Sweet Romance13 min read
The Cousin I Never Forgot
ButterPicks13 views
I was seven the first time I swore I would never get close to Christine Alvarez.
"Calvin," my little king's voice in the courtyard, "this one is mine."
"Whose?" I asked, though I already knew. She lay in a stroller, half a year old, large dark eyes like two coins fixed on me.
"That girl," I said, and I reached out because what else did a seven-year-old king do when someone tiny looked at him like that?
She peed in my arms.
"Ugh!" I gagged, but I held her anyway, like a gentleman who had accepted an unexpected storm.
"She's got a mean aim," old Mrs. Klein joked from the courtyard steps.
"She's mine," I declared, wiping my hand on my sleeve. "My bride."
"Your bride?" a boy snorted. "You can't even tie your own shoelaces, Cal."
"One day," I told them all, and I tucked Christine's little mitten into my pocket like a promise.
"Okay, mister groom," she might as well have said with those sticky baby eyes.
Years folded themselves into one another. I kept watch. I kept distance. I practiced being calm and sensible because the world around my father—because the world re-ordered itself around the sudden return of my parentage—was dangerous to grow up in unless you learned to be still and fierce both.
"Calvin," my mother said the night before she left, finger pressed to my chin, "remember who you are. Don't let anyone take what's yours by accident."
I listened. I learned. I changed my name and took the weight of my family onto my shoulders. When I was twenty-five, the company I led—L Group—rose like a ship that had been waiting for the right helmsman. We went public. I stayed up nights, talked to engineers and marketers and accountants, learned the vocabulary of investment and the angles of power, and I paid attention to Christine only as one small, warm picture in a stack of childhood memories.
"You should date," Uncle said at the holidays, but even then the thought of matching someone convenient onto my life felt dull.
"I have someone in mind," I said once, and I meant Christine without saying her name.
I found her photograph without much fuss. People can be sloppy with their lives; you only have to look in the right places. I found the image of her smile and thought, for an instant, that there was more than nostalgia there. There was a possibility of softness.
I arranged to see her.
"Hi, I'm Calvin," I said at the café, the way a man introduces himself when he intends to anchor an island.
"Hello, 'cousin,'" she sang out, "my dear cousin."
"Cousin?" I blinked.
"You're like a cousin," she smiled. "You know, a nice family face. Sit. Sit, cousin."
"You're calling me cousin now?" I asked.
"Jiao-jiao cousin," she corrected, with a conspiratorial wink that made the air between us small and bright. "You play my on-the-spot husband, you stand there looking handsome, I'll bring the bling. How's that for a partnership?"
It should have been absurd. The plan should have been laughable. But the way she asked made it feel like an arrangement not of convenience but of possibility.
"Why would I do that?" I asked.
"Revenge," she said simply. "My ex is getting married. He dumped me for rich airs. I'm going to make him eat his show. I need a man who can stand there and ruin the picture."
"Who is this ex?" I asked.
She named him: Jax Krause.
"Three years?" I tried to keep my voice neutral. "You dated him for three years."
"He cheated," she said. "Then he left because someone with more money said he could bring better prospects. He wanted comfort and name."
"That's imbecilic," I said, and immediately took offense on her behalf because I had found something to protect again.
She offered me ten thousand for the weekend and a driver position to make the spectacle believable. I accepted because of reasons I couldn't explain even to myself then.
"Ten thousand?" I said as I shoved the offer into my suit pocket.
"Well, it's not about the money," she said. "But you can have the money."
"Fine." I laughed. "For a weekend of shirking responsibility, I will be your paid stuntman."
On the day of the wedding attempt, I stood beside Christine at the "C-seat" in the gilded hall. The show was bright. Jax walked in, hair lacquered just so, suit tailored to look accidental.
"Christine." Jax smirked. "What are you doing in my seat?"
She smiled, warm and slow, and hooked her arm into mine.
"Calvin," I heard myself say, voice even. "I'm her boyfriend. She wanted a man who could stand there and ruin beautiful pictures. So here I am."
"You're joking," Jax said, and his hand tightened against the back of a chair.
"Am I?" Christine's mouth was near my ear. "Kiss me, fake-lover. Break his heart again."
I did what she asked. I kissed her. The sound of it made a dozen small cameras lift in interest. The world's possible, sweetest things are always a little loud.
Then she left the next day.
She had flights to catch and places to be, and I was left with the echo of her scent on my suit and a name on my phone: "Jiaojiao." I checked our conversation more times than my meetings. I found excuses to be near her. I told myself: don't fumble a battle if what you want is a war more lovely than power.
Months passed that were too sharp and too soft at once. I would call, she would be gone. I would show sudden tenderness at the office and watch the staff shuffle.
"You're distracted," Chauncey Sauer, my operations head, told me during a finance review. "We need you sharp."
"I'm fine," I lied. "I just—had a moment."
"Is it romantic?" Chauncey went further, because some men can't help themselves.
"Maybe," I allowed. "Maybe."
She reappeared like a seasonal bloom. She was fearless and mischievous. She came to my office once wearing an oversized coat I had bought for myself the previous winter.
"Calvin," she said, standing in my doorway, "do you remember when you promised to come to my house for the lantern festival?"
"I remember a seven-year-old trying to be the biggest of men in a small courtyard," I teased.
She laughed, and that laugh could have been made into a contract. "You saved me from becoming my sister's babysitter," she said, "and then you abandoned me for the city."
"Only grown men can pretend not to want the same small things their whole life," I said. "Why didn't you write to me?"
"I didn't think you would recognize me," she said. "You changed your name."
"I changed my name because I had to," I said. "I changed my life because I had to. But I'm still the same person who swore your stroller would be a safe place."
She blinked. "A little boy can promise a lot and still be serious about it."
We slid closer. The city made room for us, and we made excuses: charity dinners, charity inspections, staged romance for the press. Every time we let ourselves loosen the rope, I felt lighter.
Then everything cracked.
"Calvin!" my assistant Cason Ayala burst into my office one morning with a phone balanced on his shoulder. "L Group stock is dropping. Social platforms are full of angry posts. They want an interview."
"What happened?" I asked, my calm already turning to a small, molten anxiety.
"They dug up your past statement about 'ignoring members of a forum,'" Cason said. "They say you disrespected them, you lost touch with what your customers feel. The forum members are demanding we make restitution, your apologies—"
"And they want the truth about why Christine Alvarez gets special treatment," Cason finished, voice low.
My chest tightened. "Go get Livia from PR, call the legal team. Schedule an interview tonight. I'm going to make them hear me."
"Interview?" Cason looked like he wanted to applaud and cry at the same time. "At midnight? The forum admins said they'd flood us with comments."
"Then let them flood," I said. "But I will answer, and I will not lie."
We prepped for the night. The debate room of L Group filled with lights and a glass table. Cameras hovered. The forum's representatives—members who had organized a sting—sat in a row. The public watched.
"Mr. Heinrich," one of the moderators said, sharp, "how do you explain the way your brand has handled customers? They claim negligence."
"I explain by telling you that companies are built of people," I said. "I explain by telling you we have missed some marks and will fix them. But tonight isn't a corporate mea culpa—tonight is about truth."
"Then explain why your relationship with Christine Alvarez has changed company resource allocation," another man said, leaning forward. "Why is our proof showing preferential treatment for an individual affiliated with your family network?"
Silence hummed. My throat closed.
"Answer me," he insisted.
Christine had not known I would be grilled. She sat at the edge of the room, hands folded. When I met her eyes, she smiled in a way that steadied me.
"It's simple," I said slowly. "Christine is not on the payroll. She hasn't asked for special favors. If something was granted to her because the company believed in a partnership that benefited clients, those decisions were made through normal channels. If there were missteps, those are mine. I take responsibility."
"That's hardly enough," a woman from the forum said, voice cold as a blade. "People want to know if it was personal."
"Then I will show you," I said. "I will not hide my past. I will not hide my feelings."
They wanted spectacle, I gave them transparency. I spoke of the courtyard and the baby who peed on my sleeve. I spoke of my mother's dying wish about happiness and the name she gave me. That night, the stock trembled and then steadied. People liked both the confession and the calm.
But fame is a river. It both gives and reveals. When I thought the flood had passed, I discovered Jax Krause had taken it upon himself to spin lies on social channels—fabrications about Christine's family and suggestions that she was manipulative and using an entire corporation for a free ride.
"He's trying to make her look cheap," I said to Cason, grip tightening on a paper cup.
"He's posting photos," Cason said. "People are sharing with commentary. It's messy."
"Then let's go clean the mess," I said.
I decided to handle it in the simplest way I know how: go to the top of the noise and make sure the truth is louder. I invited Jax, his mother Joyce Klein, and his friend the driver—Errol Day—over to my house under the pretense of an amicable meeting.
When they arrived, Joyce's eyes sparkled with self-assurance. "Mr. Heinrich," she said, with a polished smile. "Thank you for the invitation. We thought maybe you wanted to discuss the terms of the so-called relationship between Christine and us."
"Sit," I said.
"Are we having tea?" Joyce asked, glancing around as if auditioning rooms for a magazine.
"Tea. Coffee. Whatever you prefer," I said. "I prefer truth."
The room filled with my senior staff. Cason sat at the side with a small device recording. Grady Blankenship, my head of security, hovered near the doorway. Elise and Chauncey took seats as if they were jury and judge both.
"Why did you post those photos?" I asked Jax, leaning forward until my hands were flat on the table.
"They're my pictures," Jax said, his voice pleasant but brittle. "Christine used me for money and left me. Let me tell my story."
"Your story?" I echoed. "You've been claiming she wanted to marry into money. You painted her as a social climber."
"Because she was," Jax shot back. "She wanted… she wanted my family's stability."
"Your family sells stability?" I asked. "You, Jax, a man who pretends to be an heir and borrows a driver's dignity to pose as the one giving stability—"
Errol's face stiffened. He had been playing along, posing as a son worthy of inheriting a house that was never his to claim. He tried to laugh it off.
"Hey," he began. "I was helping a friend. It was just for—"
"It's always 'just for' with people like you," I said. "Tell me, Errol, who benefits when you parade other people's possessions as reality?"
Errol's jaw went slack. Joyce's smile froze. Jax had started to snarl, ready to defend his version.
"Let's walk this back," I said. "Why don't we all take a breath and let the truth line up like ducks?"
"Don't patronize us," Joyce said. "You—you're the one with a company. You should apologize for encroaching on private lives."
"Private lives?" I repeated, incredulous. "You parade yourself into my house while running a smear campaign against one of my friends, and you call privacy?"
The room shifted. The staff's phones lit as Cason sent a link to my PR—my legal counsel had given prior permission to publish parts of the conversation. A hundred cameras outside tilting toward my windows were the last to need an invitation.
Then I did something that smelled of justice and theater both.
"You're not invited to my company's events," I told Joyce. "You're not invited to mine, personally. But you and your dear son will not leave here with the image you've created intact."
"You're threatening us?" Joyce said, voice high.
"No." I shook my head. "I'm about to give you an education in consequences."
I stood, pacing slowly. "Errol, do you have a driver contract? A pay stub? Anything to suggest you are a man of substance?"
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He had nothing.
"Jax," I said, looking him square in the eyes, "how much did your family pay you to pretend? How many nights did you lie to Christine? How many times did you tell her such-and-such would happen as long as she smiled and took the ride?"
Jax's bravado crumbled like sugar in rain. "I—it's not like that," he said. "I thought—"
"You thought?" I mouthed his words back to him. The room hummed. The staff were watching, some in disbelief, some with a kind of vengeance that felt like satisfaction.
"You told her you'd marry her if she moved in," I said. "You promised houses that weren't yours. You had her believe in a life you never planned to fight for."
"You're lying," Jax snapped, losing his even tone. "You're twisting it."
"Prove it," I said.
That was when I had Cason play a short video—one we had obtained legally—of Jax and Errol in our living room weeks ago, rehearsing lines for a performance they would later use in public photos. They had been practicing how to say "we will be together" while stuffing props—keys, meaningless documents—into an envelope.
Jax's eyes bulged. Joyce's hand flew to her mouth. "That's— that's edited," Joyce stammered.
"Is it?" I asked. "You told the room that Christine was manipulative and opportunistic. You stole her honesty and then accused her of theft. But here you are, stage-manufacturing affection. You staged the narrative."
"Who gave you the right?" Joyce cried suddenly, her voice cracking.
"The right came from you," I said. "You gave it the night you decided to weaponize a woman's private life for likes and attention."
Errol began to shake. Jax looked smaller than he had when he walked in. The change went through them like a current: smugness became panic, composure became sputter, and the public impression—those half-truths—collapsed like a poorly built prop.
"Please," Jax said finally, his defenses unraveling. "Please, Calvin. Don't make this— I can explain—"
"Explain to whom?" I asked softly. "Explain to Christine? She was the one hurt. Explain on camera. Do people get to hurt and then keep their dignity?"
A staff member in the doorway, one of my junior managers—Kristen Denton—had a live feed rolling now. "The committee is watching," she said. "It's going viral."
Jax's face contorted. He tried to muscle back some bravado. "I— I just wanted to—"
"You wanted to climb," I finished for him. "You wanted to climb on the backs of others. You wanted to look important for people who don't know you."
The room's air turned heavy with witnesses. Neighbors yelled from their windows. A delivery man who had popped into the foyer to drop a package stayed until he could not bear the spectacle. A few journalists had gathered on the driveway, cameras pointed, waiting to capture the moment a con man met a straight-backed man willing to call him out.
"What do you want?" Jax demanded, the last of his bluster gone.
I walked toward him, slow and deliberate. "I want you to look at everyone you lied to and tell them the truth. Audibly. On record. I'm going to put your voice where your actions are."
He hesitated. Then he started to stammer, to offer the thinest of admissions. "I'm sorry— I was wrong— I was young—"
"Shout it out. Say it like you mean it." I didn't raise my voice, but the command carried.
He repeated the confession more loudly, then less convincingly, then with a voice belabored by shame. Joyce sobbed. Errol tried to minimize his own part but ended up going red-faced. The staff watched, some with tears; some with what looked like morbid relish. Outside, a neighbor clapped slowly. Someone taped the clip on their phone and uploaded it. Within an hour, social platforms were awash with commentary: "Exposed!" "Serving justice!" "No fakers in real life."
But the justice I required wasn't only spectacle. It was repair.
"You're banned from contacting Christine," I told Jax. "You will apologize to her in writing and wipe any defamatory posts. You will not enter any of her families' properties. Errol, you will repay whatever you took under false pretenses—starter fees, borrowed items—and I will ensure your employment file reflects what you did."
Errol's face crumpled. "I can't—" he began, then, "I will do it. I will."
"Good." I turned to Joyce. "You will stop inciting your son. You will never hand him a script again. You will never enter any place where you feel above others as if it's a stage."
She tried to compose herself into dignity, but the cameras kept rolling.
"May I add one thing?" Christine said from the doorway. Her presence had been quiet, but now it was like the tuning of an instrument that set everything right.
"You may," I said.
She walked into the room, looked at Jax, looked at Errol, looked at Joyce, and said with almost gentle disdain, "Tell my story to someone who needs to hear it. I'm done being a prop."
That did something else to them. Jax's eyes traveled to her like they'd been stricken. He tried to say something—an apology, maybe—but it came out like a paper kite. Errol sobbed openly. Joyce put her head into her hand.
The room was loud with the sound of consequences. People around us murmured and pointed. Staff took notes. A security guard who had once respected Jax for his supposed family connections now spat the word "liar" under his breath and walked away.
The punishments we do in public are never to savor cruelty; they are to restore balance. By the time the cameras left, Jax's reputation had been pared back to a brittle core. He had lost the show of ownership he'd displayed. His mother had been denied her airs. Errol had seen the job he thought he could fake evaporate. Each of them had to reckon with themselves under the eyes of onlookers.
I didn't gloat. That would be vulgar. I stood with Christine in the doorway as the crowd dispersed.
"Thank you," she said softly, the words carried in the aftershocks of the scene.
"You didn't have to ask me to do any of this," I replied.
She smiled, small. "You did it anyway."
We didn't marry then. We didn't have to. There were other scenes and other interviews. But the courtyard memory—of a boy with mashed pumpkin on his fingers from his first bad embrace, promising to guard a stranger—was suddenly as bright as the stage lights outside. The sound of the old promise made something like home in my chest.
Months later, our PR team finished the corporate interview segment they'd been chasing. The forum members had softened. L Group's stock recovered in baby steps. The market liked contrition and decisive action; the public liked a man who could apologize and hold the line.
"One more thing," I told the camera crew the night before the final broadcast. "If the forum wants to know what I feel about them, tell them to hit the like button."
A small laugh rippled among the staff. Cason recorded me with a mock frown. "Like now or never, Mr. Heinrich," he teased.
"Like now," I said, deadpan. "And maybe remember that a courtyard and a turnip of a promise can make a CEO into a man who keeps his word."
Christine leaned against my shoulder the moment the lights went off. "You smell like coffee and seriousness," she said.
"You smell like sugar and trouble," I countered.
She kissed me then, not for cameras but for us, the kiss the courtyard should have had and didn't. We held on until the air got cold.
Outside, a neighbor took a photo we never saw. In that picture, a man who had once been a king of a small yard had become a man who would not let the world hurt the person he chose.
"Do you remember the pumpkin?" I asked suddenly.
She laughed. "You hated pumpkin so much you declared it a sworn enemy."
"Maybe I still do," I said. "But if anything ever makes me feel like a small boy again, it's not the smell. It's the idea that someone tiny could make me promise things I would keep."
"Then keep promising," she said.
And for once, I believed I would.
The End
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