Sweet Romance14 min read
Married to the Cold Man — I Refuse to Be a Vase
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I woke up staring at the words "DIVORCE AGREEMENT" like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over my face.
"Divorce? As if," I muttered, peeling the blanket off and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. I checked my hands, my face, my phone—everything belonged to Elizabeth Ayers. But the name on the document belonged to Elizabeth Ayers too. Only the world that belonged to that name was the one in the novel I had scolded and stomped through online last month.
Someone knocked timidly at the door. "Miss, the master is in the study," Esme Barnett said, voice shaking with the sort of reverence older house staff give to the family man.
I waved the divorce paper like a banner. "Where is Galen McCoy?"
Esme's eyes went wide. "The study, Miss. He—"
I didn't wait. I stormed out.
The study door was shut but not locked. I shoved it open and stepped inside without ceremony. He was there, as the book described: tall, lean, all lines and cold angles. Galen McCoy looked up without surprise. He had the "I own the room" posture that people wrote in praise of in the novel. His skin was pale in the way chronic illness makes pale, his lips pale, and his eyes were steel.
"What is it?" he said, as if I had interrupted a quiet afternoon.
I spat the divorce agreement on his desk. "Five million? You call that generous?"
He glanced at the torn paper. "You're tearing the agreement so I can't sign."
"I tore it on purpose. Five million? You own companies that touch billions. You claim a ruble and call it charity."
Galen raised one eyebrow, amusement flickering. "Sign now, you get five million. Refuse, you'll get nothing."
"I know what your lawyers will do," I said. "They'll drown me in papers and make me walk away with nothing. But look, Galen, I am not the tragic vase of your life. I have a backbone now."
He pinned me with a glance, dry and precise. "Is this a performance to get my attention?"
"No." I took a step forward and leaned close until I could see the flecks in his iris. "I loved you once. But you married me like I was decoration. You don't come home. You don't ask if I'm cold. You went away and let me sleep in an empty house."
"You're accusing me of infidelity," he said, flat. "Did you sleep with another man?"
I laughed, sharp and brief. "Do I look like the sort of woman who would choose that man? Jacob Benton? Please."
Galen's mouth twitched. I surprised myself. I moved without thinking, hooked a finger under his jaw and pulled him close. The office chair rolled a little. The scent of him—clinical and faintly mint—reached me. "Husband," I said, letting the word slide out like a dare, "I will never divorce. If we're married, you'll have to bury me."
He trapped my chin between two fingers. "You have a bold mouth."
His hand was warm, his fingers gentle, and for a stupid heartbeat I imagined kissing him properly. He leaned in. I braced, then pushed him back hard.
"What are you doing?" I hissed.
"Married couples kiss," he said, entirely unruffled. "Is that so strange?"
I stormed out, breath hot with indignation. "Don't touch me without consent, Galen."
Esme watched us from the hall, her face a map of shock. "Miss—"
"She can't be a fool like the previous Elizabeth," I snapped before I could stop myself. "I won't be."
Back in my room I rifled through the silk-lined closet. The Elizabeth in the book had been a beautiful vase: tall, long-legged, choice-bred. I peered into the full-length mirror. The face looking back at me was breathtaking—yes—but it was also mine now. I smiled, loud and shameless. "Alright, Elizabeth. Time to stop being a prop."
That evening, while Galen slept alone in the study, I went to dig. I found the old phone the original Elizabeth had used. I skimmed messages, memos, and a thousand small betrayals. The plot of that awful novel wasn't subtle: I would be set up drunk, Jacob Benton would be slipped into my room, and Galen would come in enraged and demand a divorce. Then some cunning woman, January Fontana, would become the woman of his life. Spoiler: that original Elizabeth ended badly. I refused.
I woke up the next morning in Galen's bed—he'd apparently come home in the night—and found him sitting quietly at the foot of the bed, watching me with an unreadable expression.
"You look... pleased with yourself," he said.
"I just realized how much better my legs look under those sheets," I said. "Now please leave me some breakfast."
He left a single line on his tablet before he went back to his study: "Don't make me regret noticing you."
"You jealous?" I mouthed to no one. I dressed in red—a brazen, loud gown that matched my mood—and stormed back to the house.
Esme was waiting like a stage manager. "Miss, if you would like, I can clear your blue garments. Mr. McCoy likes blue."
"Keep them," I said. "Blue is his, not mine."
When I came down, January Fontana was all harmless smiles and angel hair. She had lived in my family's house for years. She'd been fed, educated, and cosseted by my parents. In the book, she'd quietly stabbed me in the back and took everything. I was through being stabbed.
"You're home," January sang, a doll's voice.
"Guilt brought you here early?" I asked.
"My sister called. I heard about the incident at the McCoy estate. Are you alright?" she cooed, playing the soft sister.
"Spare me your charity," I said. "You want to be part of this family again?"
She blinked, perfectly innocent. "I'm worried about you, Elizabeth."
"You were never worried when I was the one helping you get a job at the estate," I snapped. "You used my name. You used my family."
Her mask slipped for the briefest second, like a cracked porcelain doll. Then she smiled wide enough to show pretense. "That's not fair, Elizabeth."
"It is," I said. "You will leave this house. Now."
My mother, Laura Barbieri, looked torn. But when I mentioned the other night's staged humiliation—how January lined up Jacob Benton to frame me—my parents' faces hardened. They had loved January at a distance, but loyalty took a sharper turn when their daughter spoke with a newspaper's calm.
January gathered her belongings like a wounded animal. I accompanied her to the car in high heels. She tripped in the driveway and spilled her luggage. I did not stop.
"You're cruel," she said between whimpers.
"I prefer honest," I replied, and left.
Later, I drove to Jacob Benton's modest apartment with a bat in my trunk. Jacob had followed January's orders before; he should have known better than to touch me. I burst in, swung the bat, and delivered a short tutorial in what happens to men who think they can be used as props. I left him bruised and swearing on the floor—and I planted a tiny, well-hidden camera.
"Why—why did you do this?" Jacob screeched when I stormed out.
I smiled at the live feed in my car. Minutes later, January arrived at his door. She slapped him and then slapped him again for being a fool. The camera caught everything. I saved the clip.
Unbeknownst to me, Galen had had someone surveil Jacob's apartment the moment Esme told him I planned to find Jacob. When he saw the footage, his eyes changed. I made him sign the directive to fire January as his assistant at the company.
A little later, I marched into his office holding my phone. "I brought a gift," I grinned, showing him the footage. "She lied. Jacob Benton is a puppet."
He didn't look surprised. "You made this yourself?"
"It was my hobby," I shrugged.
He took my phone with a stiff, almost involuntary flourish. Then he did something the original book never recorded: he reached across the desk, looped an arm around my waist and pulled me into a hug, awkward and almost protective.
"You're very pushy," he said, voice low.
"I prefer 'decisive,'" I said.
He smiled then. It was brief, but I saved the image in the corner of my head.
The person who annoyed me most in that world was precisely the one who'd always worn the purest face: January Fontana. She'd wormed her way into comfort, used people, and planned to steal the life meant for me. I decided she needed a public lesson. Not a quiet legal tussle. Not a private shaming. She would be shown what true exposure looked like.
I didn’t aim to destroy a career overnight. I aimed to show her in public, to the faces that mattered to her—the ones who had once believed her. I planned a dinner. Galen booked the top floor at Jiangnan Court—an over-the-top plan for a man who rarely wasted his time on dinner plans—saying it was for me. I pretended not to know.
On the night, January strutted in wearing the same fake kindness she wore like perfume. She expected a cozy family meal and an easy path back into the household network. I had other plans.
The room was full. There were shareholders of companies, society columnists, family friends—faces that mattered. I walked in last, in a red dress that curtained every light in the room toward me.
"Good evening," I said, my voice cutting across the room. Everyone turned.
January's smile faltered for one lovely second.
"Elizabeth?" she said, the word a question.
"Please sit, January," I said, gesturing to the empty seat at the table. "Tonight I want to tell a story."
Galen watched me from across the table, his fingers tightening around his glass. I felt ridiculous and magnificent at the same time.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said. "Tonight we are dining at the very beautiful Jiangnan Court. We are surrounded by people who keep reputations as if they were fine china. We break one, we replace it, but sometimes the chips are visible. I have evidence of chips."
I stood and held up my phone. At the click, my camera feed flickered on the large screen the restaurant had placed for us. Jacob Benton scowled, trying to look innocent; January's face paled as two videos rolled.
The first was the hidden camera at Jacob's apartment—the footage of him cursing, apologizing, then being shoved away by January. The second was even worse: private messages where January had coached Jacob to fabricate the scene that would make me shame myself publicly. The entire table fell silent.
"Is this true?" my father asked. His voice shook.
"Yes," I said. "She arranged it. She wanted to replace me."
January's eyes darted. "Those are lies! Blackmail!"
"Then explain the receipts," I said, flicking to the next image. There was a photo of January with a hotel concierge, a credit ledger, Jacob’s receipts. It was all in her handwriting.
She clutched at her necklace. "You cannot—"
"I can," I said.
Then I leaned in closer to the table. "You know what's worse than losing a house? Losing the hand that feeds you. You knew what my parents did for you. You took it and tried to poison us." I let the words sit. "I have deleted the worst of your files. I won't ruin you further—unless you make me."
Her face transformed from porcelain to panic to fury. "You threaten me?"
I had the luxury then of looking at the room. I let them see. I wanted them to watch her unravel.
"Do you—" a woman on the other side asked. "Is it all true? The messages?"
"Every word," I said. "She made a man commit crimes to cover her path."
The crowd's reaction was instant. Phones were raised. "Oh my God," someone whispered. "Is that January Fontana?"
"You bitch!" came a shout from the edge of the room. A few people moved away. A cluster of young women, social media ready, began taking live videos. The online version of the dinner began before the waiter finished pouring tea.
January's face went through the stages: smugness, denial, denial with a nervy smile, then a red-hot anger, then a shame so raw it was visible. The applause—yes, applause—broke in the room for me, oddly polite and fully dismissive of her. People clicked and whispered. The murmurs became a chorus.
"You set up my wife—our guest—how dare you," Galen said, voice cold and loud enough for everyone. He did not move closer to me. He didn't need to. His voice did the work.
"What did you expect me to do?" January spat. "You have everything. I had nothing!"
"You had civility," my mother said, rising slowly. Her voice was small but it cut. "You took our kindness and used it."
The crowd closed as if around an accident. Cameras flashed. People whispered, took photos, uploaded. Someone called a columnist. Someone else flagged January on his phone with the footage I had given to a friend.
Then it happened in the way the book never wrote: a hundred small verdicts descended. January's agent texted that they were dropping association. Two boutique sponsors texted to say they couldn't be connected to scandal. The head of a small charity that January had attended for years wrote a note on the spot: "We will observe." It was the cafeteria conversation that seals a social death.
January's reactions were a study. First, a brittle laugh—"This is performance art," she claimed. Then loud denial: "You forged this!" She looked at Jacob with an accusing glare. Jacob's jaw sagged. He looked like a man who realized mid-wager that he had bet his whole life.
"January," I said quietly, "you practiced innocence in the bathroom mirror for years. You perfected a smile. Tonight you are unraveled by your own recordings. There's nothing left to defend. You will leave the family house. You will resign any positions you hold. You will publicly apologise."
She stared at me in disbelief as the room's cameras streamed comments: "Did you see that?" "Scandal!" "She used him!"
Then, in an act that felt like the universe taking petty revenge, January tried to compose herself and asked for help from the socialites who had supported her. They turned away. A few younger guests, cruel and gleeful, started chanting, "Leave, leave, leave." Someone snapped a photo of her crying and posted it. The server stopped refilling her wine.
We all watched her small, private empire crumble under the light of sixty pairs of shoes tapping on hardwood. The table went still, and then a dozen tiny verdicts arrived: messages that fired her manager, texts revoking dinner invitations, a polite but real letter from a charity asking her to step down.
Her face changed: from confident to feral to needy in the span of seconds. She tried to bargain. "I'll stop. Please—" she said. "Don't ruin me."
A voice in the corner, an old friend of the family, said softly: "You ruined yourself a long time ago, January. You just forgot to keep it secret."
People murmured. Cameras hummed like a swarm. "You think you can manipulate everyone?" I asked, ice in my voice. "Not tonight."
She collapsed into a chair, not weeping now but with a simmering rage. "You'll pay for this," she hissed at me, but no one trusted threats anymore. The crowd had already chosen.
As January was led out—silently, by her own agent—the restaurant buzzed into gossip. The social media feed was full of clips of her slumped face. An older woman tapped her glass and said out loud, "There are consequences."
January's collapse and the crowd's reaction lasted nearly an hour in real time. People filed past her with averted faces, some with pity, most with a sharp, satisfied curiosity. She tried to make herself heard. "It's not all—"
A young blogger stood up and addressed the room: "Everyone here is one retweet away from being famous for being a bystander or a hero. Which will you be?"
People clapped. A few "likes" pinged across phones. January left amid a flurry of whispered verdicts and video clips. I watched her disappear down the stairwell, her designer shoes tapping softer and softer until silence swallowed them.
When the dust settled, there were firm effects:
- A public apology tweeted from January's account that read like a press release and nothing human.
- Two sponsors dropped her.
- Her social calendar emptied.
- Her agent resigned in an office memo citing "irreconcilable image differences."
Most importantly for me, it was public. People had watched her right fall from being the picture of virtue to a footnote on a journalist's blog. They had seen her faces change.
For Jacob Benton the punishment was different: when he was brought before the police the next day, he finally realized the world did not protect incompetence. He had to answer for his part in fabricating scenes. He pleaded pathetic apologies that no one felt compelled to accept. His humiliation in the interrogation room was a cold, bureaucratic thing—papers, witness statements, the slow ticking of a clock. He lost his job and went into obscurity. He, too, crumpled differently from January.
That day’s verdicts were not street justice. They were social corrections amplified by cameras. January was not publicly viciously stripped of all dignity—my ethics wouldn't allow that. But she was exposed, and in a world propped up by optics, exposure was punishment.
Later, when I was alone with Galen, he held my hand. "You handled them well," he said.
"I had a good teacher," I said. "I read how they did it to me. I just changed the ending."
He didn't smile, not properly. But his hand in mine was a small, startling possession. "You could have left it," he said. "You could have been gone."
"I could have," I admitted. "But I don't like being written by other people."
After that, the world strange-tilted. I focused on work. There was a small production company listed among the tiny businesses placed in my name at marriage. I sent a polite, businesslike email to Ambrosio Everett, who was directing a new web drama called Little Moods. Ambrosio was a man's man and brutally honest about actors. He was the kind of director who saw through prettiness; if he praised you, you had really earned it. He asked me to read the script and invited me to audition. I auditioned.
"You are bold," Ambrosio said after the take. "You are believable when you break."
"Good. Means I'm honest," I said.
He offered me the female lead. The room applauded my acting, and someone filmed me leaving the studio. Galen texted: "Well done." He drove me home and left me with a short, confident message: "If you need anything, tell me."
"You're being weirdly supportive," I told him one night.
"I suppose I should be," he admitted, voice soft but steady, and for the first time he didn't ask me to apologize for trying to be myself.
Time inched forward. We argued and made small peace. He was not a warm man, but he was becoming a man who noticed. He brought me line notes and books. He frowned when I stayed up too late. He told me once, quiet and precise, "When you left for this audition, I felt… unsettled."
"You felt left out?" I teased.
"No," he said. "I felt… worried."
Worry was a tiny, strange jewel on him, and I handled it proudly.
Galen had secrets beyond his reserve: he had a brain condition the book had mentioned in passing, a dangerous thing that could end him if he didn't accept surgery. The thought tightened something inside me. I promised myself I would not waste the time I had, however much that would be. I promised to be present.
As I worked on the set, my face—my acting face—changed people's minds. Directors who had skipped the original Elizabeth now saw a woman who could make an audience pity, fear, and then love her, sometimes within one scene. Ambrosio, who had seen everything, started to hand me roles that demanded pain. I drank them like a starving person finding bread.
Galen watched. He came to the set sometimes, standing at the back in the cool shade and watching me through a lens, as though practicing focus. Each time I finished a hard take and glanced back, he'd tuck his hand into his pocket like a man tucking away a secret.
We had small moments, tokens of care: he would leave a warm scarf on my chair. He would text me a single line, cryptic and brief: "Eat." I would smile and obey.
There were times when the old world crept in. January tried, clumsily and from the edges, to crawl back into public light. She tried to spread rumors about my so-called "attitude," claiming I was vindictive. The internet chuckled and moved on. People followed performances, not gossip. My work became my answer.
My revenge had not been cruel. It had been surgical. I had taken back my dignity, my family's honor, and the plot that had been written for me. People said Galen was the one who had softened. I knew better. I had softened no one; I had sharpened myself. In the end, he came to admire that.
One evening, after a long day of rehearsals, I found Galen waiting outside the theatre. He had arranged a small dinner for us at the old dockside room we once went to, quiet and private. He looked, for once, like a man who had rehearsed his words.
"I saw your scene," he said. "When you cried."
I shrugged. "It was raining last week in my head, so I borrowed it."
He laughed. "You are reckless."
"I prefer 'alive,'" I said, and reached for his hand. The skin was cool. He didn't pull away.
We sat in silence until the sky turned black and the city lighted itself like a distant constellation. He was the sort of man who moved deliberately. His life had been arranged by others. He was learning to want things that belonged to him wholly.
"Elizabeth," he said finally, voice low, "I know I do not say much. I have been... selfish. But you have changed how I see things. You make me want to be less careless."
"That's a start," I said.
"I will hold to it," he promised.
There were small battles afterward: my family healing, January's slow retreat, Jacob's quiet disappearance, Ambrosio's wrinkled praise. But the thing I cared about most was that I was writing myself. I was not the tragic vase. I was the one who broke the glass ceiling and then used the pieces to build a ladder.
I kept the memory of the dinner at Jiangnan Court as a lesson: when the lights are on, people will see. Make sure you are the one they see.
A week later, at a small press panel for Little Moods, Galen sat in the third row, expression an island of composure. When a reporter asked about our relationship, I answered honestly.
"We're not perfect," I said. "We are two messy people learning to be kinder. He saved me once, and I think I saved him once, too."
Galen didn't blush. He simply reached down and took my hand under the table. The cameras didn't pick it up. But I did.
That night, when I lied in bed and listened to the city, I could hear that small, steady whisper: I had not just survived the book's script. I had made a life out of the margins. I had turned the story's cruelty into a stage for my own talent.
And I had sent January away, not with a cheer but with a lesson: the world could be harsher than she had ever imagined—and that I, Elizabeth Ayers, would not be the tragic footnote anyone else wrote.
The End
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