Sweet Romance14 min read
Unwrapping His Bow Tie — A Messy, Sweet, Dangerous Surprise
ButterPicks13 views
"I should have known better than to let my mother plan anything for my birthday."
"Why?" my mother asked over the phone. Her voice was bright, like she'd won something at bingo. "Because it's your birthday."
"That's not a reason." I laughed into the pillow. "Tell me the truth, is the present clothes, perfume, or another self-help book?"
"You'll see. It's at home. Unwrap it yourself."
I swore softly and shut my eyes. "Fine."
When I opened the door to my bedroom, the present looked like a human-shaped mistake wrapped in a towel.
"Mom," I said, because who else do you tell when a stranger in your towel is an actual present? "This is not a normal birthday present."
"He seemed like a reasonable size," my mother said without shame on her face when I called downstairs. "He fell asleep. He's in the guest room."
"But—"
"He looks like he's in his twenties, maybe younger, but what do you expect? If you needed a man for a present, he is a man."
I stared at the towel, at the long legs that made the pink towel look like it belonged to a doll, at the curling dark hair. The towel barely covered him. I felt my mouth dry.
"You bought… a person?" I asked.
"Your mother gives you possibilities," she said. "Unwrap him."
"Mom—"
"Gracelynn, you are twenty-six. Stop acting like twenty-one."
I took a breath and opened my mouth, but the towel moved. A hand caught mine with surprising strength.
"What are you doing?" he murmured, voice a low rasp. He opened one eye and squinted up at me. "You awake?"
He sounded much younger than I expected. His voice had that dry, lazy tone; it made my stomach flip.
"Do you want me to turn the light off?" I asked because I could not think of anything less appropriate in that moment than leaving the overhead light blazing.
He stared at me for half a minute, then nodded. "Turn the light off."
I clicked the switch. The room softened into night. I felt ridiculous and bold all at once and leaned down. I kissed his cheek—on a ridiculous impulse. His breath hitched.
"How old are you?" he asked immediately, like he was trying to place a person by numbers.
"Twenty-six," I said, a little defiantly. "How old are you supposed to be?"
He exhaled like it was a joke. "A bit young."
I blinked. "You mean… young as in you are underage?"
He smiled, that small, crooked smile that somehow didn't fit his sleepy, half-drunk voice. "I mean I'm twenty."
My face must have shown every emotion because he laughed softly. "Close enough."
"Close enough?" I repeated, mortified and oddly proud. "I'm your present and you call me 'close enough'?"
"You're loud," he said, then yawned. "Let me sleep."
He let me. He curled like a student who had skipped breakfast and a chemo of life, as if he could vanish in a corner and be safe. I should have felt shamed for letting a stranger like that into my home—my mother slipped gifts in with too much ambition—but when he slept, I found pieces of him everywhere: the smell of cigarette smoke lightly clinging to his hair, a faint worry in the crease of his brow, the weird bruise on his calf.
When my father knocked on the bedroom door at midnight to ask if I'd seen his boss's boy, my brain shorted. "No," I lied. My throat wanted to add, he's here, but that would require telling a story I wasn't ready for. "I'm going to bed."
I tiptoed back, and he was tucked under my thin duvet like a child. "Sleep?" he asked, blinking up at me like a kitten.
"Fine." I settled beside him, stiff as a board. Sleep came after an hour of stupid thoughts. I thought of the meeting the next day, the classmates at the reunion, the hollow feeling of being escorted into a room where couples clustered like magnets. I had wanted a bag for my birthday; my mother had sent me a complication.
In the morning I heard the shower running and imagined him back to life. When he walked out in my towel, I panicked, slammed my door, and locked it.
"Don't go out," I told him through the door. "Lock it. Don't answer."
"Okay." His voice floated through the wood. "Sure."
I thought about buying him clothes. I told myself I could be practical: a T-shirt, shorts, underwear. I sprinted down to the corner shop in the state of a woman on a mission and came back with sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a blush on my cheeks.
He behaved as if living in a stranger's house was normal. He took the clothes I handed him slowly, like each stitch might be sharp.
"You bought—" he said, reading the label.
"For you. Sort of." I explained hastily. "You were my mother's mistake. Wear them."
He smiled like he'd been offered luck. "Do I owe you a favor?"
"Probably," I said lightly. "You can start by not leaving footprints in my life."
He cocked his head. "You call me 'little brother' and then demand favors. That's unfair."
He had always called me 'Auntie' that day in the texts later—'Auntie'—and 'sister' at dinner. The labels changed and slid like cheap rings.
Our days started in an odd timetable. He crashed on the couch after evenings out with too many men and too much drink. He napped, he joked, and he made offhand comments about being forced into an engagement by his family—by a man I later called Dalton Hernandez, a name my father mentioned with servility—and about a fiancée named Dalary Ball who looked like a porcelain doll in social photos.
One night my father told me to tutor Finn Briggs in math. "It would help our standing," Gene Elliott explained. "Do this and I may finally get that promotion."
I stared at my father. "You want me to tutor your boss's son? Are you serious?"
"Be a good neighbor," he said. "You have time."
The arrangement was ludicrous and cozy. Finn came with the swagger of someone who didn't think schedules applied to him. He sat on my bed and picked comics from my shelf instead of opening calculus texts. He teased me with words that heated my cheeks. He asked why I never smiled for anyone, and when I tried to be fierce in response he pressed his hand to my forearm and softened.
"You're a little dangerous to me," he said once quietly.
"What do you mean?" I asked, because I wanted to believe I had boundaries I would keep.
"You make me feel," he said. "Which is unfair. I'm supposed to be the irresponsible one and you the adult."
I told myself he was twenty, temporary, trouble with a pretty face. And yet, his small kindness—turning my toast when I burned it, tucking my blanket around my shoulders like an old habit—melted the sensible parts of me. He stole into the day like a light thief.
When I asked him about the fight with Dalton, he was careful. "My dad is a storm when you step in the wrong place," he said. "He will arrange things. He thinks he knows what is best."
"You mean the man who can fire people?" I said. "That man. And his daughter Dalary?"
"She's practical," Finn told me, as if that explained everything. "She cries when angry and smiles at the right time. They are good for each other on paper."
The truth was erupting around me. Rumors in the office, whispers in my father's workplace, the way my mother watched me with new hunger in her eyes—as if this was finally the chance she had been waiting for to win status through me.
After a ridiculous sequence of events—my drunken self at a reunion, his inconvenient presence, my mother's scheming—the world made a mess. Finn and I slipped. It felt wrong and right, reckless and safe. He kissed me in the hallway after a drunken evening at a KTV, and I let him. He said things in the dark—little promises and big dangerous confessions.
"Stay here tonight," he begged softly.
"No," I said. "You will ruin me."
He laughed. "Ruin me back, then."
It was pure adolescent dare and grownup lust tangled together. It was messy and it was mine. We were a scandal waiting for the right audience.
Weeks bled into a strange ritual. Finn slept at my place when Dalton yelled. He left when phone alarms screamed. He came back when my mother set the table for guests we weren't prepared to offer. We kept it secret between the beats of my life.
There was a man who knew what to do to help: Xavier Bray. He was a doctor, a steady kind of man who had an instinct for the exact moment a bandage needed changing or a bruise required soft words. He became my friend without trying too hard. He patched my foot when I bled from too-high heels, and he did not pry when I said Finn's name. "Friends are good," he said, and the way he said it made me think of Sundays and clean laundry.
But skeletons come when you least want them.
A corporate banquet bloomed like a poisonous flower in the city—Dalton Hernandez had invited a group to the firm's anniversary gala. Gene Elliott and my father were there with forced smiles. Dalary Ball glittered like a socialite in a sheath dress. Finn had been invited by his father as a sign of submission—except he did not show up like a smiling puppet. He came like a storm: unexpected, unsanctioned, and hungry to set things right.
Inside the ballroom, the lights were too bright. The mayor and board members applauded. I was on the edge, the guest of my father, with my stomach full of cheap anxiety. Dalary's laugh cut across the hall like a knife.
"Gracelynn," Dalary sang softly when she found me. "You are charming. My future sister-in-law, right?"
"Excuse me?" I said, because the universe had a terrible sense of humor.
"Finn's age makes you a motherly type," she teased in that smooth dialect she used for the camera. "But I hear different things."
I smiled like a practiced mannequin. "People will say anything."
Dalton sat on the dais like a man who had bought the air. He smiled at my father with the same smile he'd give a chess player at the end of a match—victorious but calculating.
Finn walked in while the CEO praised compliance. He did not look for Dalton. He scanned the crowd until he found me, and when he did, the room seemed to bend. He walked straight to the table, sat, and leaned close.
"You look good," he whispered to me.
"You're reckless," I whispered back.
He ignored it. He had that look—the one where his jaw tightened and his eyes promised trouble.
"Finn," Dalton began, voice sweet as carbonated poison. "Good to have you here."
"Dalton," Finn said. "We need to talk."
Dalton laughed, a sound like coins. "We need to talk? Here? You embarrass me."
Finn did not raise his voice. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone. "You beat me," he said. "You fought me in the study, and you called me a liar and a disgrace."
The room went small. Conversations died. The CEO's applauding hands fell. My father's face was the color of paper money.
"Everyone," Finn said calmly, like he had prepared this line. "You should know how our good Mr. Dalton treats his family."
He tapped his phone and the screen illuminated the giant stage screens with messages: photos of bruises, timestamps, voicemail clips of Dalton's rage.
Dalton's eyes narrowed. "You will not shame me in front of my associates."
"You already shamed me by sending me to marry someone I don't love."
At that moment Dalary, who had been clapping politely, stood. "How dare you accuse my family with—"
Finn held up another message. It was a recording of a woman—Dalary—demanding that Finn keep quiet about a lost night, a secret they both shared. The clip played: Dalary's voice, colder than the ballroom air, asking for favors and threatening exposure. The screen showed messages where Dalton tried to control Finn's life through threats and money. The proof was ugly and precise.
The crowd leaned in. The whispers turned to audible gasps. Someone took out their phone and started recording. The CEO's brow creased.
Dalton's expression collapsed as the room turned into a theater of judgment.
"You had no right," Finn said simply. "You had no right to make my life a pawn. And Dalary—"
Dalary's face went white. "This is a lie." She sounded hollow.
"Call the recording a lie," Finn challenged. "Tell them you asked me to keep your reputation safe. Tell them you told me to take blame for a night that was yours."
Her smile cracked into a frozen mask. Around us, people murmured. The board members shifted in seats. The reporters snapped photos. My father's hand fisted at his napkin.
Dalton attempted to play the patriarch. He tapped the table. "This is family business. Remove that—"
"Family business?" Finn's voice stepped forward like a knife. "Your idea of family is to beat and humiliate anyone who does not follow your script. You sold engagement like a contract. You thought you could hire someone's life."
A woman at the next table whispered, "I thought he was ruthless, but—"
"You're being melodramatic," Dalary sputtered, but no one helped. The CEO's face had changed; he favored distance, because involvement could mean reputational risk. A junior associate stood up, his phone recording. "Is this true?" he asked.
Dalton tried a show of pride. "My son is unstable—"
Finn's hand trembled, not from fear but from something fierce. He strode to the center of the room.
"Watch closely," he said. "Watch how a man who brags about control falls apart when his own lies are visible."
He replayed messages where Dalton threatened employees, a voicemail where Dalton confessed he beat Finn in a rage for choosing an education over a marriage contract. The voice was unmistakable.
People shifted in seats like leaves in a wind. The CEO walked away from the dais. "Security, please—"
But the board did not call security for Finn. Cameras rolled. The room was now an audience. Dalton's stoic mask cracked into a frown that was obviously fragile.
"You're finished," someone hissed from the crowd.
Dalton's mouth moved. "This is—"
"You will apologize on record," Finn said. "You will admit the beating, the threats, and the manipulation. You will step down from the board if necessary."
Dalton laughed for an instant, the kind of laugh that had been a weapon. "You threaten me, boy?"
"I don't threaten," Finn said. "I tell the truth."
The public punishment that followed was not a legal sentencing. It was a dismantling of image. Dalton's old friends abandoned him in a subtle panic for self-preservation. One by one, associates who had flattered him turned their faces away. A reporter asked pointed questions; the CEO announced an internal review. The board convened—immediately—after the event.
Dalary's punishment was more personal and cruel. Where Dalton lost status, she lost the truth of her carefully curated innocence. Her reputation cracked when private messages were shown in polite, bright light. Guests recorded her tears and her voice was uploaded within minutes. She was not just the wronged fiancée anymore; she became a woman who had negotiated silence and used a man. People scrolled and whispered. An editor posted an article about familial abuse and social contracts; the comment sections were ruthless.
The crowd watched Dalton's face go gray, then red, then pale. He attempted to recover, playing at dignity and shaming Finn as an ungrateful son. But the world had more evidence than his words. He had been a man who used force and money. The room erupted into opinion: condemnation, pity, disdain. People took photos and shared them. I watched my father's shoulders relax a hair with the knowledge that his job might breathe freer without Dalton's oppressive shadow. I also felt the bitter twist of realizing Finn had torn apart a powerful man in front of dozens to expose a truth. That he had done it for himself, for Dalary to be unmasked, and for me in a way I would not admit.
Dalton—who had used power as a shield—was now exposed: colleagues told stories of his bullying; relatives tried to spin excuses. He left the gala in a car that did not look like it belonged to an emperor. The board announced an investigation publicly within a day, and sponsors asked for a review. Dalton's name became a news item, and newspapers—hungry for drama—feasted.
Dalary's fall was of a different flavor. She had been poised, practiced, and then she learned that the same social rules that had kept her safe could be weaponized against her. Her calls to smooth things over made it worse; people recorded her pleas, and they did not sound sympathetic. Her friends tried to cover for her, but in the world of social snapshots and tiny video clips, the truth marches fast. Within hours she was being called an opportunist. By morning her social accounts were flooded with messages. It happened quietly and loudly at once: Dalary was left with a small army of admirers turned watchers and a personal reputation that would be the subject of gossip for months.
The scene satisfied an ugly craving in the audience. People love a fall.
Finn stood there bruised and exhausted and—somehow—vindicated. He sat down opposite Dalton and looked at me. Our eyes met, and for a second the entire room seemed like a stage just for us. I wanted to be angry at him for the way he'd forced a spectacle, for the humiliation he'd chosen as punishment, but I was also proud. The man who had been my 'present' refused to be controlled.
Later that week, drama brewed into consequence. Dalton was called before an internal panel. He lost several corporate roles and found sponsors pulling back. Dalary deleted posts and vanished from many social events. Both were alive, both complicated, but both diminished by their own choices. They reacted as humans do: Dalton tried to sue; Dalary begged for privacy. The public did not like greed covered as affection.
I know the rules had been broken. I liked it.
"Did it feel good?" Xavier asked me a few days later. He had stood in the sidelines at the gala and then texted me that he was okay if I needed an ear.
"It felt like fireworks," I said. "And a collapse."
He gave me a smile that was all warmth. "You were very brave."
"Brave?" I repeated. "I'm a coward who lets men into her bed."
"Maybe you're a coward," he said calmly, "or maybe you were making room for truth."
Truth was messy. So was love. Finn and I had made something both fragile and stubborn: we had stolen a private thing and made it public without permission. We had turned the power of a man into his downfall and watched the world respond.
He stayed, despite the scandal. He stayed because he wanted to stay. He insisted every morning that this choice was his: not because of obligation, but because of wanting. He said it in the small voice that came when he was sleep-drunk or painfully honest.
The months that followed were not easy. People watched. My parents were both delighted and terrified. My mother loved the idea of status; my father hated the attention. I had to learn to be public about small things—coffee, morning routines—while keeping the heart of us secret when necessary. Finn flew to school and still called. He was young and stubborn, and I discovered the kinds of patience I never knew I had.
There were sacrifices. We kept quiet at work, we lied to relatives when needed. He left for an overseas program that Dalton and the board had finally allowed as an exit. He begged me to come visit during a holiday; I booked the ticket.
We were not perfect lovers. He was too much like fire sometimes—hot, then gone. I was the steady iron. We argued about things a twenty-year-old shouldn't have called "us," and I argued back like someone who had already built a life. He kissed me on a balcony while his father complained at board meetings. We found compromise in clumsy promises and in the ways we held each other awake at nights.
"Do you regret this?" I asked him once, sitting by the river with a cup of tea.
He looked at his hands. "If I said yes, would you still believe me?"
"No."
He smiled faintly. "Good. Then the answer is no. I chose it."
We had love moments that were ridiculous and tender. He learned to ask questions before he assumed. I learned to forgive the small, stupid things that happen when two people of different maps try to draw the same coastline. He stopped calling me "Auntie" and called me by my name in whispers when he wanted me to feel small and beloved. I teased him for being dramatic. He returned it by tying a bow at the end of my favorite scarf and calling it "our knot."
There were nights I wanted more acceptance from the world; there were nights I wanted the quiet safety of being a single woman with no complications. The truth is, I chose him again and again, like pressing a button and liking the same picture twice.
"Promise me one thing," I said, one night as he packed for a month abroad.
"What?"
"Be honest with me if you flirt."
He laughed. "You mean tell you the truth about every girl I look at?"
"Yes."
He looked at me like someone moved a chess piece. "If I tell you every girl, you'll be tired of hearing about flowers."
"Then don't flirt."
He kissed my forehead. "I don't plan to. But I am not perfect."
He boarded the plane and left a gap in the house I couldn't quite fill. He sent messages at odd hours. He told me he loved me in English and in half a dozen accidental phrases he picked up overseas. He came back at holidays with stories and a backpack full of silly presents. He called me 'my woman' in a surprising voice that sounded like a man who had built himself in secret while learning how to be better.
Our days continued. I kept my job. I kept tutoring, mostly as a courtesy to my father's ambition and sometimes because Finn actually did learn a bit. Xavier stayed a friend and an anchor. My mother continued to scheme, and my father continued to inhale and exhale like a man who has learned that a life is what you make, not what you are given.
At one public festival, when the moon was almost full, Finn unwrapped something from his pocket—a small box. "Open," he said.
I laughed. "You promised nothing dramatic."
"You like small things," he said, grinning.
Inside was a bow tie. He had bought one for himself for an evening when he wanted to look like the man who once sat on a dais and thought he could own the world.
"Unwrap it," he said.
I looked at him. "It's a bow tie."
"Unwrap his bow tie," he quoted softly, older than his years and ridiculous. "At least for me."
I laughed, and then I took the bow tie and lifted it to his neck. He looked at me with a softness I knew was real, and for a second the world was only us.
"Do you know what you are to me?" he asked.
"You are my mistake," I said.
"No," he corrected, smiling. "You are my everything. And this time, I am unwrapping myself for you."
I untied the bow and let him lose his neatness. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at me like he had before the gala and after every test: fierce and gentle.
I had wanted a bag for my twenty-sixth birthday. I had received a man who unmade my plans and remade me. He was messy and bright and sometimes unfair. He was dangerous. He was mine.
We did not rewrite social rules. We created our own. We were not the neat conclusion of a romance novel; we were two damaged, hopeful people who decided to be reckless with their lives. And for all the chaos we had caused—public punishment, private shame, family fights and reconciliations—I would choose him, again and again.
"Promise me one thing," he said that night, pulling me close.
"What?"
"Keep unwrapping me."
"I will," I whispered, and I meant it.
The End
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