Sweet Romance13 min read
My Hidden Ring, His Ninety-Nine Roses
ButterPicks10 views
I woke to the city breathing quietly around our villa, the night lights pooling like spilled milk on the glass. I was alone on the sofa, face mask still clinging to my skin, one leg thrown over the coffee table because of habit and because the house was big enough to do anything I liked.
My phone buzzed against the cushion. I plucked it up and put it on speaker.
"Elaina! Did you see the news? Your husband is trending again!" Sandra's voice was all shriek and flirt and that particular pity she wore for me when she thought I was missing out.
"I'm watching," I said, lifting my chin. The TV on the wall was turned to entertainment news. Calloway Castro — top actor, everyone’s idol, the man the world liked to call untouchable — was on screen, photographed abroad with Jemma Rodrigues laughing by a river.
"You're not even jealous," Sandra chided, playful.
"I'm not jealous," I repeated. "I have a legal file in my hand."
"You're so cold! I'm hanging up." She laughed and ended the call.
We had been married in secret five years ago, a paper marriage to handle family pressure and to keep both our careers clean. We agreed then: a contract, an apartment, no messy entanglements. Calloway and I had been two ships in a big sea: sometimes passing, usually out of sight, mostly life in different ports.
I reached for the divorce agreement I’d kept in a folder. "Lawyer?" I told the phone when it vibrated in my palm. "Is the draft ready?"
I stepped into the shower and sang badly off-key at the steam. No one else was home but the staff and the quiet house. I imagined Calloway miles away, wrapped in someone else’s warmth. My fingers tugged the towel tighter at my waist. I told myself not to care.
Later, when I came out and wrapped the towel around me properly, Beatrice was at the doorway with a look that tried to be casual and failed.
"Madam," she said. "Master is—"
"You mean the rumor?" I smiled and sat down on the couch with my phone. "We signed a paper, Beatrice. It's enough."
Beatrice blinked. "Are you sure, Madam? The master is back."
The TV went off, and the house hummed. I sipped red wine under romantic lights and let my head rest against the cushions. For a second I allowed myself the small luxury of daydreaming. I dreamed about someone coming behind me, hands warm at my waist. I woke with the bathroom mirror fogged and something sticky on my lips — the memory of a kiss so startling I thought maybe it had been real.
"You're really going to put 'divorce' at the top of your to-do list?" Sandra asked later when she called, full of a friend's rough mercy.
"Yes." I felt oddly resolute. "I've had five years. It's time."
"You're crazy," she declared, then laughed.
I didn't expect Calloway to be home that night. I expected to be alone in my house, the villa big enough for camouflage. But when I dropped my phone and stepped backward, he stood in the doorway with the kind of casual that meant he belonged there. He wore a dark suit, tie still in place, hair a little mussed. He looked at me like he had owned the scene all along.
"You were singing," he said, taking in the towel around me.
"You were stalking," I shot back. "How long were you standing there?"
He shrugged. "Long enough to hear you say my name in a dream."
I scoffed. "Save the lines, Calloway."
He laughed — a sound that always tightened something around my ribs. "You were beautiful," he said.
"I was half-asleep," I said back.
He picked up my fallen phone and pressed the caller ID: Sandra. He smiled and said, "It's fine. Her song made me come home."
I didn't expect publicly messy feelings. We had been legal and platonic and efficient. But that night we both leaned into the small, stupid kindnesses that carry people through minutes and years: the hand that reached for mine to steady me, the quiet care when my head fell asleep on his shoulder. It became harder to be resolute when the body remembered softness.
"Do you remember the contract?" I asked when we were both less clumsy with emotions.
He did. "I do." He opened the folder I handed him and read the word "DIVORCE" in big type.
"Sign it," I said. "We've both moved on."
He frowned, then met my eyes. "Before you go through with this," Calloway said, softer, "let's try something. We are married on paper and not in life. What if for a month we stop treating ourselves like strangers?"
I laughed. "That's not a thing."
"Why not?" His voice turned conspiratorial. "We already have the legal part. Why not the… practical?"
"You're proposing a trial of married duties?" I teased.
"Call it—" he paused, "a month of us."
I didn't say yes. I didn't say no. I took the shower, wrapped myself in clothes, and considered the idea.
The next morning, I woke to him still there. For the first time in five years I opened my eyes and he didn't have to be somewhere else. He had this quiet, steady presence that felt like a promise I hadn’t asked for.
"You'll forget," I said playfully, sliding my feet off the bed. "Promise me you won't make any speeches."
"No speeches," Calloway agreed. "Just… honesty."
He kissed me like he meant to keep it casual but the kiss turned honest. I found myself returning it.
"You're impossible," I said after, breathless and grinning.
"You'd say so if I weren't," he said.
In private, we explored. Small touches that shouldn't mean anything because we had made them mean nothing years ago suddenly started to rearrange me. He would fold my scarf around my shoulders when I shivered; I would pick at the buttons of his cuffs for no reason. I caught myself thinking about him at odd minutes and feeling that small electric hazard I had promised myself I wouldn't.
The world intruded in the form of a phone call and scandal; a foreign film producer named Giuseppe Hughes had shown an ugly side at a negotiation, and in the weeks after, his name kept crawling up in the tabloid sewers. He had tried to press himself on me at a signing dinner, and I had not tolerated his hands, his whispers, or his entitlement. My temper had surprised me when I tossed a glass of wine in his face — and I had never expected for that one moment to escalate.
"You're lucky," Sandra whispered on the phone while we sat together in the living room after the incident. "Calloway came in and—"
"I know," I said. "He handled it."
"Handled it?" Her voice turned dreamy. "He wrecked that man."
He did. But that was only part of the story. When the incident became front-page news, I didn't want to hide behind our private agreement. I went public on a late-morning livestream that had started as a promotional segment for a children's show I had agreed to — secretly, awkwardly — and then turned into confession.
"Hello," I said to the camera, my hands steady on the small boy who sat in my lap like a little sun. Landon — my son — waved shyly at the lens and said, "Hi. I'm Landon. She's my mom."
The internet turned a single gear and exploded.
"Your husband is Calloway?" one commenter asked.
I swallowed. In the past, hiding had meant protection. In the moment, I felt different. "Yes," I said. "We've been married for five years. This is my son. He is mine."
When the rumors paired Calloway and me, the world had a hard time fitting two famous puzzle pieces together. He had been a ghost in my life by design, a fact that suited both of us until it did not. When the truth crashed through the online chatter, Calloway did not run.
Later that day, in a crowded VIP room where men joked and poured drinks with practiced indifference, Giuseppe Hughes — the man who had leaned on my shoulder like a leech — sat comfortably until he did not. He knew me well enough to think powder and pretty would do. He did not know Calloway well enough.
"Giuseppe," I heard, in the kind of voice that cut like rope, "apologize."
Giuseppe laughed, the sort of laugh that tries to buy forgiveness. "Apologize for what? I was playing the room."
"You were playing the wrong guest."
I stood up so fast that someone called out. Calloway leaned forward, his posture a blade of black suit and restrained power. He rose, too, and the room grew smaller as people realized the meat of a scandal was not what they had bargained for.
"Sit down," Giuseppe sneered, but his voice did not reach me. Calloway moved before I could, and his hand knocked the man's drink aside with calm intention.
"Everyone here," Calloway said, his voice smooth and low, "this man thinks he can use influence and money to take advantage of women. He is wrong."
The patrons blinked. Someone gasped. A woman near the bar whispered loudly, "Isn't he the producer who used to be linked to minors in the press?" The rumor broke the surface.
"Here’s what happened," Calloway continued. "He invited my wife, tried to embarrass and humiliate her, and then he threatened to ruin careers when she refused. That is predation, and there will be consequences."
Giuseppe's face hardened. "You can't—"
"Watch me," Calloway said. He stepped forward, calm as a judge. "Security, take his phone."
Hands moved. Two burly men — hired security who had been leaning at the wall like statues — moved with practiced efficiency. One stepped into Giuseppe's personal space and pulled the phone away. Giuseppe tried to reach for it, but Calloway's hand was on his shoulder, steady.
"You're done," Calloway said to Giuseppe. "You've been making your own bed for twenty years. Time to sleep in it."
Then Calloway opened his palm and placed an envelope on the glossy table. It was thin, but heavy in its implication. The room watched the exchange like a breath held forever. Calloway glanced at me, and then at the others, and his face was a calm, terrible thing.
"I have here," he said, "evidence of Giuseppe's misdeeds. He has been protected for years by money and people who prefer rumors to reform. Not tonight."
A phone lit up, someone in the room started taking a live stream, and people began to murmur. Calloway's team had been preparing quietly for weeks; he had found documents, contracts, and messages. Within minutes, depending on an exposure plan, the truth — ugly and precise — was broadcast.
"You're bluffing," Giuseppe snapped, his face red with shame or rage.
"Am I?" Calloway's voice did not rise. "Giuseppe has a history of coercing talent with promises. We've recorded admissions on tape. We've got bank transfers. We have witnesses — women who were silenced. I offered him a chance to leave quietly. He chose to be a coward."
The room smelled of cheap perfume and fear. The live stream of the confrontation was already catching fire online. Someone was contacting law enforcement. Another person was forwarding the files to a journalist who had been trying to blow a wider case for months.
Giuseppe looked around, the arrogance melting in his face. Around him, a different sound rose: phones clicking, people whispering, chairs scraping back. He started to stammer excuses — a panicked litany.
"You're lying!" he cried. "This is slander!"
Around him, people who had once smiled at him turned away. The assistant pushed another envelope toward Calloway: bank records showing transfers to shell companies; emails with implicating threads; messages to girls promising roles in exchange for silence. Somewhere outside, the sirens started. A couple of cameras rolled like hungry beetles.
"Call security," Giuseppe begged, suddenly small. "Call my lawyer. I'll sue you."
They didn't call his lawyer. They called the police. They called the reporters who had been following months of hints and subpoenas. They called the women he had silenced. They called the agencies that had been complicit.
"How long has this been going on?" a woman in the corner demanded, voice trembling with righteous anger.
"Long enough," Calloway said. "Too long."
The man's face changed slowly: from color to pale to a kind of stunned gray. He realized the room had turned on him, that power had shifted. He saw the phones, the camera lenses, the faces that had once smiled now hard and small, and his bravado burned away.
"No, no—" Giuseppe's sentence broke into a string of denials that couldn't fill the hole reality had dug. He staggered back, the room parted like a river around him. People turned their backs. Some applauded. Some simply left their seats. Someone took a photo that would go around the world with a timestamp.
"What do you want from me?" Giuseppe begged finally. That was the last sentence that earned him anything but scorn.
Calloway looked him straight in the eye. "I want you to leave, and I want you to surrender all your contacts and files. I want you to publish an apology. And I want you to never work in this town again."
Giuseppe's reaction traveled through a spectrum: first disbelief, then negotiation, then collapse. He tried bargaining — money, threats, crying — and it all sounded like a child whimpering at a doorstep. The room cataloged every change on his face. People took notes, some with an almost clinical calm.
When the police arrived, Giuseppe had been reduced to a man clutching nothing but a suit and ruined swagger. He was read his rights and taken out under the steady eyes of the cameras. I watched his face as they put his hands behind his back; he had gone from predator to pariah in front of a hungry audience, and he would later find himself stripped of clients and friends. Lawyers withdrew. Sponsors canceled campaigns. The man who thought he could buy silence found himself sold out in the public court of consequence.
The crowd outside the restaurant cheered more for the dismantling of power than for any hero. There were tears, murmurs, a lot of small conversations about what had happened to women and what men had to do to change. "Justice," someone whispered. "Finally."
I watched the whole thing and felt a dizzying blend of fear and gratitude wash through me. After the police had hauled Giuseppe away, Calloway sat down next to me and took my hand. He didn't ask permission. He didn't perform. He was quiet, just present.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Thanks to you."
He squeezed my hand. "You didn't want to go quiet. You did right."
"I did not expect it to be so public."
"Neither did I," he said. "But when someone crosses a line, we don't step back. We step forward."
The public punishment was not a mere punchline. Giuseppe's fall was meticulous and public: the press dug into his past, victims were found and given a voice, contracts were canceled, financiers distanced themselves. Over weeks, he lost not only power but public faith; the companies he had trusted severed connections; the industry that had turned a blind eye now walked away. There was shock, then fascination, then a kind of relief at seeing a predator reduced to a cautionary tale in front of a global audience. He paced through stages: arrogant, petulant, frantic denial, and finally a hollowed plea for mercy that none offered.
And the crowd watched every beat of his collapse with a mix of glee and disgust. People took photos, uploaded videos, wrote scathing threads. A part of me felt guilty for the spectacle. A larger part felt a relief I hadn't realized I wanted.
After it was over, Calloway and I stepped into the quiet hallway of the villa. He handed me ninety-nine roses wrapped with a nervous, clumsy bow.
"Ninety-nine?" I asked. "Why ninety-nine?"
"One less than a hundred," he said, watching the petals in a way I hadn't seen him watch any prop before. "Because perfection is a promise I can't make, but I know I can try."
I laughed and kissed his jaw. "Try then," I said.
We promised nothing we didn't mean. We promised to try for a month.
In the days after that violent cleaning of a predator from our lives, we learned each other in clumsy fits and starts. He began to stay home more often; I sat in boardrooms and rehearsals and then came back to his arms. Once, while I was brushing my teeth, he watched me and said my name in a way that folded the air, and I felt like a child sneaking a forbidden fruit. Once, in a moment of drunk courage, I planted the first deliberate kiss on his lips in the bathroom as he helped me squeeze toothpaste, and it felt like stealing spring.
At work, I signed up for the children's show Calloway teased me about: people thought we would be the oddest celebrity pairing on the screen. The show wanted a "fake mother" for a precocious boy. The boy on set recognized Landon immediately, which turned everything upside down. The live feed they set up cut through the noise and showed the world something real, a little boy who said "Mom" like a bell.
That afternoon, when the internet saw our photo together and realized we had been married all along, the world rearranged itself. Journalists scratched their heads. Fans choked on surprise. My inbox flooded with questions: Why didn't you tell us? Where has Calloway been? Why does your son look so much like you?
Calloway took the press conference like a man who had been built for light and shadows. He stepped to the podium and said the thing that stopped rumor mills cold.
"I want to say something," he told the cameras. "There have been rumors that I'm not a husband or that I'm a ghost. I want to correct one thing: I am very much alive. I am her husband. I am his father."
Somewhere a room full of men laughed, then stopped. Calloway's statement was simple and devastating because it refused to play into the gossip.
After everything, when the world had settled into a new pattern of fascination and begrudging acceptance, I held my son in the kitchen and watched Calloway place the last of the ninety-nine roses into a tall glass. He studied them like a man who had never expected to plant his own garden.
"You know," he said, "when I was a kid I thought roses were the hardest thing to grow. Turns out husbanding is harder."
"You're the one who bought them," I said.
"I bought them because you told me not to sign the divorce quickly," he replied. "And because I wanted to apologize with flowers, which I know are ridiculous."
"They're not ridiculous," I told him. "They're honest."
Landon, who had been busy making a fort out of blankets, lifted his head and announced, "The roses are nice." He plucked one and pressed it to his nose.
"Don't crush the petals," Calloway said.
"Too late," I said, laughing, and reached for Calloway's hand.
We had not promised forever. We had promised a month. We gave each other small, daily proofs instead: a shared bowl of soup, a toothbrush placed beside the sink, a movie watched together until we fell asleep halfway through. We practiced being a family in a patchwork way, like sewing new seams into old fabric.
One night, months after Giuseppe’s fall, I stood at the window and watched the last of the roses fall apart in the vase. The petals looked like tiny worn-out flags. I picked up the pocket watch Calloway had once shown me — the one he had used to count time while I protested we should sign the divorce. The watch ticked, small and precise.
"I'll tell you something," I said, cradling the watch. "The first time I kissed you was a dream. The rest are very real."
"Then keep making reals," he answered, lips soft against my temple.
In the end, we never pretended the past hadn't existed. We never pretended that our marriage began as paper or that the hurt of five empty years disappeared. But we tried, clumsy and deliberate, to be better than our agreement. We tried to be present, to repair, to grow.
Calloway placed the ninety-ninth rose gently on the pillow between us that night. The watch ticked on the dresser. Landon slept like a tiny, perfect rule inside our days.
When people asked later how we moved from strangers to something more, I would tell them the honest parts: the accident of a dream-remembered kiss, the steady decision to try, the public collapse of a monster that taught us both how cruel the world can be and how gently it can mend. But what I kept for myself was quieter: the small mornings when he asked if I needed more coffee, the way his voice softened when he called my name.
Once, at the crest of a long day, I slipped the pocket watch into my palm and heard the tiny "tick" — a small, dependable sound. "Tick," it said. "Tick."
That night, with the nine-and-ninety roses beside us, I closed my eyes and felt that steady rhythm. It sounded like promise, like a pulse finally learning to answer mine.
The End
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