Sweet Romance14 min read
My Boss, My Uncle, and the Ship Called South Moon
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"I still have to ask—are you even able to walk?" I said.
"You look like you could run a marathon," he replied, and his hand tugged my sleeve so gently that I stumbled forward and had to grab the railing. The tug wasn't rough, but his eyes had a weight to them that pinched my chest.
"I—" I stopped myself. "Who knew life liked pulling jokes."
"Who are you talking about?" he asked.
"It feels like the world keeps recycling the same faces," I said, and tried to laugh it off. "I mean—again?"
"Again what?" His tone was calm as glass, colder than I deserved.
"Again—him." I pointed toward the dark window behind me where the city lights scattered like spilled sugar. "And you."
"You mean Diego?" He didn't raise his voice. He only looked at me as if the name had no business being spoken.
"Yes," I said. "Diego Lindberg. He rented my wedding apartment after he and my ex bought it together. He sleeps like a king in the bed I was supposed to sleep in, and I eat noodles from a box because my bank is broken."
"That's messy," he said. "Also, unlucky."
"It is," I said. "And then today I came to interview for a new job because I needed a paycheck before my parents died from worry and bills. Two months ago my fiancée dumped me and my parents wound up in the hospital from stress. So yeah—unlucky."
He didn't laugh. He only watched me with eyes that were too dark for early afternoon.
"What's your name?" he finally asked.
"Kiana," I said. "Kiana Berger."
"Easton Barlow," he answered.
"Of course you are."
"I didn't know it would be that hard," Easton said, and there was a smile that almost reached his eyes. "Tomorrow at nine. Come to my office."
"Okay," I said, the word like an anchor in a storm.
I opened the door to the building and the wind hit me. I walked like someone carrying a sack of glass.
"Don't cry in public," my friend Jana had told me before I left the flat this morning.
"Why would I cry at nine a.m. on a Tuesday?" I asked Jana, and then, of course, I cried. Tears pricked my eyes when Easton said "Come to my office."
When the video link for the interview opened, his face swam into focus.
"Hello, boss," I said, remembering the rehearsed lines I'd practiced in the mirror.
"Good morning," he said. "Sit down."
He had a way of saying things that made my shoulders drop without moving. His jawline was sharp enough to cut a ribbon; his shirt fit like it was made for him. But he said, "You work two jobs already?"
"One," I corrected. "I paint commissions at night."
"Art?" He looked surprised as if he had expected spreadsheets.
"Yes." I felt my face flush. "Illustration."
"I like that," he said. "Creativity. You start on Monday. You'll report to me."
"What? I—" I almost choked on the coffee I hadn't finished. "But—shouldn't there be paperwork?"
"Paperwork will be ready. Bring your ID."
I left the call shaking and stunned and thinking I must have misheard. Easton Barlow, who had the intimidating presence of someone who could order the sky to rain and it would, had just hired me.
That evening, hunger gnawed at my stomach like a persistent dog. I walked into the apartment I had been forced to keep—for legal reasons—and saw him lounging on the couch like he owned the place.
"You're home early," Diego said without looking up from his phone.
"You're home early in my house," I replied. "I don't even have a key to my own room."
He shrugged. "You still have the bathroom. It's fine."
"Fine," I said, and then slammed the fridge. There were vegetables and trays of something elaborate and then a small plastic box with three eggs that looked offended.
"You hungry?" he asked.
"I can fend for myself," I said. "I'm at an interview tomorrow for a stable job."
"You? An interview?" He looked amused in a way that made blood go cold in my ears. "Who is your boss?"
"Unknown," I said. "But he sounded like he knew English and sarcasm."
He smiled with those long, lazy lips that used to make me melt when I wasn't furious. "Good luck."
I slammed my bedroom door. "I'm not crying," I told the shirt on the hanger. "I'm not."
"Don't make a habit of it," Jana messaged later. "Bosses might like tears but not as a long-term strategy."
On my first day of work I practiced the smile that didn't look like a grimace. The office had glass from floor to ceiling. Easton stood behind a long desk and watched the team like a conductor watching an orchestra.
"Good morning," I said, and meant it this time. It caught in my throat, though, and turned into "Boss, good morning," for lack of courage.
"I expected you to say 'husband,'" he said dryly, and I flushed—
"What?" I stammered.
"Nothing." He let the comment hang like a puzzle with no solution. "Sit. Orientation starts at ten."
"Orientation." I sat down and tried not to stare.
At lunch he sat at the same table as me like he had a monopoly on my oxygen.
"Eat," he said.
"Thanks, boss," I replied.
"Don't call me 'boss' in front of clients if you want to keep the job," he said quietly.
"Why?" I asked.
He looked at me, as if trying to read the margin notes of my life. "Because I don't want them to think they're dealing with a company whose leader is frivolous."
"Who said I was saying it out of frivolity?" I shot back.
He smiled, the near-smile. "Because you said 'husband' by accident the first time." He picked up a chef's canapé, handed it to me, and there was contact—just fingers—and my heart misbehaved.
"Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome," he said.
Days passed. Easton had a clock that measured everything: meetings, calls, frowns, approvals. I learned the company's rhythm in small bites. I learned that Easton never slept an hour without working.
"Why did you eat the cake like that?" I asked once when he offered me a pastry.
"It's efficient," he said.
"You're efficient at being vague," I muttered.
He put the plate down. "I like your hands when you draw. They're steady."
"You watch people's hands?" I asked, and he shrugged.
"I watch many things," he said.
At a client event he kept me near him like a talisman. "Stay," he told me simply, palm on the small of my back to steer me through a sea of designers, investors, and polite small talk. People glanced. Some looked impressed; others took me for a decorative accessory.
"He never lets anyone hold his attention for that long," whispered a colleague. "Where'd you find her?"
"I wasn't found," I hissed. "I applied."
That night, after a long wine dinner that bled into midnight, he leaned his forehead against mine as we left the restaurant. "Help me to my car," he murmured at one point and I laughed uncontrollably because I had been the helper all night.
"You're embarrassing and you smell like bourbon," I scolded as I steadied him.
He smirked. "And?"
"And," I said, then my voice shook. "Why are you so...different around me?"
He stopped and looked at me like he had been carved from marble and then warmed. "Because," he said, "you are the only person I want to do normal things with."
"Like what?"
"Like complaining about microwave dinners," Easton said. "Like boarding a boat and pretending to point star constellations."
"South Moon," I whispered.
"South Moon," he said back, and my chest soared because a ship name was now ours.
We spent more time together. He teased; I resisted. Once, he pinched my waist in a crowded lobby and said, "You always overpack pockets."
"You always underdress coats," I shot back. But when he put his coat over my shoulders that night, his hand lingered and I stood still.
I told him about Diego. "He lives in my wedding apartment," I said.
"Renting it out?" Easton raised his eyebrow. "How shameless."
"Shameless is putting a man in my bed and pretending it's not mine," I said, thinking that was a more brutal line than I'd meant.
He didn't reply. He only took my hand.
At the company's autumn gala, everything glittered. Easton walked ahead of me like a prince out of an architecture magazine. The press, the partners—eyes everywhere. I felt like a moth pulled into the flame.
"Stick close to me," he murmured.
"Like you're telling me to hide behind you?" I grumbled.
"Like I'm telling you to belong nearby," he answered.
A murmur broke near the stage. "Isn't that Diego?" someone whispered.
"Diego Lindberg," another voice said. "Is he actually here?"
Diego had always been pride arranged like a badge. He had ways of letting people know he had more than they did. That night he strolled into the hall with a tailored look and a smirk that had once hooked me and now did nothing but prick. He had rented my old apartment, he had slept in my bed, and he had the audacity to smile at me.
"He shouldn't be here," Jana hissed, but my heart had already thickened.
Diego's eyes found me across the room. He walked over as if the world were his and I were an acquired thing. "Kiana," he said, with the easy familiarity of someone who has taken what he needed.
"Diego," I said, my voice too small for the chandeliered room. "This is Easton."
Diego's face changed. I saw the old arrogance ripple. "Oh. Easton," he said. "You're the owner, right?"
"Yes," Easton said. "I am Easton Barlow."
"Small world," Diego smirked. "I used to be close to Kiana—"
"Used to be engaged," I cut him off, because the truth deserved air. "We are over."
A hush fell. People looked like dominoes. Diego's smirk cracked. He laughed too loudly. "Oh, is that the official wording?" he asked.
Easton stepped forward like a tide. "You know you have a habit of taking other people's things," he said calmly.
Diego's face reddened with that electric mix of shame turning into anger. "Excuse me? Who are you to—"
"I'm Kiana's boss," Easton said. "And, I believe you live in her old apartment because she couldn't afford to keep it while paying hospital bills for her parents. Did you think that was amusing?"
Diego flicked his gaze to the gathered audience. "This is ridiculous," he said. "We are adults."
"Adults who had enough money to force a woman out of the home she paid toward," Easton said. "Adults who then have the gall to grin about it at a company event. You want to be an adult, Diego? Fine. Tell the room whether you paid full value for that apartment."
Diego's arrogance flickered. He opened his mouth and closed it. Someone from the press took out a phone. A hush swelled like a storm before lightning.
"Don't," Diego warned, but the words were weak.
Easton turned toward the crowd like a conductor raising his baton. "Diego Lindberg—who bragged to coworkers about renting a property that belonged to his ex-fiancée—is, right now, being asked if the lease was legitimately transferred."
"You can't do this," Diego hissed, hands trembling with anger.
"I can," Easton said. "And I will."
Easton had everyone bring out the lease documents. He asked the hotel manager for a photocopy. "Let's make this public," he said. "Is there an audience for truth?"
Phones lifted like birds. Murmurs became a chorus. Diego's smile liquefied into shock. He began to babble apologies that didn't fit the crime.
"It's leased, obviously," Diego insisted.
"To whom?" Easton asked coldly.
"To—someone else," Diego said flailing. "It was a short-term sublet."
"Short-term?" Easton put the lease on the table. "You signed a six-month contract under your name and used it to avoid paying the mortgage obligations you had as a buyer. Are you proud of this: profiteering off someone else's impending marriage?"
Diego's mouth opened and closed. His face had the stunned whiteness of a man who suddenly realized the audience had turned against him.
"People will talk," he stammered.
"They already are," Easton replied. "And now they'll know."
Diego's defense collapsed the way cardboard collapses under rain. Photographs popped on social feeds. "Diego Lindberg takes my old home and rents my life back to me," read one caption. People who had once toasted his name now watched him flail. A few whispered "shame" and someone took a slow, deliberate photo.
Diego's expression moved quickly across stages: first, affronted pride; then, forced bravado; then, denial; then panic; then pleading.
"Diego," I said quietly, though the microphone amplified me. "You told my parents you would leave the apartment when we separated. You lied."
Diego's eyes flicked to me. He tried to shrug: "I didn't know he would—"
"Enough," Easton said. "We have a statement from the bank here that shows payments were withheld and then arranged via a shell company. You, sir, profited at another's expense and then paraded the gain as a joke."
Someone in the crowd hissed. "That's fraud," someone whispered.
Diego's face spiraled. He tried to push forward but the room's collective gaze severed him. People took out phones, not to cheer him on but to record the end of him.
"Diego Lindberg," Easton said, each syllable crisp, "you will stop using this woman's past as your advantage. You will leave her home without delay, or we will pursue every legal remedy." He laid the contract on the table. "And to everyone present: renting someone's heartbreak is a shameful occupation. Record this as the night the room turned."
Diego's composure spilled like wet paint. He held his hands up. "Please," he said. "I'm sorry. I—"
"Sorry doesn't rewrite the leases," Easton snapped. "You will be asked to resign from the board of the charity fund you brag about. You will be removed from the listings where you act as a landlord. The company supporting the leases will be notified."
Diego looked like a man sliding down an ice slope with no handholds. He was pleading now, genuine fear replacing his earlier bravado. "Easton, please," he croaked. "I didn't mean—"
"You meant enough to keep a woman from sleeping in her own bed," Easton said. "That means you meant it."
Guests cringed. Someone stood and applauded; the clap sounded like a gavel. Cameras kept clicking. People began backing away from Diego like he had contagious arrogance.
"Will they believe me?" Diego asked, fingers clawing at air.
"That's not my job," Easton said. "My job is to stand with the person who was wronged."
The rest unfolded like a slow public collapse. Diego's sponsors withdrew messages of support. Investors asked for explanations. His social channels lost followers by the thousands in the night. Co-workers who had at first looked at him in pity now averted their eyes altogether. Those who had once laughed with him now recorded his humiliation.
He tried to beg for a private conversation in the parking lot, but security escorts funneled him out past a line of faces that ranged from disdain to quiet satisfaction. Someone shouted "shame" as he left. A handful of onlookers followed the van with their phones, and the footage went viral within hours.
I stood there, chest heaving, not sure whether to feel vindicated or empty. People gathered around me—colleagues, acquaintances, even some who had been present at the wedding planning.
"You okay?" Easton asked.
"No," I said. "I don't know."
"Then sit with me," he said, and guided me to the side of the stage where his presence felt like a small island of steadiness.
Diego's punishment wasn't a court judgment. It was a hurricane of social consequence. The man who had once strutted through our neighborhood like royalty stumbled into exile from our social map. He was not arrested; he was exposed. He begged for mercy and learned that mercy is not always served in public.
I watched him go, and then I watched Easton stand there with his coat shoulders perfect and his jaw set like a line drawn across sky. People flocked to him, offering back pats and thanks. He had taken the blow and given me the shield.
"Thank you," I said, though the words felt feeble.
"You're welcome," he replied. He didn't let go of my hand.
That night, when the event lights had cooled and the crowd thinned like tide, Easton walked me to a waiting car.
"Do you regret the truth?" I asked quietly.
"Regret what?" he asked.
"Looking at me like an option to be defended."
He stopped. "Do you think I would defend someone I didn't care about?"
I looked up at him. "I don't know."
"Then stop wondering." He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a gentleness that made my knees forget their duty for a second. "I only do honest things."
We married later that year—quietly, at the registry on a rainy Tuesday. Easton called it practical; I said it was a miracle. "We get to be honest now," he told me as we stood with our signed papers. "And honest with the household budget," he added, and I laughed.
"You really bought me a dress for our first night as a married pair and the price tag had my monthly wage on it," I told him once while I held his sleeve like a child with a secret.
"I didn't want you to worry," he said.
"You did it anyway," I said.
"Yes," he said. "Because your worry shook me."
Later, when I started to feel sick and the tests confirmed it, everything sharpened. "Two lines," I said, voice trembling, as I showed him the paper.
He smiled like sunrise. "Good."
"Did you—do you know what this means?" I asked. "I mean, it's—complicated."
"Yes," he said. "We will be honest with the family. We'll do this right."
"Right," I echoed, thinking of the South Moon and the nights on the balcony with the city's lights spread like promise.
When we announced to his family, the reception was complicated. Easton's father—Hudson Belov—was stony at first, then softer when he saw the way Easton looked at me. The matriarch of the house, Brooke Estes, tapped my hand with a practiced gentleness that felt like acceptance dressed as ritual.
"Don't be afraid," she said. "Family is messy and then it's everything."
White-faced, Kasumi Ziegler—the woman Diego had once aimed for—tried to throw shade and failed badly when Easton's father simply asked her to be polite. Easton's niece Ivy Ballard bounced around in ways that made me dizzy.
"Do you like seaweed on octopus balls?" Ivy demanded the first time she met me.
"What do you think I like?" I countered.
"Good answer!" she shouted, and I laughed so hard I thought my belly might burst.
Later, in a small private moment, Easton took my face in his hands. "Kiana," he said, "do you remember the night you joked about calling me 'husband' by accident?"
"I remember," I said. "It felt like a trap then."
"Is it a trap now?"
"No." My voice was sure. "It's a promise."
"Then come see the South Moon," he said with that same near-smile. "I want to hear the sea with you."
We did. The ship's name was painted on the stern—South Moon—just like the old memory and yet ours newly.
"Do you think it's silly to be afraid?" I asked once when the boat rocked like a sleeping animal.
"No." He tightened his hand. "Fear means you're alive."
My parents healed slowly. My father joked, "If I'd known a man like Easton could be our neighbor, I would have booked him as a house guest years ago."
"You're biased," I said, but he smiled like a man who had slept and then seen morning.
Weeks later, when the child kicked for the first time in my belly, I yelled and startled everyone on the South Moon—especially Easton. "He kicked," I announced.
"She," Easton corrected gently. "It's our girl."
"You're presuming gender now?" I laughed.
"I presume a lot," he said. "But not how much I love you."
We did not have smoothness like glass. We had rough days, like any pair. Once Easton's old contacts tried to manipulate a project to cut me out—an old design deal where I had poured all my nights into illustrating an important pitch. When I discovered the emails, I wanted to quit.
"Don't," Easton said simply. "You fight with truth."
"How?" I asked, because I was tired of being small.
"With evidence," Easton said. "With your hands and your voice. With me."
He gathered staff, lawyers, and friends and laid out the truth like a blueprint. We won. The men who tried to shove me aside apologized—some genuine, some because of consequence. They learned that trying to injure someone who had Easton on their side was bad for business.
Our lives settled into smalls: morning tea, laundry wars, midnight laughter when the baby hiccupped. Easton would sometimes be brusque in the morning and then extraordinary at dinner, as if he had compressed all tenderness into an evening envelope.
"Promise me one thing," I teased him one late night.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Don't be a monster," I said.
"I won't," he whispered, and kissed me like he had been planning it for years.
There were people in the past who did not get a punishment like Diego's—there were small wolves who slunk away. But the men who had publicly hurt me had to face public consequence. Shame is not the same as justice; yet sometimes it is the only speech that reaches the very ears that once laughed.
When I held my daughter for the first time—our small, fierce thing—I thought of the South Moon and the night I almost missed the start of something real.
"She looks like you," Easton said.
"She looks like both of us," I said.
"No," he insisted. "She looks exactly like you."
"Fine," I said, and rested my head on his shoulder. "Then you owe her the moon."
"We'll give her South Moon," Easton promised.
"And a little more." I smiled against him, thinking of contracts, of accounts, of the long slow work of love. He had been a boss and an uncle and something else entirely.
"Do you remember the first time I said 'husband'?" I asked again, a question for the joy of memory.
"I remember," he answered.
"And you remember how mean you were?"
"To test you," he said.
"To be rid of my rehearsed nonsense," I said. "But you turned the rehearsal into reality."
"Because you are worth more than rehearsal," he said.
I watched him then—the man who had taken a part of my pain and, instead of owning it as a trophy, carried it gently. He had been loud in battle, quiet in love, unforgiving when someone hurt me, and soft when I was afraid. He loved me in ways that made the world less like a trap and more like a sky you could breathe under.
"Always," I said, and shook my head. I couldn't use worn endings.
"Never always," he corrected with that small cruel smile. "But I'll try to be steady."
"Steady," I repeated.
He tucked a loose curl behind my ear and said, "If you ever doubt again, remember the South Moon. The night you cried and I took you aboard. The ship that kept us from drowning."
"I will," I whispered.
We put the ring in the drawer with a note. The last thing I wrote before laying down to sleep was a small joke: "If anyone thinks they can take my South Moon, they should check the lease."
"Who are you talking to now?" Easton murmured.
"The past," I said. "And the future."
He pulled me closer, kissed my brow, and I slept with the South Moon in my dreams.
The End
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