Sweet Romance13 min read
My Fake "Husband" and the Cufflink That Changed Everything
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Half an hour ago, for the sake of face, I sent my ex a photo of my boss with five words: "My husband."
I never thought the photo would be projected onto the meeting room screen. I never thought my chat with Enzo would open in front of fifty senior staff members. I never thought everyone would go silent and look at me like I was a new kind of animal on display.
"I—" I tried to speak, but the room closed in. The CEO's face on the screen was handsome and cold. The real Lincoln Falk sat there, watching me, and I suddenly wanted the floor to swallow me.
"I need to use the restroom," I said, and I fled before anyone could look at me longer than a second.
I locked myself inside a stall and stared at the cold porcelain bowl. For a second, I wanted to put my head down and disappear. The humiliation burned like a bright coal in my chest.
Ten minutes later, I walked back into the office like nothing had happened. People glanced at me—some with sympathy, most with gossip thinly masked as curiosity.
I made coffee and walked into Lincoln's office because my job—my title—was assistant. It was what I had earned, quietly, with a recipe my grandmother taught me and a stubborn streak of loyalty.
"Lincoln, your coffee," I said, sliding the cup to him.
He looked up from his laptop. I had seen his serious face a hundred times, but up close, in the light, he was almost sculptural. I knew he was a stereotype of a billionaire CEO: sharp-angled jaw, tailored suit, a presence that made people small by comparison.
He smiled, something that happened rarely. "Am I this handsome?" he asked softly.
My brain froze. "You—yes, you're very handsome," I said. I was sure it was an attempt at a warning, a subtle way to tell me to stop daydreaming about a man I served.
"It's a joke," I hurried to explain. "I only sent the photo as a joke. I swear I have no—"
"You're my wife now." He said it like it was a fact, not a command.
My heart misfired. I blinked. "Lincoln, we work together. This was a mistake."
He let his face go unreadable. "Act like you want to keep your job," he said before returning to his laptop.
After the meeting that afternoon, the CTO and a few managers were roasted by Lincoln. Heads bowed, tension thick in the air. I brought him tea and pastries—the ones my grandmother taught me how to make—and he accepted.
"Thank you, Indie." He took a bite and relaxed. Around him the managers breathed. When he smiled in that way, people exhaled like they'd been holding their breath for hours.
"Thanks for the pastries, Indie." A manager breathed. I nodded and left. I heard someone mutter, "Lucky girl."
Later, someone overheard Lincoln arguing about marriage on the phone. He sounded tired. "I don't want to be married. I'll decide my own life," he said. He sighed and then called me over and pointed at his screen. A photo of a woman—an elegant, poised woman—was on it.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"She's nice," I said. "She suits you."
He sounded like he was pushing back at his family. Then he said, "Fine. I'll go meet her."
I left the office confused, and on my way home, my phone rang. Enzo. Seeing his name made a small part of my chest hurt, the old part that remembered laughter on hospital corridors and the times we planned the kind of future that never happened.
"Indie, don't hang up. I'm at the Zambezi, doing a rapids run," he said breathlessly. "You're missing out on life."
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I miss you," he confessed. "Let's meet."
"For what? To remind me I chose not to fall off cliffs with you?" I snapped.
He pleaded. "Come have dinner with me."
I gave in because I had a guilty streak and because my mother liked Enzo. I wanted her to be happy. I went to the restaurant. I walked in late, and lo and behold, Lincoln and the woman from his screen were seated behind me. She wore a black dress and looked like she stepped out of an art magazine. They spoke like a couple. He was bulldozing through demands: "You'll quit and be a stay-at-home wife." "You will do all housework." She left, her face like a cracked vase.
I rolled my eyes. He left, too. I almost laughed until a chestnut-sized pain hit me on the head—Enzo. He bounded over like a boy.
"Indie!" He grinned. My memory of him was a rope of rough laughter, freckles, a habit of late arrivals. He smelled like sun and careless days.
We talked and he rambled; I tolerated it for a while. Enzo asked if we could get back together. I told him, "I have a husband," and showed the photo I had sent. He scoffed.
"Who would a CEO take you for?" he said.
I was about to retort when Lincoln's voice came from behind me, cool and nearby. "Who said I didn't?"
My head turned. He placed his arm on my shoulder like we were a married couple having a private joke. "Wife, are you meeting your ex behind my back?"
I felt my knees go weak. "Husband—I'm sorry," I said without thinking, and a little of the theater dissolved into real warmth at hearing him call me that.
I owed him a favor after that stunt. The next day, he called it in.
"Come with me to a gala," he said two days later.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I need a cover," he admitted.
We dressed, and when we walked into the gala hand-in-hand, dozens turned to stare. Women widened their eyes; men checked their mirrors. Someone pushed forward and demanded to know who I was. I heard the sharp voice, "Lincoln, who is she?"
"She's my girlfriend," he said, authoritative.
The woman shouted, "Prove it! Kiss her!"
He reached for my chin and asked in a soft voice, "Can I?"
I nodded. He kissed me like the world had been waiting for that moment. He kissed me with a deliberate tenderness that left me dizzy. Cameras flashed, and gossip websites hummed the next morning.
Breakfast appeared on my desk the next day with roses. Someone thought my love life had changed overnight. Rumors spread.
"Is she really Lincoln's girlfriend?" people whispered.
"She must be from a rich family," a colleague sniped. "Who would he pick?" The rumor-mill turned.
I told myself to be cautious. Lincoln kept acting like a boyfriend. He brought me to dinners, to movies, and once to his home. He cooked. He made three dishes and a soup—everything was exactly what I liked. He had a hidden tenderness that didn't match his public reputation.
Then came the night I decided I couldn't pretend anymore. He said, "Let's make it real." My heart leaped like a trapped bird, but fear pressed on me.
"Make what real?" I asked.
"Our relationship," he said. "Let's stop pretending."
A part of me wanted to say yes and never look back. Another part thought of my small life with simple coffee, pastries, and the scar of old love. In the end, I said yes because I couldn't resist him, and because part of me wanted to see what it felt like to be chosen.
He left for a trip. I texted him often. He replied in short, patient bursts. Then, he sent me an address: "I'm in town. Come if you can." I answered, "I'll come," and my chest fluttered.
I drove two hours and climbed to room 1802. I knocked and found a scene: a woman in a black dress holding Lincoln close. I felt like someone had thrown cold water over my shoulders.
"It's fine," Lincoln said immediately. "She's my brother's friend, stop making a scene."
I was stunned into silence. We talked. After a while, the awkwardness dissolved into a strange, private familiarity. We managed to settle into an uneasy calm. He was gentle, and I let my guard down.
That night, we slept in the same apartment. In the morning, he came out of the bathroom wrapped in nothing but a towel. I stared. He laughed. "Hungry?" he asked, the universal word for "I notice you."
We slept in the same bed for a night. He would talk about the past and say, "Wait. Remember." There was a shadow in his voice—someone missing.
A few days later, at dinner with his friends, someone toasted, "To Lincoln and his wife," and I felt my stomach twist. Also, someone sent me a message calling me a "stand-in." Cambridge of rumors returned: photos of Lincoln with a young woman were labeled "mystery girl." My chest hurt again.
At work, people looked at me differently. "A sparrow can't be a phoenix," they whispered. I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand they leave me alone. Instead, I worked, pretended, made tea, and locked myself in bathrooms to cry.
I sent Lincoln a messy message: "I'm quitting. I'm leaving." Then I turned off my phone. Next morning, someone knocked at my door. It was Enzo, which made my heartbeat sink.
"You're a mess," he said. "Come out, I'll fix things."
I couldn't bear another lecture, but he dragged me to the river. We bungee-jumped. For a few hours, I felt dizzy and free. Then I saw Lincoln standing in the distance like a concerned sentinel. He asked if I loved Enzo; I shrugged and turned away. Lincoln looked like someone betrayed, not by me, but by the world around him.
I blacklisted him from my life, from my phone, like closing a window to keep out rain. I handed my resignation at a new company, and I left. Life thudded on like a dull drum.
A few weeks later, a client at my new job tried to take advantage of me. I poured beer in his face and quit on the spot. I walked out into the night and got trapped by a man intent on dragging me into a car. A shadow moved and hit him—Lincoln.
He beat the man without hesitation and called the police. He looked at me like I was made of china. "Why did you leave?" he demanded.
"I wasn't protected," I said.
He stood there, silent. I went home.
Days unfolded and we bumped into each other more and more. A car, a train station, a rainstorm—always Lincoln. He would offer me a ride. Once, he said in the backseat, "Why did you leave me?"
"Leave you?" I asked. "You were leaving me."
"Did you ever think I'm not as heartless as my reputation?"
I told him about the photos, the girl at the hotel, the messages from a woman named Camille Watson telling me I was a replacement. He looked at me like someone who had held a secret for a long time.
"Camille?" he repeated. "She has a history."
Then he showed me two photos that knocked the breath out of me: a backlit picture of a girl leaning into him and another of a girl in a white dress sitting in sunlight. "Who is she?" I asked, because the face looked uncannily like me.
"That's you," he said quietly.
I tried to slide the memory back into place and failed. He told me a story I had half-feeling—two years ago, when I'd had an accident, when my memories had been rewired, when I had been abroad working and living a life I couldn't remember.
"You helped me when my bank was frozen," he said. "I was young and struggling. You supported me. I wanted to tell you but I wanted to wait until you remembered."
Pieces flooded forward—me handing him a tiny cufflink from a birthday gift. Me in a cramped studio flat. Me taking shifts. We had been poor together, and my memory had placed a fog over that life.
"I wanted to wait," he said. "I thought you'd remember on your own."
It wasn't only romantic. It was real, complicated, honest. I felt stolen years settle around us like dust blown back into place.
I started to remember more—the bar, the laughter, the cramped bed, the nights we cooked noodles and counted coins. I remembered giving him a small cufflink; I remembered planning to buy him a ring. I remembered slipping into a car that never reached its destination. Memory reassembled itself like a child's broken toy stitched back together.
When I confronted him, he confessed. He kept a cautious line and a tenderness that made me blush.
"Why didn't you say any of this before?" I demanded one night.
"Because I wanted you to choose me without being forced by pity," he said.
"I already loved you," I whispered.
He smiled like a man relieved to hear water run through a dry well.
Meanwhile, a storm gathered in the form of Camille Watson. She was the one who messaged me about being a replacement. She had pressed into Lincoln's life like ivy, quick and flattering, and she loved histories where she was central.
I had tolerated her petty comments in the office, shrugged off her glances. But when she sent an anonymous tip to a gossip site about "Lincoln's mystery girlfriend" and uploaded photos meant to humiliate me, I decided she needed to be stopped.
Lincoln did not let it go either. He looked at me and said, "Let me handle her."
"No," I said. "I want to handle her. I want to prove I'm not fragile, not just someone he wears for a night."
He agreed. "Okay. We'll do it together."
We planned nothing. The universe planned everything.
Camille decided to make her move at a charity tech exhibition where Lincoln was to announce a new product. The room was full: investors, journalists, staff—exactly the kind of crowd that would like scandal and cameras.
"She's going to try to unveil something," Lincoln said. "She has a network."
"Let her," I said.
On the day, the exhibition hall buzzed. My heart thudded loud, obnoxiously loud. Lincoln's hand found mine beneath the table and squeezed. I swallowed.
The moment came. Camille stepped onto the stage during a Q&A. Her smile was too bright.
"Lincoln, before you talk about gadgets, answer this: who is she?" she said, pointing at me with a manicured finger.
The lights seemed to sharpen. A hundred faces turned toward me.
Lincoln stood, very still. He closed his eyes for one heartbeat and then opened them.
"What is it, Camille?" he asked, as if humoring a child.
"You've been acting like a married man," Camille said, and the room hummed. "Is she your assistant? Is she your conquest? You owe your investors honesty."
"Are you making a spectacle?" Lincoln asked.
Camille's smile flickered. "I have proof. I have messages and photos proving this girl is not who she pretends."
She clicked her phone like a gavel. A projector lit on the large screen above the stage.
"Let them see," Lincoln said softly.
Camille's smirk widened. Photos bloomed on the screen: staged private pictures, whispers of flirtation. The audience leaned forward. Cameras flashed. I felt my stomach drop.
"She isn't even your type," Camille crowed. "You're a CEO—you have standards."
I felt heat flush. I thought I would never stop trembling.
Then Lincoln raised his hand, and the lights cut. A hush fell.
"Camille," he said, and his voice had a slow, dangerous calm to it. "You love an audience. That's been obvious."
She looked at him, triumphant.
"Show them everything," she said. "Reveal the chat logs. Tell them I'm a liar."
Lincoln's jaw tightened. He stepped forward and pressed a remote. The screen blinked and, instead of the photos Camille had selected, a new video played.
It began with shaky footage—a man I recognized as a paparazzo, an exchange of envelopes, a whisper. Then it showed Camille in a private cafe with the same paparazzo, laughing, flirting. Her phone screen was visible: messages promising exclusives for money, messages planning to plant a story. There were documents—bank transfers to a holding company under her name. She had, with practiced cruelty, paid for the rumor.
The hall felt like it had been dropped into ice. People scanned each other, whispering.
"What is this?" Camille demanded, her confident voice fraying.
"Who assists you in these plans?" Lincoln asked.
"No—this is impossible," she whispered.
"You're a woman people take seriously," Lincoln said. "Yet you funded a character assassination, playing with reputations for attention."
She bristled. "You can't—this is a setup! I didn't—"
A journalist in the front row stood up. "We have records," he said. "We have bank transfers and messages to the paparazzo."
A businesswoman in a glittering dress murmured, "Oh my God."
Another man hissed, "Camille, you did this for clicks?"
Cameras panned, the room's murmurs turned into a roar. People started filming with their phones, fingers tapping record. A few people clapped in disbelief.
Camille's face went from glow to pale. I read shock on her features—then anger, like a paper burning.
"This is slander!" she snapped. "You can't show private messages!"
"You chose to be public," Lincoln said. "You chose to harm people for your gain. You thought the crowd would take your lie."
Camille's voice broke. She moved toward the microphone like a prize fighter, then lost her balance. Her hands began to shake.
"You're all judges now?" she cried. "This is—this is an invasion. How dare you?"
"How dare you?" a woman in the back shouted, and the room echoed it. "She paid for lies."
Camille's denial became frantic. "I didn't—it's a setup! He's paid to say this!"
"No." Lincoln's voice had ice. "You hired this to create scandal, and you used other people's lives as fodder."
The cameras closed in. A man near the stage muttered, "Who is the woman you were dating? Who's the real target?"
"Stop!" Camille begged. "Please, you're ruining me. I didn't mean to—"
She stumbled, the high heel of a shoe snapping. Someone caught her arm. The murmurs turned to a chorus of disgust and amusement. Phones angled, light catching on tears.
There was a slow shift. People who had once admired her now recorded her implosion. A few clapped. A man laughed and patted his wife, "She finally got exposed."
"Look," whispered a woman cutting in line to the press pit. "She's the one trying to bring strangers down!"
Camille's expression collapsed; she was all sharp edges turned inward. A cameraman shoved a microphone in her face.
"Why? Why did you do it?" he asked.
She hiccupped, searching for words. The earlier arrogance had cracked, replaced by fear. "I—" she started. "I needed attention. I thought—"
"Is that it?" a reporter asked.
She lowered her voice into a pleading whimper. "Please. Please, I'm sorry. Don't—don't ruin me. This is my career."
"No one here cares about your career if you toy with other people's dignity," someone snapped.
A woman near the front sobbed softly. "She almost ruined someone. God, I can't believe it."
Camille fell to her knees, shoes splayed, hands in the carpet. She looked up at Lincoln like a beggar at a king.
"Please," she said, voice shaking. "Please don't expose me to the press. I won't—I'll leave. I'll resign. I'll apologize. Please."
People around her had their phones out. A dozen tweets were already rolling in: "Camille exposed for paid smear campaign." Photos of Camille kneeling were uploaded. The hashtag started trending within minutes.
"Get up," Lincoln said, and though his voice was calm, there was firmness like steel. "You've done a lot of harm. Apologize to her, now."
The camera focused on me, then back to Camille. Her face crumpled again.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed in a voice ragged from weeping. "Indie—I'm sorry. I—"
"Save it," I said, but my voice shook. I felt vindicated and hollow at the same time. The room split into applause and murmurs. Some clapped as justice; others clapped at the spectacle.
Security led her away. People crowded the exits, murmuring and filming. Some staff started to cheer. A few investors whispered about morals. The humiliation had been complete and public.
Camille's reaction had followed the arc I'd been told to write: smugness, shock, denial, collapse, and begging. She was now small and raw, her face blotched red, a brand of disgrace burned into the public record.
Afterward, people surrounded me with questions and pats on the back.
"Are you okay?" a reporter asked.
"I'm fine," I said. I felt guilty for the relief I felt. "Thank you."
Lincoln's hand brushed my back and stayed there, warm and steady. "You did well," he murmured.
The weeks after the exhibition were quieter. The gossip had exposed Camille and returned my name to normalcy. People who had gossiped now avoided me with sheepish eyes.
Lincoln's presence shifted. He was less theater and more companion. He discussed work like a partner, and home like someone who wanted to build one. He surprised me with a small box—inside was the cufflink I had once given him, polished and shining.
"You dropped it that night," he said. "I kept it."
My throat closed. "You kept that?"
"I kept everything you gave me," he said.
We kept falling into one another then, not with the urgency of a made-for-TV romance, but with a steady and careful warmth. We tried to mend the time we'd missed and to accept the parts we couldn't change.
One evening, as rain tapped the windows of his apartment, he sat me on the sofa and made the cover messy like he had complained no one did before.
"I made it look like you were here," he said, smiling.
I looked at the sofa cover and laughed. "You did this on purpose?"
He shrugged like a man who didn't mind admitting he liked small domestic rebellions. "Yeah."
I slid the cufflink into the pocket of my coat before I left that night. It felt like a promise and a memory, a small metal circle holding weight I could put my hand on.
I keep that cufflink in my desk drawer at work now. Sometimes I take it out and turn it over. It fits between my fingers like a secret I can hold. When I feel small or uncertain, I press it gently and remember the messy sofa, the gala lights, and the night a projection made me shrink—and a man with a reputation rebuilt me.
The End
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