I just want a chance."
"You don't get chances," I had said. "Not here."
The gala was a cluster of polished smiles, chandeliers, and bodies in good suits. I entered with Yuri and his hand in mine. Many people knew both Bennett and me because of past work ties. I saw colleagues and kept my face calm.
Halfway through the evening, Bennett mounted the stage after a toast, clutching a small bouquet of white camellias—my camellias—wrapping them like a ransom note between his fingers.
He cleared his throat. "Karlee," he said. "Can we talk?"
A hush fell. People turned like a wave. Cameras lifted. Phones found him first. I felt the energy of expectation — some hoped he would apologize and win me back; some hoped he'd get knocked down.
I walked up to the stage in my plain dress and the ring Yuri had given me tucked quietly on my finger. The room stilled.
"You want to take my time," I said to the crowded room. "All right."
I let the slide projector show small things I had kept hidden: one screenshot that mattered, one message thread, one photo of a location. I told the stories that the rain had kept for me.
"That night on the highway," I began, my voice even but loud enough for the balcony, "I sat for an hour. He told me to get out of the car. He told me he had to pick someone else up. He told me he would let me be safe until someone came. Then he locked his door and drove away."
Bennett's jaw twitched. He started to speak, but I shook my head, and the microphone carried me.
"I called and called. My phone was dead. I thought I might pass out. I thought I might die. He picked another person's pain to respond to. He chose someone he had loved before me."
Someone gasped. A camera flashed. A man in a suit whispered to the person next to him.
"He says it was a mistake. That he forgot to tell his driver. That he didn't know. But here's a message he sent to Gianna on the day he left me."
I hit the remote. The screen showed two short messages: "I'm on my way. Stay there." and "I left her on the road. It was bad. I had to get to you."
The room shifted as if a wind had passed through it.
Bennett's face changed shape. At first there was disbelief, then annoyance, then the bright rise of anger, and finally a raw, wet panic.
"No," he said. "You can't—"
I walked down the stage and held the mic so that everyone could listen. "If you wanted me, you could have done something that night. You did nothing. You let me freeze. You let me hurt. You picked someone else."
He laughed, a high, ugly sound. "This is performance! You're doing this for attention!"
"Do what you must," I said. "But this is the truth."
He stumbled backward. People began to murmur loudly. Some stepped forward, eyes hard. "He would never—" a woman said beside me, but her voice lacked certainty.
"You're lying," Bennett said then, voice higher, thin. "You are lying."
I smiled and showed a small thing: the small pill bottle with the pharmacy label, the receipt from the corner store where he had stopped minutes before picking Gianna up. The date matched. The handwriting on the receipt—his initial, clumsy—was the shape of someone who thought he had left the past behind in neat lines. It matched the messages on the screen.
The crowd shifted again, and the shame moved across Bennett's face like oil. He went from controlled to frantic.
"Say something!" he shouted, turning to Gianna, who sat at a table with a glass of champagne cooling in her hand. She looked like the same sunlit woman from the photos: calm, practiced, untouchable.
"I didn't know she was there," Gianna said calmly. "He told me he was picking up a friend with a fever. I swear—"
"Swear all you want," someone called. I could see fingers lifting to record. The room hummed. The band kept playing a soft, nervous tune somewhere behind us.
Then Bennett did what some men do when their world collapses: he tried to force a tender truth. He stepped toward me as if to take me in his arms.
"No," I said. "Don't."
He reached. The hand that grasped my shoulder shook.
"Karlee, I—" He tried to look small and repentant. "Please. I made a mistake. I love you."
"Love doesn't leave someone in the rain," I said. "It doesn't make small choices for big comforts."
He lost his center entirely. "You'll come back," he pleaded. "You'll forgive me."
The crowd had grown. Phones recorded. Someone hissed, "He used to be so sharp." Another voice said, "He used to be a good man."
I turned and smiled at Yuri.
"She doesn't belong to you anymore," I told Bennett. "She belongs to someone who showed up when I needed him."
"Yuri?" Bennett said, fury and something like fear in his voice. "You stole her."
Yuri stepped forward and placed a steady hand on my back. He didn't touch Bennett, but his presence was a cold wall.
"She isn't yours to steal," Yuri said quietly. "She never was."
For the first time, Bennett's face broke into real sobs. He staggered backward and hit the stage rail. The room watched as the man who had once walked away from me became a show of small, ridiculous human collapse.
He tried to deny it. He tried to laugh through tears. He refused blame and then drank it. Someone shouted for security. A few people in his circle drifted away like loose threads.
"This is what I mean," Bennett said, louder, to anyone who would hear. "She's making a scene. She's lying to make me look bad."
"Look at the messages," I said. "Look at the receipt. Look at the truth. You can't gaslight a crowd."
He fell to his knees as if that would rewind what he'd done. His face was wet and ridiculous. People turned away or clicked their phones faster. Some applauded in the way people applaud a small moral victory at the movies; a couple of women cheered.
One of his former friends, a professional who had once been in his email footer, stepped up and said, "Bennett, you left a woman on the highway while she needed help. We don't defend that."
There was a low sound in the room like a storm going out.
Bennett tried to explain. His sentences broke into pleading and then into strangled apologies. "I'm sorry," he kept saying. "Please. I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't enough," I said. "Not in front of everyone who really knew me and in front of the people who didn't."
He looked up at me then with the face of a man who had understood the finality of his choice. His eyes were a wet, unfair red.
The security finally came and guided him away, not in handcuffs but in the kind of firm, professional hold that says you have lost an argument with the room. Cameras followed his every step. Around us, people whispered about men who loved their comforts more than the people beside them.
It was not vengeful. It was just truth, made loud and true in a room of witnesses. The punishment wasn't theatrical humiliation for amusement. It was the slow dismantling of privilege in the open. People turned their backs. People stopped calling. He was left to gather his dignity like scattered leaves outside the building.
Afterwards, colleagues came up to me, surprised, soft, embarrassed for him and for the part of the company that still let that kind of thing slide.
"You were so brave," someone said.
"No," I told them. "I was tired."
Yuri held my hand the whole time. He was quiet and steady and when the lights were lowered and the crowd thinned, he kissed my cheek and said, "I'm glad you told them."
I smiled at him through the blur of people and felt a small kind of power return to my bones.
Later, in the slow shade of an after-party calm, I understood more of what the punishment had been: not a spectacle, but a reclaiming of truth. It unmoored his excuses and let witnesses see him as he had been.
That was not the end of Bennett's suffering. In the weeks that followed, colleagues who had once smiled at his jokes ignored him. Partners who had liked his charm made subtle shifts in their contracts. He became an object of whispered pity and anger. He tried to call me and left messages that sounded like a man bargaining with his own shame, but I didn't answer. Every attempt he made to rebuild was out in public, watched and found hollow.
Sometimes the worst punishments are small things: not a dramatic arrest but the empty seat at the table, the missed invitation, the stiff handshake where warmth once lived. He found many of those, and each one cut.
I never wanted to see him humiliated for pleasure. I wanted him to see himself as others had when he walked away. I wanted truth exposed where lies had hidden. The gala did that, and for once, I didn't leave alone.
I left with Yuri, with our plain rings boxed in our pockets and a white camellia between us like a small secret.
"Are you okay?" he asked on the way home.
"I am now," I said. "Do you know how odd it feels to watch your life break in a ballroom?"
He chuckled soft against my hair. "You made his choice visible. That's brave."
"Or tired," I said.
He squeezed my hand. "Then be tired with someone who stays."
Months later, Bennett tried to appear in offices, in social circles, always nostalgic, always trying to show he was better. He failed. He tried to craft apologies that sounded like essays and then suffered the slow consequence of being untrusted where it mattered. People who used to defend him now avoided him. He had public scenes, private regrets, and the slow, social frost that follows choices.
Meanwhile, Yuri and I grew into the small life of two people who knew each other's bad days. He brought hot towels and held my hair back during a fever. I learned his habits: the way he filled the kettle, the small ritual of making coffee just right.
One night, months after the gala, Bennett found me again in the street. His face was open and small and raw. "You—" he said. "Will you—"
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I realize I was wrong," he said. "Because I can't go on not saying sorry."
"Sorry is small," I said. "You left me in the rain. You left me when I was most small. I'm not a place you come back to. Not anymore."
He looked at the plain ring on my hand then, the one Yuri had given me months ago. It was a simple circle of metal that reflected light like a small promise. His eyes slid to it and then away as if it burned.
"Please," he whispered. "Please forgive me."
I shook my head. "Forgiveness isn't a gift you can demand," I said. "You made a choice and people saw. You have to live with that."
He walked away and the winter air swallowed him. People watched him go with the same measured pity they had at the gala. The world had a way of moving on, and I had moved with it.
Yuri and I kept our little rituals. White camellia blossoms came and went on the windowsill. Yuri sometimes bought a small bouquet and set it in water. The rings we had were not flashy; they were a quiet claim. We wore them and we were not theatrical. We were content to be simple and steady.
"Why did you stay?" I asked Yuri once late at night when the city hummed outside our window.
"Because I wanted to," he said, like it was the only answer I needed.
Our life was not a story of fireworks. It was a slow book with steady pages. I learned how a safe hand felt. I learned that I could be wanted without having to give up my peace.
One spring night, as the city warmed and the white camellia put out a small shy bud, I put my hand in Yuri's and whispered, "Thank you for showing up."
He kissed the back of my hand and said, "Thank you for staying."
We kept that ring in a small box sometimes and wore it other days. If anyone asked about the white camellia, I would always tell them: it waited to bloom and it did.
When I think of the highway now, it is no longer a place of fear. It is a place I remember because of what came after: a man who left me and had to face what he had done publicly, and another man who sat calmly with me through the quiet parts.
I keep the receipt from the pharmacy in a small drawer. I keep the photo of the ring in the little wooden box Yuri gave me. Sometimes I take the white camellia leaf between my fingers and feel the silk of the petal that does not seek the sun too quickly.
"Do you ever think about him?" Yuri asks sometimes, eyes on the window.
"Sometimes," I say. "Then I look at the ring and at the camellia and I remember who I have now."
He squeezes my hand. "Good," he says.
And the camellia blooms again.
The End
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