Sweet Romance14 min read
The Daisies on the Kitchen Island
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I learned the sound of his shower as a deadline.
"That's my cue," I said into the empty doorway, voice soft like a small bell.
Cole Lewis was in the bathroom. The running water meant what it always meant: leave. I folded the sheets and shoved them into the trash bin, fingers stiff, heart even stiffer.
"I've packed. There's nothing left of me here," I told the door like it was an audience.
A man cleared his throat behind the tile. It was the same dry assent it had been for three years. Cold. Distant. Practiced.
"Mr. Lewis," I said anyway, because I had learned to keep my voice sweet. "The sheets are changed. My things are packed. There are no traces left of me in this room."
"You left a tip," he said, the bathroom door sliding open. The towel was still wrapped low around his waist. His hair was damp, little rivulets on his neck catching the morning light.
I placed five hundred dollars on the little cabinet by the door. I had meant one hundred, like always, but this morning my fingers had added four more bills as if the numbers could buy a softer look from him.
"Because last night was… exceptional," I forced out, voice lighter than I felt.
He looked at the bills. He smiled, but it was the wrong kind of smile—sharp, like a blade's edge.
"Keep it," he said. "Don't expect anything from me."
I closed my mouth because he hated to hear things he didn't want to hear. I carried the suitcase down the stairs. The stairwell light flickered and I leaned against a cold wall, palms pressed to the drywall, telling myself that at the end of the month I'd hand in my resignation and the arrangement would stop. It would stop. I repeated it like a promise.
Three years ago, Mr. Lewis's father had given me a job when I least deserved one. My father had died. Debt had stacked itself into a cliff I couldn't climb. Henry Cohen—Mr. Lewis's old friend—had insisted, "Juliet deserves a chance." So I came in as an office secretary, and the job paid more than any of the measly positions I could get. Enough to pay off debts, then to leave.
He called me clumsy. He called me a fool. He called me trash. But nobody knew that I liked him. I was not a commodity. I was not. I told myself so aloud when the stairs finished and the lobby swallowed my shadow.
A little later, he summoned me.
"Come in," his voice was a low instrument through the glass wall.
I walked into his office and the sun was bright enough to make his silhouette cut clean and tall against the skyline.
"Don't look up," he said the way you tell a child not to touch a hot stove.
I kept my head down. The shadow of his body and my body overlapped on the floor. For one small second it was a stolen hug, the one I'd never had.
"What did I say?" he tapped the desk with his finger like a metronome. "Don't make a scene, Juliet."
"I didn't mean to… I just—" I looked up and smiled. His face changed. The smile in his eyes burned like coal.
"You're out of place here," he said. "Go, taste the cafeteria food. Come back with a report on the vendors. And don't complain."
"Mr. Lewis…" I tried, but he cut me off.
"There is no next time," he said. "And don't expect favors because you look for them."
He sent me to the cafeteria and I wandered, tasting things that made me itch—onion, garlic, spices. My chest tightened with the reaction, but my report was accurate, thorough. When I brought it to him he briefly—briefly—found something like approval.
"Good," he said. "But you can leave at noon."
"Okay," I said, the word too small.
Outside the glass, the city moved. Inside, my world narrowed to a desk, a file, a pair of shoes that always fit too tight.
That evening, I was alone on the elevator when I heard gossip that made me freeze.
"Did you see Juliet? Her face is a mess," one woman whispered near the coffee machine.
"It's from allergies," said Chelsea Mendez, my closest friend at the office, gently. "She's fine. She'll be okay."
Chelsea had always been kind. She helped me with lunches, with files, with the small rehearsed smiles I kept on at work. I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her this: that he was not my boss in the way people understand. That he was the man who took advantage of the late nights, who used me to vent and then waved me away like a tissue.
Instead, I told her about the daisies.
"I put a small bouquet in the conference room," I said, the words tumbling out. "I thought it would be nice for the visiting executives. It was a thought."
"That was sweet." Chelsea squinted, then frowned. "Why would that make anyone angry?"
"Because the visitor's wife loved those flowers," I said, the memory tasting bitter. "He—he erupted."
My stomach plunged. I had wanted daisies to be a bridge. Instead, they became the match.
Later, Mr. Lewis returned to his office, and the meeting that should have secured a major partnership disintegrated on the daisies. A man named Cedric Bentley stormed out, red-faced and furious.
"Who put those flowers in here?" he barked in the hallway. The security cameras recorded everything.
"It wasn't an intentional slight," I tried to say when I was summoned. "I meant it as respect."
"Respect?" Cedric laughed. "You mean you wanted to remind me of what I lost? Who are you to meddle in this negotiation?"
Mr. Lewis didn't defend me. He threw the daisies angrily into the corner and the pot shattered. He told me to go, to collect the broken ceramic. I cut my finger on the shard and blood welled up. He didn't pick up the first-aid kit. He only said, "You did this. Learn to stay in your place."
I said, the words practiced for years now, "I'll take responsibility."
He sneered. "Good. Clean up. And don't be stupid."
I left the room bruised in more ways than one.
That night at home, I finished a resignation letter. I would hand it in when my final paycheck cleared. I would go quietly. I would not be a spectacle.
Then the world shifted.
An image appeared on the company network. A photo of me, stumbling out of Cole's house at three in the morning. The app that ran internal life at the firm lit up with gossip. People wrote venomous, imagined the worst: "She seduced him," "She wants a title," "She tricked him."
I felt smaller than ever.
Then, unexpectedly, Cole posted.
"Hello everyone," his message read. "I'm Cole Lewis, and I'm pursuing Juliet Garcia."
My breath stopped. The office erupted.
"What are you doing?" Chelsea whispered, eyes wide. "Why would he say that?"
"I—" I couldn't speak, because I didn't understand. He had never been kind like this in public. He'd never ever said anything that could be taken as affection.
The message spread like a lamp turning on in a dark room. People took different sides. Some mocked. Some cheered. Some left nasty comments.
"Is this real?" I asked silently. I had rehearsed leaving. I had never rehearsed this.
He called me into his office. "Come in," he said, voice steady.
"I didn't—" I tried to protest, but he cut me off.
"Don't go onto the floor until I've sorted this," he said. "And change back into the black. Don't let them use you."
It was the strangest command—protective and controlling. I complied. I was still in shock, still dizzy. He said he'd handle Cedric. He said it as if there was no question.
"You're making a damn scene," he muttered under his breath. "You will be careful."
I wasn't sure if he was angry at the world or at me.
Two days later, the world turned in ways I couldn't have predicted. Cedric Bentley's company had been ousted by sudden shareholder votes, legal complaints, and a blizzard of documents exposing past theft of intellectual property and bad faith with partners and investors.
"How did this happen?" I whispered.
Cole smiled thinly. "You watched the man scorn daisies because they reminded him of his ex-wife's money and his crimes. I watched him. He made mistakes when he thought only of winning. People who build on stolen things crumble when the real owners speak up."
He told me he'd pulled threads. He'd used legal channels, a few former colleagues, and an investigator to prove the man's misdeeds. It was ruthless but precise.
"You did all this because of me?" I asked, stunned, my voice small like a child's.
He watched me for a long time.
"You messed up the negotiation," he said, and the words were simple, factual. "It made me look at him and dig."
That night, he sat on the couch and let me massage his feet. He never thanked me for the role I played. He only said, "It's done. He won't harm you or us again."
Then there was the bar.
I was angry, numb, and hurt. Chelsea insisted I come out to "forget" and somehow relax. The alcohol loosened my tongue and my dignity. A man in the bar looked at me the wrong way. Chelsea barked at him, and the man retorted. Things escalated. A man called Liu—an acquaintance of the bar owner—tried to move too close. The crowd thickened. Suddenly a tall, familiar face pushed through the crowd.
"Bennett?" I mumbled. Bennett Mueller stood between me and the crowd like a shield.
"Get away from her," he said, hand firm on the man's chest.
He held me like a friend should. He took me to a hotel room because I was drunk and vulnerable. He left a card, gentle, and went away. He did no more than shelter me. But when I saw on my phone that a message with a hotel address and a compliment about my looks had been sent from Bennett to Cole—well, Cole's response was violent in the way only a man who pretends never to care can be.
At the bar, when Bennett left, I felt safer than I'd felt in months.
Cole exploded at the bar. He punched a man—Liu—who had been near me. He asked where Bennett had taken me. He wanted answers. He paced like a wild animal. He called a dozen places and then set the car in motion like a missile, heading for the hotel Bennett had used.
We were in different storms: Bennett frustrated that Cole had come like a thunderclap, Cole furious at the idea that any man could treat me as less than I am. I noticed it then, the fierce thing under his calm: protection.
A week later a public scene played out where Cedric Bentley's downfall was finalized.
The investors had arranged a "clarification meeting" at a downtown forum—what they called "a corrective shareholders meeting." The room filled with people in suits, with phones held up like lances. The press was there, the kind that delighted in humiliation.
"When I first walked into your conference room," Cedric said at the podium, voice raw, "I expected respect. Instead I found a daisy."
"Why is this important at all?" I asked from the audience, my hands folded on my lap.
"You put the wrong flowers in the room—no, you put the wrong smell around me—and you made me remember my ex-wife," Cedric said defensively. "I was insulted."
Cole stood from his seat in the front row. He walked to the microphone, slow, a predator disguised as a gentleman.
"Mr. Bentley," Cole said, voice soft. "The flowers were not intended for you. They were meant to honor the late Mrs. Bentley."
"She died of illness," Cedric snapped. "How dare you—"
"How dare you," Cole said, and he pressed a folder onto the dais. "Here are documents. Screenshots of your private messages. Records of transfers. Statements from your old partners. Evidence that your company grew on money that was never yours."
The air grew tight. Phones recorded. Murmurs rippled like a lake wind.
For the next twenty minutes, Cole laid out a map of Cedric's manipulations. Boardroom tumult turned to stunned silence, then to incredulous chatter. The investors leaned forward. Someone in the back stood with the intention to shout, then stopped, eyes wide.
"You're lying," Cedric said, color draining. "All lies!"
"You told a client of ours that you would secure IP. You forwarded their ideas to your own private research, and you repaid them with the wife's funds when their names needed to be cleaned up," Cole read off, voice steady.
Cedric's face moved through a sequence I will remember for a long time. First, the lofty smile of a man who believes he's untouchable. Then, a flicker of confusion: how can someone know this? Next, denial. "You can't prove—"
"These are signed messages," Cole said. He set printed emails on the table, the kind of paper that cannot be smoothed into excuse. "And when I asked the lawyer to look into it, he found more. Tax irregularities. False invoicing. A partner who claims he never received promised royalties."
The room shifted. Phones lit up. A journalist leaning forward asked the first public question that landed like a stone.
"Mr. Bentley," she asked, "can you comment on the transfer of funds dated five years ago from Mrs. Bentley's account?"
"Take it down," Cedric pleaded. He started to sweat. "Those were gifts! She—"
"These are receipts," Cole said, and he slid copies across the table. "Your words in your own messages talk about 'leveraging' and 'using family support' to accelerate growth. When the company failed to cash out, you left people with nothing—employees paid last, creditors ignored."
The shareholders murmured. A director stood, shook his head, and announced, "We have to vote on removal. This cannot go on."
The security staff closed in politely as whispers became accusations. I watched Cedric's veneer split. He laughed, sharp and brittle, then his laugh became a high whine. He tried to command the room, to call security, to call lawyers. He demanded a public vindication. But the evidence was a net too tight.
"Do you deny using your late wife's account to settle debts?" a man asked, voice flat.
"No," Cedric said. "I—I—"
The cry went up at exactly that moment. Phones flashed. Someone in the gallery shouted, "Shame!" Another voice called out, "You robbed her memory!" A woman raised her hand and filmed, face furious.
Cedric's reactions were a study in collapse. He went from arrogance to panic to denial and then to pleading, the facial choreography playing across his cheeks for everyone to see. "I didn't—please, you all—I can fix this. I can explain—"
A former partner who had been quietly watching from the second row walked up to the microphone. He did not shout. He simply spoke of how he had lent Cedric an idea, been ignored and betrayed, and later seen that idea presented at a Cedric-created product launch.
Around us, the crowd's mood changed. The director announced a suspension of Cedric's rights, the board convened a vote, and the press stopped pretending to be neutral.
Someone recorded Cedric being escorted out. People swirled around the gallery—investors, journalists, employees of both companies. Cameras broadcast his face, red and disintegrating, as he stumbled past the glass doors. Hands were raised. Fingers pointed. Not many were kind.
When he reached the public foyer, which was filled with financial analysts and interns expecting a boring meeting, he was met with a chorus he had never heard.
"Shame!" cried those who had seen people lose their livelihoods because of his actions.
"Thief!" yelled a creditor who had been in the room—he had a ledger, he pointed to a line as proof.
"How could you?" a woman demanded, her voice shaking. "My mother gave you a loan to help her favorite cause. You used it on your toys."
The cameras got their shots. Phones recorded him pleading, "Please, I can pay back—"
"Where's the bank account numbers?" a young reporter pressed. "Where are the restitutions?"
He fumbled paperwork that had once been used to conceal. Now, they were the strings that strung him up.
Cole watched all of it without raising his voice. There was something like victory on his face but cold and precise. He turned when he saw me in the crowd. There was a look, a brief, private acknowledgment. No tenderness, only the iron thought that what had been done could not un-happen.
The crowd's reaction was savage. Some clapped, but mostly there were glares and pointed fingers. People who had been skeptical when Cole posted his message to the company suddenly had a narrative they could feed on: the man who used his power against a predator.
Cedric's fall changed more than one company. Share prices dipped. A corporate lawyer was replaced. A charity that had been given to his name issued a statement of grief and clarification. The public watched clips and asked how a man could use someone else's wife's money like that.
I stood then, watching him escorted out, and felt strange.
Relief. Fear. Embarrassment. A tiny flicker of something that felt dangerously like vindication.
After the meeting, when the crowd thinned and the press hounded for a quote, Cole and I stood in the lobby between the marble pillars. He had defended me in a way that was both political and personal. He hadn't offered apologies for his own cruelty. He'd not held me tenderly in the way I wished. But he had protected me.
"Why did you do it?" I asked. My voice trembled because the day had strained me thin.
His jaw tightened. "Because someone had to," he said. "You didn't deserve to be traded like goods."
"Then why have you been—" I began, then stopped. There was a long list: the cold mornings, the insults, the weeks when he drove me to tears. "Why have you been like that for three years, if you were going to...?"
He looked at me like I was a complicated equation he didn't want to solve.
"Because I wanted you to learn to survive without me," he said. "Because I didn't want you to feel entitled to protection. Because I'm not good at being careful."
"You could have told me," I said. "You could have... cared."
He shifted, embarrassed with himself, I thought.
"I wasn't sure care would do anything but hurt you more," he said. "So I arranged the world."
Chelsea burst out laughing into my ear, relief spilling over like a faucet. "You look soft," she told me, and then, softer, "He chose to go public. He could have quietly terminated you. He didn't."
"What do you want from me?" Cole asked abruptly.
"I want to go home," I said. "I want to quit here next month, collect the last of the debts, and then leave without being a spectacle."
"Then stay," he said. "Stay a little longer. Let me make a world where you don't have to hide. Let me try."
I could have said yes. I could have repeated the same old pattern, the same threadbare script. But this time, the choices were different: a man who claimed—not offered—help by moving a company to protect me; a man who could be cruel and yet had just chosen to destroy a man who threatened me.
"Stay," I answered finally. "But not because you demand it. Because I'm choosing to."
He looked like he almost didn't believe me.
That night, we went to his old family house. Henry Cohen oversaw us with a look that was warm but skeptical. He scolded Cole about introducing drama into family matters. "You made us a spectacle," he said. "You did it for what reason?"
Cole hedged. He was a careful man in public, a volcano in private.
When we left, I sat on the kitchen island and watched him fill a cup of coffee. For a second the house smelled plain and human; the island's edge was worn.
He reached out and took my hand. "I am clumsy," he said, "but I'm trying."
I looked at his hand, the scars, the way the cigarette was bent between his fingers. He wanted me to understand more than his words said.
"Then try," I whispered.
He did, in his own way. He stopped saying the harshest things in public. He trained his anger to be toward crooked men who hurt others, not at me. He let small kindnesses slip, like making me eat bowl after bowl of instant noodles when I froze in the cold. He set his phone's screensaver to our only candid photograph and left it there for days.
We moved through a world where power can build and can crumble. He had used his power to crush Cedric; he had used it to make life easier. He was not perfect. He never promised to be.
Weeks after the public fallout, when the newsroom clips had calmed, people still muttered in the corridors. Some whispered that Cole was "chasing" me. Some said I had trapped him. A manager passed hissed comments. But Chelsea stood by me and Bennett sent me messages asking if I needed anything, always careful and solid.
And at the center of it was the kitchen island, small daisies sometimes—real ones, or dried ones—left in a jar that I had once placed myself, and that he had thrown away in anger. Later, he would replace the jar with a simple vase and set it there without speaking. The daisies became a small testament: things break and can be replaced, but only if someone tries.
"Do you like daisies?" I asked him one night when we sat across the island, lights low.
"They're stubborn," he said. "They keep turning to the sun."
"That's how I felt," I said. "So I put them in the meeting room, and I didn't mean to hurt anyone."
He touched the rim of the jar. "You did a good thing," he said. "Not everyone has the courage to try."
I smiled. "Then—" I started. My throat tightened. "—let's keep trying, then. Both of us."
He looked at me, then at the daisies, and then at the small scar on my finger where I'd cut myself clearing the pot. There was a moment—only a moment—when I saw something like softness in his eyes.
"I will," he said.
The days after Cedric fell were quieter. People at the company eyed me with the curiosity of animals who had watched a fight and wanted a piece. Some were kinder. Some more distanced. Chelsea still teased me mercilessly. Bennett's occasional texts were tiny lifelines, polite, patient.
There were new storms too. I still had to go on Fridays like a wind-up doll. But Cole's hands were gentler. Once he even helped me reattach a stuck drawer. Another time, he smoothed the creases from my jacket with his palm without saying it aloud.
And when one of the men who used to snicker at my expense met me on the stairs, eyes flinty, I didn't feel alone. I felt watched over like a wild thing that finally had a pack.
At the month’s end, I cleared my desk and put the last envelope into Cole's outbox. He looked at me like I was a sudden summer.
"You sure?" he said.
"Yes," I said. "It's time."
He handed me back my folded resignation. "Good," he said. "But before you go, have you ever gone to the old pier?"
"No."
"Come tomorrow. Bring those daisies."
We drove out at dawn. The pier was misted and empty. I dropped the daisies into the water and the little white heads bobbed like tiny moths. He stood close, and I reached up and rested my hands on his chest.
"I don't know what this is," I said.
"Neither do I." His voice was honest as a confession. "But I want to keep trying."
I nodded, and we stayed there, two people who had been bruised by each other and by the world, deciding whether to keep walking together.
The End
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