Sweet Romance10 min read
My Substitute Lessons: Teaching My Husband How to Love
ButterPicks14 views
I run substitute training online to kill time. I never imagined my student would be my husband.
"Hello," the message began. "I saw your post and... could you teach me how to be a good substitute?"
"You can pay hourly," I typed back, amused.
"I will. Name your price."
I smiled and agreed. Teaching would be fun. I had been a perfect substitute for two years—married to Valentino Keller, imitating his white moonlight's every habit, staying careful and small so he could pretend to be whole.
"Who are you?" I asked after he sent a contact.
"Valentino Keller," the reply blinked on my screen.
I stared until the letters looked wrong. Valentino Keller. My Valentino.
"You're joking," I typed.
"I'm serious," he sent. "I want to learn."
I laughed aloud. He was my husband—the same man who always wore the same cool face, who was private and distant. Two years of marriage, and our bed had been more like separate islands. He paid my expenses and kept me safe, and I kept my role; we both seemed satisfied. Until boredom and a little greed made me start a public post teaching the art of being a substitute. Then my husband signed up as a student.
"Why would you want to be a substitute?" I asked, playing teacher.
"Because," he typed, "as long as my wife is happy, what's wrong with it? If the mimic is perfect, she will choose him. He will come back to me."
I blinked. "You mean... you want to imitate her white moonlight?"
"Exactly," he replied. "To win her heart back."
I felt a weird tug in my chest. If he meant the white moonlight was me—how could he be trying to win me with mimicry? I tested him. "First lesson: empathy. Start by noticing small things."
He hesitated, then asked, "Like what?"
"Like a sore neck. Like cold feet." I said. "Go press her neck tonight."
He sent back a string of question marks, then: "How? She doesn't like contact."
"Then show her sympathy more than touch," I corrected. "But if you insist—try a massage. Start light. Light pressure. Remember: slow hands."
That night he tried.
"You're awake?" he asked from the doorway.
"I'm fine," I lied, sleepy and noticing his stiffness.
"Where does it hurt?" he asked, voice oddly careful.
"The back of my neck," I said.
He came over. His fingers were cautious but skilled. "Here?" he murmured.
"Yes," I breathed, letting the tension go.
He didn't smile often. When he did it was like sunlight hitting a cold glass. "Do I do it well?" he asked, and fear and hope mixed in his tone.
"You do," I admitted, and felt something flutter.
Soon my small account exploded with messages. "Teacher, thank you!" "How did you learn this?" I answered them while Valentino kept messaging from the study.
"She was soft," he texted later. "She smelled nice. I almost... could not stop."
"Almost what?" I typed, eyes wide.
"I almost kissed her," he admitted.
"Then why not?" I pressed.
"Because I am learning how to be the right man," he typed. "I am practicing types."
I sent him a list: "Try the dominant CEO, the clingy puppy, the distant cool one, the warm faithful one, the silly naive one." I laughed as I typed. He took it like gospel.
"Call her 'sis' when you are clingy," I wrote, unable to stop my mischief. "She likes being older and doted on."
"Call her 'sis'?" he echoed.
"Yes," I said. "Or 'sister.'"
He tried everything. The clingy morning texts, the silent watchfulness, the sudden boldness. He sent me photos of little notes he left. "She didn't notice? What did I do wrong?" he'd ask, a child puzzled.
"Stop trying so hard," I told him. "Be sincere."
His sincerity surprised me. He learned like a man discovering a new instrument. He even tried to dress softer, to show off parts of himself he'd never revealed. Once, late, he came to the bedroom in a half-open shirt, blurred by the light.
"You look..." I started, then flushed.
"Hot?" he supplied, teasing.
"Yes."
He let me touch him. "Do you like this?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, my voice small.
That was the first flutter. He had always been aloof, and he had never let me touch him like this. Now his true hands under my fist—gentle, surprisingly tender—felt like a real person, not a role.
"Is this what you wanted to teach me?" he asked another night, brow soft.
"To let me teach you how to be present," I said. "And to let yourself be loved."
He did not laugh.
But things were never simple. A name from the past kept surfacing—Katherine Mendez. Valentino mentioned her as his old friend, someone who once held his heart. I had always been the substitute for Katherine's memory. Once, a young Katherine had cried at a wedding; Valentino had thought she was mourning love lost. I had stood in.
"She asked me to watch over you," Katherine told me one afternoon in the living room, voice honey-soft.
"I will," I said, nodding, though inside I bristled. I had been performing this role long before I met Valentino. She left in tears, trusting me to keep him whole.
After Katherine left, Valentino's expression hardened. "You misunderstood me for a long time," he said that night, small anger cracking his cool.
"Maybe you also misunderstood me," I answered.
He pulled me close, then kissed me, and everything else fell away. "You thought you were only a substitute," he whispered into my hair. "You are not."
That was the second flutter. His admission—soft, late, and entirely sincere—was a small earthquake.
Weeks passed. He followed my lessons, but he was no puppet. He surprised me, showed up with a tiny present, an out-of-place smile, a tendency to defy his usual reserve. I found notes hidden in my purse: "You are beautiful today." The notes were not theatrical; the handwriting was rough but earnest.
"Why here?" I asked once when I found one behind my favorite cookbook.
"Because it was in the kitchen where I first realized I wanted to be near you," he said.
I felt warmth.
One evening I joked, "You should practice a big, bold gesture—like an accidental grand romantic scene."
He looked at me and suddenly his eyes were very real. "Are you serious?"
The next day he tried something risky. At a charity gala we attended together, he stood up during a speech.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, voice cool and public. "I have been taught something by my wife. I was wrong to be distant."
Gasps rippled. I wanted to sink into the chair.
"This woman next to me has covered for me, taught me, and given me patience. I have been a poor husband, and I apologize." Valentino turned to me. "Madeline," he said softly, using my name in front of a room of strangers for the first time. "Will you keep teaching me?"
My heartbeat scrambled. He had always been private, and here he was, exposing a small truth in public. People leaned forward, faces bright with gossip appetite.
"Yes," I heard myself say. "But you have to keep learning."
He laughed a low laugh. "Deal."
That night he tucked a blanket around me, his arm a steady band. I looked at his profile and saw contentment there—an unforced softness. He had given that to me willingly.
The lessons changed us. He stopped leaving the bed like a ghost; he stopped pretending contact was a crime. He brought coffee sometimes, his forehead creased with concentration over how to make it perfect. "Too bitter?" he asked.
"Perfect," I said.
We grew like two people trying new clothes. He revealed softness; I revealed impatience. There were small fights, a jealous text read wrong, a misstep where I sent him a flirty message I'd written to a friend. He found that message on my phone.
"Why?" he asked, controlled and dangerous.
"I was practicing a tone," I lied.
He looked at me long. "Practice on me," he said, then kissed me in a way that told me he forgave the mistake and made a new rule: honesty first.
One morning a scandal hit Katherine Mendez's company—news that made the papers and the business world murmur. Valentino's tone darkened when he read it.
"They're under investigation," he said quietly.
"That's awful," I said.
"Not just that," he replied. "They'll be meeting with partners today."
I was uneasy. Katherine had been a soft rival, not a villain. But the world is not simple; boardrooms bite hard when accused.
Later that day Valentino asked me to sit with him at a meeting. The room smelled of polished wood and cold coffee. Katherine sat across, her face immaculate in the way of women who expect sympathy.
"What happened?" I whispered.
"Let's hear their side," Valentino said.
The meeting was formal and solemn. Partners murmured. Katherine spoke with her usual honey, denying accusations. But evidence had a way of cutting through smooth words. Documents were presented: supply chain irregularities, falsified reports—details that could not be explained away.
"These are serious allegations," one partner said, voice sharp. "If these are true, this is a breach of trust."
Katherine's expression flickered. She looked less like the gentle girl from the wedding photos and more like someone whose life had been propped up by appearances.
"Where did this come from?" she asked, but the room had moved past her performance.
Valentino watched, still cold. When he stood, people hushed.
"I need to speak now," he said. "Not as an accuser—" he paused—"but as someone impacted."
He spoke with steady clarity. "Katherine and I were childhood friends. I asked Madeline to help me—" he looked at me—"to look after a man I thought lost. I married thinking I could give myself something I thought I'd always missed. But actions have consequences."
Katherine's face crumpled. "Valentino, you can't—"
"Please," someone in the room said. "We must decide on the partnership."
The partners looked at the ledgers, at the photographs, at the contracts. Murmurs rose. A senior partner cleared his throat. "We must sever ties if there's evidence of falsified reporting. It endangers all of us."
Katherine's brow pinched. "You can't do this," she whispered, but the decision had been made. Phones lifted; secretaries took notes. The moment felt surgical and public.
"How could you?" I asked later, meek and bewildered.
"Because integrity matters," Valentino said. "And because when business and personal lines blur, someone gets hurt—often the innocent ones. I won't let that continue."
Katherine's reaction was immediate: shock, then anger, then denial. She stood, paced, then finally tried to plead her case.
"This is a smear!" she cried. "People, please! You can't just—"
"All your partners need evidence," a woman said, cold.
"Look at the documents!" another insisted.
The final blow came when one partner stood and announced they would halt cooperation, effective immediately.
"Effective immediately," he repeated. "We cannot be associated with this risk."
Katherine's shoulders sagged. People around the room exchanged looks of mixed pity and relief. The public nature of the decision made it impossible to hide. Phones recorded the statements. Social feeds would take them and amplify.
Her face went through a slow strip of emotions: disbelief, anger, frantic denial, then the slow, dawning terror of someone watching everything collapse.
"You're ruining me!" she shouted, voice raw.
"Then prove you're not corrupt," another voice cut in. "If you are innocent, fight in court with clear proof."
Cameras clicked. People whispered. A junior partner leaned over, eyes narrowed. "We will have to inform clients," she said, the words final. "We cannot risk reputational damage."
Katherine's supporters were few and began to step back. Someone discreetly wiped at their eyes, as if to excuse a quick exit. A journalist at the doorway raised a hand, pen poised. "Miss Mendez, any comment?" she asked.
Katherine looked at me then. For a second there was a personal plea in her expression. "Please," she whispered, "Madeline—tell them. Tell them it's not as it seems."
I thought of the early days, of the wedding where she cried and asked me to take Valentino's care, of the performances we both gave. But I also thought of the documents on the table.
"This is a business matter," I said, voice level. "It needs a business resolution."
Her eyes flashed with fury. "So you'll stand with him?"
"I'm standing with the truth," I said.
Her composure cracked. She lunged toward a nearby partner, her voice trembling. "You're betraying me!" she yelled. "After everything—"
A woman in the backroom stood up and turned away. People began to murmur louder. Phones shifted from text to video. "Someone record this," muttered a young associate, eager for the scoop.
Katherine's change was painful to witness: from smugness to the shock of being cut off, to frenzied pleading, to the cold sheepishness of someone watching the last of their illusions crumble under fluorescent lights.
"You're making a mistake," she said directly to Valentino, voice raw. "You can't just push me away like this after—after everything we had."
Valentino's expression was flat. "We had different things," he said. "We are not the same people."
A man near the door let out a low whistle and murmured, "She always looked so perfect in photos. Funny how things move."
Another leaned over to his colleague. "This will be in the morning roundups," he whispered. "Katherine Mendez's firm faces severed partnership."
The meeting disbanded with stiff exchanges and paper shuffle. Outside, as people left, a cluster of strangers gathered and started murmuring, some taking photos, some whispering. Katherine's pleas dissipated into the hum.
In the end, she stood alone for a moment, framed by the glass wall, watching her life split into headlines. The scale of the scene—public, sharp, irreversible—hit her like cold water. Her shoulders curled inward. For the first time she looked small.
That public split was my punishment for a rival, but it also felt like a purge. Valentino had used the instruments of business truth rather than private vengeance. The partners, specialists and executives, had judged on documents. The scene was cruel and efficient. People pointed, whispered, filmed. Katherine's plea to me was unheard by most, replaced by camera clicks and eventual social commentary.
That was the punishment: public, documented, and final. She changed through the process—smugness to shock to denial to frantic pleas to resignation. On every face around her, curiosity turned to judgement.
Afterwards, when the storm settled, Valentino turned to me.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"For what?" I asked.
"For letting this get to this point," he said. "I didn't want to see someone suffer. But I also couldn't ignore wrongdoing."
He took my hand in the stillness. The gesture was simple, but enormous.
That week the two of us grew closer in a new way. He continued to practice small touches. He fed me breakfast. He learned the smallest of my preferences—how I liked my tea, where I kept my notebooks. He smiled when he had been so rarely smiling before.
"Do you remember the can tab?" he asked once, an old private memory.
"I do," I said.
"Then you remember promising to marry me," he said, the old mischief returning.
"I do," I smiled.
We had laughter again, and quiet evenings where he read aloud and I fell asleep to his voice. He took me to the bookstore and bought me a silly romance novel because he thought I might like it. He came to my training sessions—not as a student now, but as my partner, offering small compliments to the online group.
"She's a brilliant teacher," he said one evening into my headset. "I learned a lot."
I felt a third flutter when he laughed at one of my silly jokes for no reason. It was not mimicry; it was real.
In the quiet after the storm I realized that being a substitute had taught me more than pretending. It had taught me to take care of myself. It had taught him—slowly, awkwardly—to be present. We were not perfect; we would have missteps and old habits. But we were learning, together.
One night, under the soft light in our kitchen, Valentino set down two cups of tea. He pulled my hand across the table and said, "You've been my teacher. I want to be your husband."
I smiled, warmth pooling inside me. "I'll keep teaching," I said. "But you have to keep learning."
He nodded, then leaned forward to kiss my forehead.
"Deal."
The End
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